Poster #65 - The Relation Between Empathy and Child Anxiety as Moderated by Inhibited Temperament

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Empathy, defined as the understanding of and response to the emotional experience of another individual, is a crucial skill for maintaining relationships (Zahn-Waxler & Radke-Yarrow, 1990). Although deficits in empathy have often been associated with psychopathology and it is typically conceptualized as an adaptive skill, either a deficit in or high levels of empathy may be maladaptive (Tone & Tully, 2014). High empathy is expected to relate to anxiety in the context of physiological hyperarousal and frequent exposure to negative emotion (Tone & Tully, 2014). Recent research has supported an association between empathy and anxiety, but has not examined this relation in children (Gambin & Sharp, 2018; Powell, 2018). This relation has also not been examined within the context of inhibited temperament, which is associated with physiological hyperarousal and is one of the most robust predictors of child anxiety (Perez-Edgar & Fox, 2005). To better understand the development of anxiety in the context of high empathic sensitivity and inhibited temperament, the current work aims to investigate the interaction of empathy and inhibited temperament to understand how these variables may influence anxiety development.
Participants will include approximately 118 mothers and their 4-year-old children. Mothers and their children came to the laboratory when children were 3 and were contacted again for follow-up assessments at age 4. Child inhibited temperament was assessed as a composite of behaviors observed during a Risk Room episode (Lab-TAB; Buss & Goldsmith, 2000) at age 3. At age 4, mothers and children came back to the laboratory and participated in an empathy task, in which mothers were asked to feign an injury. The child’s behaviors during the task were coded to create an empathy score. At age 4, mothers reported on their child’s empathic behaviors (Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment; Briggs-Gowan & Carter, 2001) in order to have an assessment of child empathic behaviors with individuals other than their mothers. Mothers also reported on their child’s anxiety symptoms at age 4 (Spence et al., 2001).
Current analyses included 82 participants. Correlations were analyzed to examine the relations among primary variables (Table 1). Mother-reported child empathy was negatively correlated with inhibited temperament, suggesting more inhibited children expressed fewer empathic behaviors than less inhibited children. Multiple regression was used to test the main effects and interaction between mother-reported empathy and temperament in relation to anxiety. The interaction between child empathy and inhibited temperament significantly related to child anxiety (β = .820, t(45) = 2.019, p = .05). Further examination of the interaction revealed empathy approached a significant relation to anxiety at high levels of inhibited temperament (β = .722, t(45) = 1.908, p=.06), but not at low levels of inhibited temperament (β = -.540, t(45) = -1.697, p = .09). Results suggest high empathy, in the context of inhibited temperament, may be maladaptive in terms of anxiety development. This may be due to inhibited children’s higher physiological hyperarousal or attentional biases. Future analyses will examine how parent emotion may also moderate the relation between empathy and temperament to predict anxiety development in children.

Authors

• Keshia Wagers, Miami University
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth J Kiel, Miami University
  Non-Presenting Author