Investigating adult age differences in real-life empathy, prosociality, and well-being using experience sampling

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.

Investigating the Relationship between Facial Mimicry and Empathy

“…This result confirms what has been found in previous studies [ 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ]. At the same time, in contrast to previous studies reporting age differences in empathy [ 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 ], we found no difference in the empathetic ability among people of different ages; however, this might be due to not considering age groups at a more granular level as other studies did. Similarly, our finding that there is no difference in the empathetic ability among people of different ethnic groups contradicts that of Sommerlad et al [ 25 ], who found greater empathetic concern associated with non-white ethnicity.…”

“…While previous studies consistently report gender differences in empathy [ 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ], results on age differences in empathy are mixed [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 ]. Furthermore, we found only one study considering ethnicity and suggesting there might be differences in the empathetic ability among people of different ethnic groups [ 25 ].…”

Cognitive effort for self, strangers, and charities

“…However, since our study was underpowered to detect between-subject effects, more work is needed to understand how males and females differ in their decisions to invest cognitive effort for self and others when multiple non-self targets are involved. In addition, future work should examine whether our findings generalize to older adults, and whether older adults are more willing to invest cognitive effort for others relative to younger adults, as has been observed for physical effort in the lab 17 , but not prosocial behaviour in everyday life 66 .…”

Adult Age Differences in the Integration of Values for Self and Other

“…There are reasons to hypothesize that social aspects, such as prosociality and empathy, undergo changes during midlife. The period of midlife may be a particularly prosocial and empathetic phase as suggested by theoretical approaches, research on personality traits, as well as typical developmental tasks including caregiving (Fingerman et al, 2011;Grundy & Henretta, 2006;Lachman, 2004;Pollerhoff et al, 2022Pollerhoff et al, , 2023Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000;Roberts & Mroczek, 2008;Specht et al, 2011;Wojciechowska, 2017).…”

“…In general, there is increasing evidence that socio-emotional and socio-cognitive capacities like empathy, compassion, and Theory of Mind predict prosociality (Batson, 2014;Caputi et al, 2012;de Waal, 2008;Depow et al, 2021;Eisenberg & Fabes, 1990;Eisenberg & Miller, 1987;Lehmann et al, 2022;Schulreich et al, 2022;Tusche et al, 2016;Underwood & Moore, 1982). However, studies testing whether the influence of empathy and Theory of Mind on prosocial behavior differs as a function of age showed mixed results (e.g., Bailey et al, 2018;Beadle et al, 2015;Cavallini et al, 2021;Cho et al, 2022;Pollerhoff et al, 2022;Sze et al, 2012). Moreover, general cognitive abilities have been suggested to play a moderating role in age-related differences in prosocial behavior (Mayr & Freund, 2020).…”