ArticleAffective science2025
Exploring the Role of Empathy in the Association Between Early Life Adversity and Antisocial Behavior.
Article in Affective science, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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5 authors.
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Abstract
Early life adversity (ELA) refers to stressful childhood experiences such as neglect, abuse, and violence exposure that can profoundly shape behavior. While ELA is consistently linked to antisocial behavior (e.g., aggression, delinquency), the role of empathy in this connection is unclear. Empathy, the ability to understand and resonate with others' thoughts and emotions, is theoretically linked to antisocial behavior, but empirical work has produced mixed findings. We explore mediation and moderation frameworks to explain the ELA-antisociality link. Using an online sample of 165 adults, we examine three ELA dimensions (unpredictability, threat, and deprivation) and their association with antisocial behavior and empathy through an ecologically valid empathic accuracy task. We also compare this naturalistic measure of empathy with a popular self-report measure of empathy. Results did not support mediation with either operationalization of empathy (i.e., task or self-report), with no direct effects of ELA on empathy or of empathy on antisocial behavior. Empathic accuracy, however, moderated the association between antisocial behavior and both unpredictability and deprivation in childhood. At low levels of empathic accuracy, there was a significant link between adversity and antisocial behavior (unpredictability Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-024-00280-y.
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