Empathy can help people build strong friendships and close family ties. A new study reinforces the power of teaching and practicing empathy, especially during adolescence.
New results from a long-term study published in the journal Child Development found that teens who received “empathic care” from their mother (the only parent included in the study) were able to pay it forward and show empathy to their close friends. The research further suggests that parental empathy is passed down from generation to generation: teenagers who developed empathy skills were more likely to have healthy adult relationships and a supportive parenting style with their own children more than a decade later.
“This study is among the first to show that teenage friendships may play a role in predicting how we parent,” says Jessica Stern, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia and first author of the study.
On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
Longitudinal studies that link together different relationships across time are unique and impressive, says Lana Karasik, a psychology professor at the College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, who was not involved in the study. “I have not seen anything like it,” she says. “Usually, giant studies such as this one typically rely on self-reported behaviors. The incorporation of behavioral measures of the parent-to-adolescent and the adolescent-to-adolescent [interactions] was a big strength.”
Previous research suggests that teenage years are an important period for building empathy along with other social and emotional skills. Teens also start to depend less on their parents, discover their own identities, become interested in understanding the perspectives of others and learn how to navigate social situations independently.
The new study is part of an ongoing project called KLIFF/VIDA (Kids, Lives, Families, Friends/Virginia Institute for Development in Adulthood). Since 1998 KLIFF/VIDA has followed 184 people from age 13 into their late 30s using surveys and in-person observations. The demographically diverse participants were recruited during middle school in the Charlottesville, Va., area. This project focused on the empathic care of mothers, but the researchers hope to include the effects of empathetic fathers in future follow-up studies.
In the Child Development study, the team invited teenagers, along with each participant’s mother and one of their close friends, into the lab once a year and recorded six-minute conversations about a problem that the teen was having. The researchers looked for four main indicators of empathy: emotional engagement, support, solutions and understanding. Mothers who were emotionally engaged actively listened and asked thoughtful follow-up questions. Supportive parents often validated what their kid was feeling or offered comfort by expressing concern or sympathy. They also steered the conversation toward solutions while acknowledging their teen’s needs. Their level of understanding regarding their teen’s experiences was evaluated through the relevance of their suggestions and responses.
The researchers then had the teens discuss a problem that their close friend was experiencing to see if they showed empathetic behaviors themselves. These behaviors were scored on a scale of zero to four, with zero representing no signs of empathy or engagement. Teenagers whose moms demonstrated more empathetic behavior tended to show similar skills and actions toward their close friend. There was a small difference in empathy between boys and girls—female participants were slightly more empathetic—but Stern notes that the researchers’ data do not account for other nonconversational supportive behaviors that boys might exhibit outside the lab.
As the teens grew into adults, the team also evaluated participants’ relationships with their own children (who were between the ages of three and eight during this portion of the study). For this later phase of the study, the researchers had to rely on survey data because of the pandemic, and some participants had moved out of state. Those who had kids rated various observational empathetic behaviors, such as how frequently they saw their child trying to understand how others felt or comforting another person. The participants who displayed empathy for close friends at ages 17 to 19 in the observational portion of the study were more likely to be supportive, empathetic parents, and that, in turn, was associated with greater empathy in their young children.
The recent findings and past results from the KLIFF/VIDA project support the idea that, compared with parental relationships, the quality of relationships with close friends during midadolescence starts to be a stronger predictor of mental health, social awareness and the quality of other relationships, including workplace and romantic relationships.
“For children and adolescents, being more empathetic tends to be linked to better peer relationships and better conflict resolution,” Stern says. “If you understand your friend’s perspective, you’re less likely to do something that upsets them, and you’re more likely to be able to repair the relationship if something goes wrong.”
Stern’s previous work has shown that parents who are more empathetic tend to have kids who are more securely attached, meaning they show greater connection and trust in a parent. “If you feel more understood by your parent, there’s more trust in the relationship, and there’s a sense that your parents are available for support when needed,” she says. “What we think is happening is that experiences of empathy allow you to be secure in your relationships, and then feeling secure in your relationships allows you to show more empathy.”
Karasik notes that assigning number-based scores to complex interactions “doesn’t give you the nuances in behavior.” Stern acknowledges that the lab setting isn’t the most natural environment for these conversations and can’t capture all the supportive behaviors teens express in their daily life. She’s also interested in studying if empathetic friendships can compensate for a lack of empathy from a teen’s family.
Amanda Guyer, a professor of human development and family studies at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the study, praises it for addressing a positive type of behavior that’s transmitted across generations. “By identifying these types of behaviors and responses in the observed data, [the researchers] actually suggest points for intervention to help support effective parenting,” she says.
Stern and many other psychologists have found that empathy can be taught, even to toddlers. Observing how parents interact with each other sets a model for children as young as three years old, which is why teaching empathy should start as early as possible. Parents can also help their teens become more empathetic by encouraging them to develop friendships and allow them to have unsupervised time with their peers, Stern says.
Listening and paying attention to teens when they have a problem are important approaches for parents to take, Stern says. She also encourages active listening, nodding to show you understand, not interrupting and not laughing if teens are sharing something vulnerable. Matching a teen’s emotional response can help them feel more understood, she adds. Being curious about their experiences and asking open-ended questions about how they’re doing can give them an opportunity to open up.
Guyer says it’s important to give kids space and time for big, difficult emotions to be felt before asking if they want advice. They might just want to be listened to, she says. Guyer’s research shows that mothers who offered supportive responses and were warm either through tone or actions helped teens better regulate their own emotions, especially negative ones such as anger and sadness.