Abstract
While the importance of social affect and cognition is indisputable throughout the adult lifespan, findings of how empathy and prosociality develop and interact across adulthood are mixed and real-life data are scarce. Research using ecological momentary assessment recently demonstrated that adults commonly experience empathy in daily life. Furthermore, experiencing empathy was linked to higher prosocial behavior and subjective well-being. However, to date, it is not clear whether there are adult age differences in daily empathy and daily prosociality and whether age moderates the relationship between empathy and prosociality across adulthood. Here we analyzed experience-sampling data collected from participants across the adult lifespan to study age effects on empathy, prosocial behavior, and well-being under real-life circumstances. Linear and quadratic age effects were found for the experience of empathy, with increased empathy across the three younger age groups (18 to 45 years) and a slight decrease in the oldest group (55 years and older). Neither prosocial behavior nor well-being showed significant age-related differences. We discuss these findings with respect to (partially discrepant) results derived from lab-based and traditional survey studies. We conclude that studies linking in-lab experiments with real-life experience-sampling may be a promising venue for future lifespan studies.
Highlights
While the importance of social affect and cognition is indisputable throughout the adult lifespan, findings of how empathy and prosociality develop and interact across adulthood are mixed and reallife data are scarce
Experimental age-comparative laboratory studies have often revealed a higher degree of prosocial behavior in older compared to younger adults[14,26–29], and have shown a linear increase in prosociality when examined across the adult lifespan[11,30,31]
Separating contributions of within- from between-subject variability, we aimed to investigate whether age influences daily empathy, prosocial behavior, and well-being, as well as their interactions
Summary
While the importance of social affect and cognition is indisputable throughout the adult lifespan, findings of how empathy and prosociality develop and interact across adulthood are mixed and reallife data are scarce. In line with our expectations, empathic concern was found to be enhanced whereas perspective taking ability decreased in older compared to younger adults Whilst this pattern of findings contributes to an emerging prevalent view of reduced cognitive but preserved or increased affective empathy in older vs younger adults (8 for a recent review), there is substantial heterogeneity in the literature, when considering adult age effects across the lifespan. With respect to experimental studies, there is some evidence for an age-related increase in task-based (i.e., less naturalistic behavioral measure conducted in the lab) empathic concern[11], and affect sharing[12] in some studies. There are, other studies which do not find such age-related increases in prosocial behaviors neither in experimental tasks or self-reported prosocial measures when comparing younger and older adults[32,33], when comparing middle- and older age groups[34], nor when looking at age correlations across adulthood[35,36]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
