Adversity, emotion recognition, and empathic concern in high-risk youth.

Jodi A. Quas,Catherine M. Quas,Kelli L. Dickerson,Richard Matthew,Connor Harron,Michel Botbol

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0181606

Jodi A. Quas, Catherine M. Quas + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0181606

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Abstract

Little is known about how emotion recognition and empathy jointly operate in youth growing up in contexts defined by persistent adversity. We investigated whether adversity exposure in two groups of youth was associated with reduced empathy and whether deficits in emotion recognition mediated this association. Foster, rural poor, and comparison youth from Swaziland, Africa identified emotional expressions and rated their empathic concern for characters depicted in images showing positive, ambiguous, and negative scenes. Rural and foster youth perceived greater anger and happiness in the main characters in ambiguous and negative images than did comparison youth. Rural children also perceived less sadness. Youth’s perceptions of sadness in the negative and ambiguous expressions mediated the relation between adversity and empathic concern, but only for the rural youth, who perceived less sadness, which then predicted less empathy. Findings provide new insight into processes that underlie empathic tendencies in adversity-exposed youth and highlight potential directions for interventions to increase empathy.

Highlights

In recent years, scientific research, policy, and even public attention has turned toward attempting to understand how some of the most fundamental social processes that make us human—compassion, empathy, and concern for others—operate in a world filled with vast poverty, desperation, and violence
We investigated whether adversity exposure in two groups of youth was associated with reduced empathy and whether deficits in emotion recognition mediated this association
The overarching goal of the present study was to assess whether exposure to chronic adversity was associated with reduced empathic concern in youth, and test whether this association was mediated by variations in the youth’s capacity to recognize emotions in others

Summary

Introduction

Scientific research, policy, and even public attention has turned toward attempting to understand how some of the most fundamental social processes that make us human—compassion, empathy, and concern for others—operate in a world filled with vast poverty, desperation, and violence. These processes are core to our ability to connect with one another, form close relationships, and engage with others; and are believed to underlie a range of prosocial and altruistic tendencies [1, 2]. Despite recognition of the critical role that empathy and related processes play in human lives, questions remain about precisely how empathy functions in contexts defined by extreme adversity and challenge, in childhood, a time when emotional functioning generally, including possibly empathy, is undergoing rapid change.

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