Abstract
Empathy is fundamental to social cognition, driving prosocial behaviour and mental health but associations with aging and other socio-demographic characteristics are unclear. We therefore aimed to characterise associations of these characteristics with two main self-reported components of empathy, namely empathic-concern (feeling compassion) and perspective-taking (understanding others' perspective). We asked participants in an internet-based survey of UK-dwelling adults aged ≥18 years to complete the Interpersonal Reactivity Index subscales measuring empathic concern and perspective taking, and sociodemographic and personality questionnaires. We weighted the sample to be UK population representative and employed multivariable weighted linear regression models. In 30,033 respondents, mean empathic concern score was 3.86 (95% confidence interval 3.85, 3.88) and perspective taking was 3.57 (3.56. 3.59); the correlation between these sub-scores was 0.45 (p < 0.001). Empathic concern and perspective taking followed an inverse-u shape trajectory in women with peak between 40 and 50 years whereas in men, perspective taking declines with age but empathic concern increases. In fully adjusted models, greater empathic concern was associated with female gender, non-white ethnicity, having more education, working in health, social-care, or childcare professions, and having higher neuroticism, extroversion, openness to experience and agreeableness traits. Perspective taking was associated with younger age, female gender, more education, employment in health or social-care, neuroticism, openness, and agreeableness. Empathic compassion and understanding are distinct dimensions of empathy with differential demographic associations. Perspective taking may decline due to cognitive inflexibility with older age whereas empathic concern increases in older men suggesting it is socially-driven.
Highlights
Empathy comprises the ability to feel compassion for another person’s experience and the cognitive capacity to take the mental perspective of another person in order to understand their feelings [1]
Perspective taking was associated with younger age, female gender, more education, employment in health or social-care, neuroticism, openness, and agreeableness
Perspective taking may decline due to cognitive inflexibility with older age whereas empathic concern increases in older men suggesting it is sociallydriven
Summary
Empathy comprises the ability to feel compassion for another person’s experience (emotional empathy) and the cognitive capacity to take the mental perspective of another person in order to understand their feelings (cognitive empathy) [1]. Identifying the links between empathy and static characteristics such as gender and ethnicity or dynamic factors such as aging, education, employment, or social behaviours including marriage and social contact, has the potential to elucidate the determinants of empathy, such as learning through social interaction [10], and how empathy changes during the life-course [1]. Understanding how empathy changes with age and to what extent this is related to biological and psychosocial factors is important as it may clarify the mechanisms involved and links to neurodegenerative diseases in which loss of empathy can be characteristic [11], as well as identify targets to improve empathy. Several studies have suggested decline in empathy in older age [1], for example, a large nationally representative cross-sectional study of US adults, aged 18–90 years old, born between 1920 and 1999, found an inverse-U shaped association of empathy with age, so that both emotional and cognitive empathy increased from young adulthood and peaked in middle-age—around age 60—before declining [12]
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