Associations between Empathy and Aggression Subtypes in High-Risk Adolescents.

• In Event: Heterogeneity in Externalizing Psychopathology: the Contribution of Multiple Etiological Pathways Across Childhood and Adolescence.

Abstract

Aggression, a notably heterogeneous set of behaviors causing harm to others, is associated with many maladaptive outcomes across childhood and adolescence (e.g., lower academic achievement, mental health problems). The development and persistence of aggression has been theoretically linked to individual differences in empathy, or the capacity to perceive, understand and resonate with others’ experiences, perspectives, and emotions. Empirical research tells a less consistent story; meta-analytic work quantifying the link between empathy and aggression shows a small and negative association (r = -0.07, Miller & Eisenberg, 1998; r = -0.11, Vachon et al., 2014), with studies reporting both positive and negative associations between these constructs. Expanding this work to delineate subtypes of empathy (i.e., cognitive versus affective empathy) and aggression (i.e., reactive and proactive aggression) may be important for advancing this muddled literature.

Adolescence is an especially vulnerable period for the consequences of aggression (e.g., poor peer relationships, delinquency); therefore, the current pre-registered study (https://osf.io/zbpt5/) seeks to examine associations between empathy and aggression subtypes in a diverse, longitudinal sample of 103 high-risk adolescents (MAge=16.1 years, 53% female; 60% racial/ethnic minoritized groups). Two-thirds of the sample were recruited from a clinical sample of youth with moderate to high levels of emotional reactivity; the remaining one-third were recruited from the community and had low levels of emotional reactivity. Subtypes of empathy were assessed using the Cognitive, Affective, & Somatic Empathy Scale (Raine et al., 2018), a newly developed and well-validated measure of empathy. Reactive and proactive aggression were assessed using the Reactive-Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (Raine et al., 2006)

In multiple linear regression models, we considered subtypes of empathy as dependent variables and included as independent variables proactive aggression, reactive aggression, group (clinical versus community), age, sex, and minoritized status. Consistent with our pre-registered hypotheses, we found that reactive aggression was positively associated with affective empathy (β = 0.24, p = 0.03), while proactive aggression was negatively associated with affective empathy (β = -0.24, p = 0.03), and somatic empathy (β = -0.24, p = 0.02). Importantly, aggression, broadly defined, was not associated with any empathy subtype (i.e., affective, cognitive, or somatic), highlighting the importance of parsing aggression subtypes when examining connections between empathy and aggression. Our talk will feature additional analyses considering the a) impact of emotional reactivity on these associations given prior work linking emotional reactivity to both empathy and aggression, b) assessment of aggression across multiple informants (i.e., parents, teachers) and contexts (i.e., home, school), and c) longitudinal associations between empathy and aggression assessed 9 months later. Investigating and modeling connections between empathy and aggression subtypes early in development, particularly among youth at risk for aggression, is critical due to the frequent co-occurrence of aggression subtypes in clinical samples and the paucity of work considering both proactive and reactive aggression in at-risk youth. Results from our study contribute a key step towards understanding etiological correlates of aggression giving rise to heterogeneity in antisocial behavior, and ultimately, inform targeted interventions aimed at reducing antisociality and improving psychosocial outcomes for at-risk youth.

Authors

• Isabella Kahhale, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Jamie L Hanson, University of Pittsburgh

• Adrian Raine

• Amy L. Byrd