The Role of Childhood Maltreatment in Affective and Cognitive Empathy

Abstract

Maltreatment during childhood has been associated with poorer affective and cognitive empathy. Poor empathy is one of the many negative consequences of childhood maltreatment, and is associated with poorer interpersonal functioning and anti-social behaviors. Despite the strong link between maltreatment and empathy, few studies have examined different types of empathy and the mechanisms underlying their relationship. The current study aimed to explore the association between childhood maltreatment and empathic subcomponents, as well as factors mediating this association. Mediating factors suggested in the literature remain untested, such as attachment security, emotional regulation, emotional avoidance, and attribution biases. The main hypotheses were that childhood maltreatment is associated with poorer affective and cognitive empathic abilities, but that attachment security, emotional regulation, and emotional avoidance mediate the relationship with affective empathy, while attachment security and attribution biases mediate the relationship with cognitive empathy. Undergraduate students from the Psychology Department at the American University of Beirut were invited to participate in the study through completing a web-based survey that included measures of childhood maltreatment, empathy, and the hypothesized mediators. The study did not find a relation between childhood maltreatment and empathy, nor its subcomponents. Regression models showed that attachment and emotional regulation were significant predictors of affective empathy, as opposed to maltreatment and emotional avoidance. For cognitive empathy, none of the potential predictors (maltreatment, attachment and attribution biases) were significant predictors. Possible explanations for these unexpected findings are explored, including situation-specific empathy and the role of personal distress, as well as low levels of maltreatment severity in the sample. This study has implications for future research to further understand the role of attachment security and emotional regulation in the development of empathy, and inform interventions that promote empathic abilities.