ArticleJournal of adolescence2026
Emotional Valence Influences Empathic Capacity in Adolescence and Young Adulthood.
Article in Journal of adolescence, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Emotional Valence Influences Empathic Capacity in Adolescence and Young Adulthood.Journal of adolescence · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
introductionPrevious research has identified age-related differences in empathic abilities between adolescence and young adulthood. While cognitive empathy appears to continue to develop from adolescence and into adulthood, the developmental trajectory of affective empathy is less clear. It is also unclear how valence influences empathic responding and whether this differs according to age. To address this, we assessed age differences in cognitive and affective empathy in adolescents and young adults using a newly developed empathy measure that includes contextually rich stimuli with a variety of positive and negative emotions.
methodsWe recruited 109 participants, including 50 adolescents (aged 13-20 years, 60% female) and 59 young adults (aged 25-35 years, 59% female). All participants completed the EMOTE, which indexed cognitive empathy accuracy and affective empathy ratings. All data were collected in Australia between 2024 and 2025.
resultsAdolescents had lower cognitive empathy accuracy than young adults, whereas affective empathy ratings did not differ between the age groups. Emotional valence influenced empathic responding, such that cognitive empathy accuracy was higher for positive compared with negative stimuli in both age groups, and affective empathy ratings were stronger for negative compared with positive stimuli in adolescents only.
conclusionOur findings support the view that cognitive empathy continues to develop into young adulthood, while affective empathy remains more stable. Critically, our results highlight the role of emotional valence in shaping empathic responding, particularly in adolescence.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.