Parents’ and Adolescents’ Empathic Accuracy in the Context of Managing Type 1 Diabetes

• In Event: 3-222 - Is it a Six or a Nine? Quantifying Parent-Adolescent Perspectives in Dynamic Interpersonal Interactions

Integrative Statement

Type 1 diabetes is among the most common chronic childhood illnesses whose prevalence is increasing worldwide (Lipman et al., 2013). Adolescence is a developmental period when adherence to type 1 diabetes regimens and glycemic control often deteriorate, increasing the risk for long-term microvascular complications (Weissberg-Benchell et al., 1995). Parents’ tendency to empathize with their children is associated with better health outcomes for children and adolescents with chronic illness (Vervoort et al., 2006). However, no studies to our knowledge have examined in-the-moment empathic accuracy and its associations with health and relationship outcomes. Using an observational methodology, the present study tested whether parents’ and adolescents’ accurate perceptions of each other’s emotions (i.e., empathic accuracy) was associated with physical and mental health and relationship characteristics in a diverse sample of adolescents with type 1 diabetes and their parents.

As part of an ongoing multi-method study, adolescents (Mage = 12.76 years, SD = 1.88, 53% female), and their parents engaged in a discussion about a conflict topic related to the adolescent’s diabetes management (e.g., forgetting to check insulin levels). Following the discussion, adolescents and parents separately reviewed the videotaped discussion and rated their own and the other person’s perceived positive and negative emotions once every minute. Parents and adolescents also completed questionnaires of physical and mental health and dispositional empathy, and adolescents completed measures of parent-adolescent relationship quality. Metabolic control (HbA1c) was collected from medical records. Empathic accuracy was computed as average difference scores between the individual’s ratings of his/her own emotions and the partner’s ratings of the individual’s emotions (smaller gap = higher accuracy).

Preliminary analyses indicate that adolescents’ empathic accuracy for parents’ positive and negative emotions was associated with less diabetes-related conflict, adjusting for overall relationship quality and dispositional empathy (β = .42, p = .01 for negative accuracy and β = .30, p = .04 for positive accuracy). Furthermore, child empathic accuracy for parents’ negative emotions was associated with fewer adolescent and parent depressive symptoms (β = .39, p = .02 and β = .35, p = .03 for parent and adolescent depressive symptoms, respectively). Finally, parents’ empathic accuracy for adolescents’ negative emotions was associated with less parental anxiety (β = .37, p = .02) and a trend toward better adolescent diabetes management (β = -.26, p = .09). There were no associations between parent or adolescent empathic accuracy and HbA1c or child anxiety.

Findings suggest that dynamic assessments of perceptions of others’ emotions in the context of parent-adolescent relationships coping with chronic illness are important above and beyond general self-report measures. Implications for using dynamic and ecologically valid measures of empathy in parent-adolescent interactions will be discussed.

Authors

• Alexandra Main, University of California, Merced
  Presenting Author

• Carmen Kho, University of California, Merced
  Non-Presenting Author

• Deborah Wiebe, University of California, Merced
  Non-Presenting Author

• Linda Cameron, University of California, Merced
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jennifer Raymond, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author