Empathy is an important social skill and is believed to play an essential role in moral development (Hoffman, 2000). In the present longitudinal study, the authors investigated adolescents' development of perspective taking and empathic concern from age 13 to 18 years (mean age at Wave 1 = 13 years, SD = 0.46) and examined its association with pubertal status. Adolescents (283 boys, 214 girls) reported for 6 consecutive years on their dispositional perspective taking and empathic concern and for 4 consecutive years on pubertal status. Latent growth curve modeling revealed gender differences in levels and developmental trends. Gender differences in perspective taking emerged during adolescence, with girls' increases being steeper than those of the boys. Girls also showed higher levels of empathic concern than did boys. Whereas girls' empathic concern remained stable across adolescence, boys showed a decrease from early to middle adolescence with a rebound to the initial level thereafter. Boys who were physically more mature also reported lower empathic concern than did their less physically developed peers. The current study supports theoretical notions that perspective taking develops during adolescence as a result of cognitive development. Moreover, the results suggest that pubertal maturation plays a role in boys' development of empathic concern.

Although adolescents’ prosocial behavior is related to various positive outcomes, longitudinal research on its development and predictors is still sparse. This 6-wave longitudinal study investigated the development of prosocial behavior across adolescence, and examined longitudinal associations with perspective taking and empathic concern. Participants were 497 adolescents (M age t1 = 13.03 years, 43% girls) who reported on their prosocial behaviors, empathic concern, and perspective taking. The results revealed marked gender differences in the development of prosocial behavior. For boys, levels of prosocial behavior were stable until age 14, followed by an increase until age 17, and a slight decrease thereafter. For girls, prosocial behavior increased until age 16 years and then slightly decreased. Regarding longitudinal associations, empathic concern was consistently related to subsequent prosocial behavior. However, perspective taking was only indirectly related to prosocial behavior, via its effect on empathic concern. Tests of the direction of effects showed support for the notion that earlier prosocial behavior predicts subsequent empathy-related traits, but only for girls. The findings support cognitive-developmental and moral socialization theories of prosocial development and the primary role of moral emotions in predicting prosocial behaviors. Our findings inform strategies to foster prosocial behaviors by emphasizing moral emotions rather than moral cognitions during adolescence.

We examined whether the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980 ), consisting of Perspective Taking (PT), Empathic Concern (EC), Personal Distress (PD), and Fantasy (FN), is a psychometrically invariant empathy measure for early and late adolescents and their mothers. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated adequate properties and psychometric invariance across 2 Dutch samples (269 early adolescents, 232 late adolescents). Females scored higher than males on each subscale. Early adolescents scored lower than late adolescents on PT and FN, and higher on PD. The different groups showed similar subscale associations with psychosocial health indexes, and similar subscale contributions to a higher order empathy dimension. Most dimensions showed positive correlations between adolescents and mothers. The IRI appears adequate for examining empathy across the span of adolescence, as well as patterns between youths and mothers.

Empathy, which is the ability to feel concern for and to understand others’ feelings, is thought to develop in high quality relationships with parent and peers, but also to facilitate the quality of these relationships. While a wide literature has addressed this aspect, the heterogeneity of primary studies, in which different indicators of relationship quality (e.g., support, conflict) and empathy (i.e., affective and cognitive) have been examined, makes it difficult to draw conclusive answers. Therefore, it remained ambiguous how parent–child and peer relationship quality are associated with adolescents’ empathy. In order to increase the understanding of these associations, a multilevel meta-analysis was performed, which allowed for including multiple effect sizes from each study. By a systematic literate search, 70 eligible studies were found that provided 390 effect sizes from 75 independent samples. The results showed a small positive correlation between parent–child relationship quality and empathy, and a small-to-moderate positive correlation between peer relationship quality and empathy, which was significantly stronger than the correlation with parent–child relationship quality. Hence, the meta-analytic results indicate that adolescents with higher quality relationships, especially with peers, indeed tend to show more concern for and understanding of others’ emotions than adolescents with lower quality relationships. Moreover, the moderation analyses showed stronger correlations for the positive dimension of relationship quality than for the negative dimension, and stronger correlations for composite scores of affective and cognitive empathy than for separate scores of the empathy dimensions. However, no differences in correlations were found between the affective and cognitive empathy dimension, and no moderation effects were found for gender and age. Thus, this meta-analysis demonstrates robust positive associations between parent–child and peer relationship quality and empathy in adolescence, implying that good empathic abilities may be a protective factor for experiencing poor relationships.

