A Longitudinal Examination of Within- and Between-Person Associations Between Peer Status and Empathy

• In Event: Peer Relations as a Risk Factor for Negative Developmental Outcomes: Addressing High Priority Understudied Areas

Abstract

Empathy is considered a multi-dimensional, developmentally acquired ability to share other people’s thoughts and feelings (Allemand, 2015), and plays a vital role in socioemotional processes, particularly during adolescence. Lower levels of empathic concern in adolescence are associated with antisocial, aggressive, and bullying behavior (Joliffe & Farrington, 2008), and thus, substantial research has been dedicated towards examining psychosocial predictors of empathy in adolescence. Limited research has begun to suggest that peer-nominated ratings of likability and popularity are positively associated with empathic concern, but findings are mixed (see Port et al., 2020, for a review). Studies revealed both significant positive, and nonsignificant associations between peer-status and empathic concern, but studies are rarely longitudinal, and no studies included both popularity and likeability as simultaneous predictors of empathic concern.
Adolescence is a pivotal time for the development of empathy, as youths’ social goals and peer milieu vary throughout adolescence, and these relational changes may influence an adolescent’s ability or willingness to focus on others’ feelings and perspectives. Additionally, as adolescents age, popularity and likeability as metrics of high peer status diverge into increasingly disparate constructs; likeability is thought to be positively associated with prosocial behavior, and leadership abilities, whereas popularity is associated with dominance, aggression, and prestige (Cillessen & Rose, 2005). These differences underscore the necessity to examine the associations among empathy and both metrics of peer status simultaneously and longitudinally. Gaps in the literature led to the development of two study hypotheses; (1) higher levels of popularity would be prospectively associated with lower levels of empathy, and (2) likeability would be prospectively associated with higher levels of empathy.
Method: A racially and ethnically diverse school-based sample of 893 sixth and seventh grade adolescents self-reported empathic concern at four timepoints (IRI; Davis, 1983), and ratings of likeability and popularity were assessed using standard sociometric procedures (Coie & Dodge, 1983).
Data Analyses: To evaluate the main study hypotheses, a tri-variate random-intercept cross-lagged panel model was fit (RI-CLPM: Hamaker, et al., 2015; see figure 1). The RI-CLPM extends the traditional CLPM by disaggregating within-person (represented by the cross-lagged paths) and between-person effects (represented by one latent random-intercept per outcome). The RI-CLPM enabled the examination of the reciprocal relations among likability, popularity, and empathic concern over four timepoints.
Results: Results indicate that at the within-person level, popularity was negatively and prospectively associated with empathic concern, while controlling for concurrent associations and between-person effects (see Figure 2). In contrast, likability was not significantly associated with empathic concern in any cross-lagged path throughout the study’s timepoints. These results indicate that, above and beyond likability, popularity is significantly and negatively associated with empathic concern. These results illustrate that popular adolescents may be at risk for decreased empathic concern, whereas unpopular adolescents, perhaps due to their experiences with negative social feedback, have greater increases in empathy over time.

Authors

• Nathan Field, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author

• Emma Balkind

• Kara Anne Fox, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Mallory J. Feldman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Kaitlyn Burnell, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Elizabeth Nick, Vanderbilt University

• Kristen A Lindquist, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Eva H Telzer, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Mitchell J Prinstein, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill