empathy from infancy to adolescence: an attachment perspective...

Developmental Review xxx (2017) xxx–xxx

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Developmental Review

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Review

Empathy from infancy to adolescence: An attachmentperspective on the development of individual differences

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2017.09.0020273-2297/� 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

⇑ Corresponding author at: Dept. of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, 4094 Campus Dr., College Park, MD 20742, United StateE-mail address: [email protected] (J.A. Stern).

Please cite this article in press as: Stern, J. A., & Cassidy, J. Empathy from infancy to adolescence: An attachment perspective on theopment of individual differences. Developmental Review (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2017.09.002

Jessica A. Stern ⇑, Jude CassidyUniversity of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 2 December 2015Revised 27 July 2017Available online xxxx

Keywords:AttachmentEmpathySympathyParentingChildhood

a b s t r a c t

Empathy involves understanding and ‘‘feeling with” others’ emotions, and is an essentialcapacity underlying sensitive care in humans and other species. Evidence suggests thatthe roots of empathy appear early in ontogeny, and that individual differences in empathybear meaningfully on children’s social behavior and relationships throughout develop-ment. Here we draw upon attachment theory to provide a conceptual model of how attach-ment may contribute to individual differences in empathic development, with a focus onmediating mechanisms and moderators at multiple levels of analysis. We then reviewthe research on attachment-related differences in empathy from infancy through adoles-cence. Given the theoretical predictions, empirical findings are surprisingly mixed andappear to depend on contextual, methodological, and developmental factors. We discusspotential explanations for the equivocal findings and highlight key areas for further inves-tigation, including the need for longitudinal designs and multimethod assessment that cap-tures the multiple dimensions of empathy in childhood.

� 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Empathy is the capacity to comprehend the minds of others, to feel emotions outside our own, and to respond with con-cern, kindness, and care to others’ suffering. It is a relational construct, an experience of self ‘‘feeling with” another thatallows bonds to be woven from the fabric of shared pain. Its centrality in the formation and maintenance of social bondsis implicated in its phylogenic history: Empathy is thought to have evolved out of the mammalian caregiving system to pro-mote adaptive responses to the needs of kin, as well as to promote cooperation and resource sharing among group members(de Waal, 2008, 2012; Decety, Norman, Berntson, & Cacioppo, 2012; MacLean, 1985; Preston, 2013; Preston & deWaal, 2002;Taylor, 2002). Indeed, research in primates (Clay & de Waal, 2013; de Waal, 2008, 2012), rodents (Bartal, Decety, & Mason,2011; Bartal, Rodgers, Sarria, Decety, & Mason, 2014; Mogil, 2012; Panksepp & Lahvis, 2011), and other mammals (e.g.,Custance & Mayer, 2012) suggests that the capacity to understand others’ intentions and to resonate with others’ emotionsunderlies social interaction in a variety of animal species (Panksepp & Panksepp, 2013). In humans, this faculty has expandedbeyond the immediate circle of one’s kinship group, allowing us to care for the well-being of strangers, out-group members,and even those we never encounter in person; stories of earthquake victims and displaced refugees move us, even in theabsence of a face-to-face encounter (Stone, 2006).

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2 J.A. Stern, J. Cassidy /Developmental Review xxx (2017) xxx–xxx

Although the broad capacity to empathize is considered nearly universal, individual differences in the ability and ten-dency to do so have significant implications for social functioning across development (Eisenberg, 2000; Eisenberg,Spinrad, & Knafo-Noam, 2015). In childhood, low empathy is associated with poor peer relationships, hostility, and bullying(e.g., Findlay, Girardi, & Coplan, 2006; Mayberry & Espelage, 2007; Miller & Eisenberg, 1988). In adolescence, low empathymanifests in aggression and antisocial behavior (e.g., Cohen & Strayer, 1996; Lovett & Sheffield, 2007). In adulthood, this def-icit is associated with child abuse, violence, and psychopathy (e.g., Blair, 2005; Jolliffe & Farrington, 2004; Rodriguez, 2013).Conversely, greater empathy is associated with social competence and prosocial behavior across the lifespan; among chil-dren and adults alike, more empathic individuals are more likely to share resources, to provide help to those in need, andto care for others in distress (e.g., Barnett, 1987; Batson, Duncan, Ackerman, Buckley, & Birch, 1981; Eisenberg & Miller,1987; Maibom, 2012; Sze, Gyurak, Goodkind, & Levenson, 2012; see Williams, O’Driscoll, & Moore, 2014, for evidence of acausal link between empathy and prosocial behavior in children). More broadly, individual variation in empathy contributessignificantly to the degree to which we can build a kind, safe, and compassionate society (de Waal, 2009; Greenberg &Turksma, 2015; Lobel, 2014; Nhat Hanh, 2014; Rifkin, 2009). As Greenberg and Turksma assert, ‘‘empathy and compassionare core dimensions of human nature that can be nurtured. Further, when nurtured they will enhance one’s personal growthand health as well as the health and wellbeing of others and the quality of the natural, physical environment” (2015, p. 280).

