Linking attachment to empathy in childhood and adolescence: A multilevel meta-analysis

Abstract

From promoting cooperation and resource sharing to forming and maintaining harmonious social bonds, empathy plays a key role in everyday life. However, despite the theoretical relevance of attachment to empathy, questions remain about the strength of the association between these two variables in childhood and adolescence. Thus, a series of multilevel meta-analyses were conducted to determine the strength of the relationship between each of the attachment patterns and empathy, and to test potential moderators altering this relationship in individuals aged 0 to 18 years. In total, 159 effect sizes from 50 studies, assessing 66 independent samples, including 29,653 young people, were retrieved by a systematic literature search. The results revealed that secure attachment was positively correlated with empathy, ambivalent attachment was not associated with empathy, and avoidant attachment was negatively related to empathy. In addition, the multivariate analysis showed that the dimension of empathy moderated the relationship between secure attachment and empathy. In sum, the findings of the current study were crucial for understanding the association between attachment and empathy in childhood and adolescence.