Adolescent Religious Motivation, Family Functioning, and Empathic Concern

Abstract

Empathic concern, or the ability to understand the emotions of others, serves as a notable part of the foundation for adolescents' abilities to respond to others in a caring manner. This study provides empirical evidence that both aspects of adolescents' religious motivation and family functioning are potentially important areas for prevention and intervention associated with adolescent empathic concern. Self‐report questionnaire data from 248 adolescents were used to test how adolescents' reports of intrinsic and extrinsic religious motivation and family functioning were associated with empathic concern after controlling for gender, ethnicity, family form, and age. Results of the hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that girls reported significantly greater empathic concern than boys, intrinsic religious motivation and family functioning were positively related to empathic concern, and extrinsic religious motivation was negatively associated with empathic concern. Implications of the findings for social workers are presented.