Building on self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan in Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227-268. doi:10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01, 2000), the aim of the current study was to examine the role of maternal affective and cognitive empathy in predicting adolescents’ depressive symptoms, through mothers’ psychological control use. Less empathic mothers may be less sensitive to adolescents’ need for psychological autonomy, and thus prone to violating this need using psychological control, which may in turn predict adolescents’ depressive symptoms. Moreover, according to interpersonal theory of depression (Coyne in Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 85, 186–193. doi:10.1037/0021-843x.85.2.186, 1976), adolescents’ depressive symptoms may elicit rejecting responses, such as mothers’ psychological control. For six waves, 497 adolescents (57 % boys, Mage T1 = 13.03) annually completed questionnaires on depressive symptoms and maternal psychological control, while mothers reported on their empathy. Cross-lagged path analyses showed that throughout adolescence, both mothers’ affective and cognitive empathy indirectly predicted boys’ and girls’ depressive symptoms, through psychological control. Additionally, depressive symptoms predicted psychological control for boys, and early adolescent girls. These results highlight the importance of (1) mothers’ affective and cognitive empathy in predicting adolescents’ depressive symptoms, and (2) taking gender into account when examining adolescent-effects.

Parent-child relationships change during adolescence. Furthermore, parents and adolescents perceive parenting differently. We examined the changes in perceptions of parental practices in fathers, mothers, and adolescents during adolescence. Furthermore, we investigated if fathers', mothers', and adolescents' perceptions converge during adolescence. Following 497 families across six waves (ages 13-18), we investigated the development of parental support and behavioral control using mother and father self-reports, and adolescent reports for mothers and fathers. We found curvilinear decrease for support and control. Parent-adolescent convergence emerged over the 6 years: those with higher intercepts had a steeper decrease, whereas correlations among parent and adolescent reports increased. This multi-informant study sheds light on the development of parent-adolescent convergence on perceptions of parenting.

This study examined interrelations of trait and state empathy in an adolescent sample. Self-reported affective trait empathy and cognitive trait empathy were assessed during a home visit. During a test session at the university, motor empathy (facial electromyography), and self-reported affective and cognitive state empathy were assessed in response to empathy-inducing film clips portraying happiness and sadness. Adolescents who responded with stronger motor empathy consistently reported higher affective state empathy. Adolescents' motor empathy was also positively related to cognitive state empathy, either directly or indirectly via affective state empathy. Whereas trait empathy was consistently, but modestly, related to state empathy with sadness, for state empathy with happiness few trait-state associations were found. Together, the findings provide support for the notion that empathy is a multi-faceted phenomenon. Motor, affective and cognitive empathy seem to be related processes, each playing a different role in the ability to understand and share others' feelings.

Parent-adolescent conflict can be intense, yet parents and adolescents do not always agree on the intensity of conflict. Conflict intensity tends to change during adolescence and is thought to be an indicator of how the parent-adolescent relationship transforms. However, parents and adolescents might differently perceive change in conflict intensity, resulting in changing discrepancies in conflict intensity throughout adolescence. Also, personality characteristics of parents and adolescents might affect the extent to which there are discrepancies in perceptions of conflict intensity. This multi-informant longitudinal study investigated a) the trajectories of parent-adolescent conflict intensity, b) the trajectories of informant discrepancies, and c) the prediction of these trajectories by parental and adolescent personality. Dutch adolescents (N = 497, 43.1% female, M age = 13.03 at T1), their mothers, and their fathers reported on parent-adolescent conflict intensity and personality for six years. Latent Growth Curve Modeling and Latent Congruence Modeling revealed curvilinear changes in conflict intensity, as well as in discrepancies thereof. Two cycles of discrepancies emerged. First, in early-to-middleadolescence discrepancies in perceptions of parents and adolescents increased, reflecting that adolescents' perceived conflict intensity increased. Second, in middle-to-late-adolescence, father-adolescent discrepancies increased further, reflecting that fathers' perceptions of conflict decreased. Resilient adolescents, mothers, and fathers reported lower levels of conflict intensity than Undercontrollers and Overcontrollers, but personality was not associated with the rate of change in conflict intensity. Finally, undercontrolling fathers and overcontrolling adolescents showed higher father-adolescent discrepancies. This study showed that parents and adolescents differentially perceive conflict intensity and that in the adolescent-father relationship, the extent of the differences depends on adolescent and father personality.