If empathy represents a ‘‘core dimension of human nature,” within which individual differences bear significantly on theaggressiveness or kindness of our society, then it is important to understand how these differences emerge across develop-ment. As with most developmental processes, individual differences in empathy result from the complex interweaving of achild’s biological predisposition and environment (Knafo, Zahn-Waxler, van Hulle, Robinson, & Rhee, 2008). Behavioralgenetics studies estimate that empathy is moderately heritable, with the majority of variance accounted for by sharedand nonshared environmental influences (e.g., Knafo et al., 2008; Zahn-Waxler, Schiro, Robinson, Emde, & Schmitz, 2001).In particular, theories of empathic development have emphasized the role of parenting (e.g., Hoffman, 1975, 2001). Froma socialization perspective, children’s empathy may be seen as a product of specific parenting behaviors such as authorita-tiveness, gentle discipline, inductive reasoning, and sensitive responding to children’s distress (e.g., Hastings, Utendale, &Sullivan, 2007; Hoffman, 1963; Krevans & Gibbs, 1996; Taylor, Eisenberg, & Spinrad, 2015; Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow,& King, 1979).

One additional perspective that may be useful in understanding the role of parents in children’s empathic development isattachment theory (Bowlby, 1969/1982, 1973, 1980). Attachment theory is an evolutionary-based theory that offers a richrelational framework for understanding the development of individual differences in social functioning and care for others,contextualizing the social behavior of humans as well as other species. In humans, the theory points to specific mechanismsby which the quality of a child’s attachment might contribute to empathy; specifically, the theory predicts that secureattachment shapes children’s (a) cognitive models of relationships, (b) emotion regulation capacities, and (c) physiologyin ways that support children’s capacity to care for others. Finally, attachment theory provides a framework for understand-ing parenting behaviors that underlie the development of healthy relationships: Like some models of socialization (e.g.,Davidov & Grusec, 2006; Eisenberg, Fabes, & Murphy, 1996), it focuses parents’ sensitive responses to children’s distress asa key antecedent to children’s healthy social and emotional development.

The purpose of the present paper is to provide the first comprehensive theoretical and empirical review of the develop-ment of individual differences in empathy from an attachment perspective. We begin with brief overview of attachment the-ory to provide a foundation for exploring the relation between secure attachment and empathy, discuss potential mediatingmechanisms, and present a theoretical model of empathic development. We then review the empirical literature on the linkbetween attachment and empathy from infancy to adolescence. In light of the literature reviewed, we identify gaps in ourcurrent understanding of the attachment–empathy link and highlight key areas for further investigation.

Issues of definition and measurement

Before exploring the theoretical basis for this link, it is important to provide a scientific definition of empathy, which his-torically has been much debated (see Duan & Hill, 1996). The original German term Einfühlung is literally translated to mean‘‘feeling into” (Wispé, 1986), reflecting the automatic resonance that occurs when we project ourselves into those we observe(Lipps, 1903). In addition to sharing in others’ affective states, social psychologists have conceptualized empathy as involvingfeelings of tenderness and concern for others’ welfare that arise in response to witnessing their suffering (Batson, Fultz, &Schoenrade, 1987). Developmentalists, too, have viewed empathy primarily as an emotional state (Hoffman, 1975);Eisenberg and Strayer (1990) define it as ‘‘an emotional response that stems from another’s emotional state or conditionand that is congruent with the other’s emotional state or situation” (p. 5). In contrast, personality researchers conceive ofempathy as a relatively stable, trait-like capacity, involving both emotional identification and cognitive perspective taking,and associated with other dispositional factors such as agreeableness (Costa et al., 2014; Davis, 1980, 1983; Graziano &Eisenberg, 1997; Leiberg & Anders, 2006). Recent perspectives clarify the three components of empathy that are commonacross these approaches and supported by evolutionary and neurodevelopmental theory: (a) emotion sharing, (b) cognitiveunderstanding or perspective taking, and (c) empathic concern for other’s welfare (Decety, 2015; see Decety & Meyer, 2008).

Thus, empathy is a complex and multidimensional construct, involving cognitive, emotional, and motivational compo-nents (Davis, 1980; Decety, 2015). As with the study of any multidimensional internal state, the task of operationalizationand measurement is complex. Different research traditions focus on different dimensions in their measurement of empathy

Please cite this article in press as: Stern, J. A., & Cassidy, J. Empathy from infancy to adolescence: An attachment perspective on the devel-opment of individual differences. Developmental Review (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2017.09.002

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2017.09.002

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in childhood, and there are pros and cons to each approach. Self-report measures of empathy, for example, have the advan-tage of directly tapping internal states and assessing distinct dimensions of empathy such as perspective taking. On the otherhand, these measures suffer from potential reporter biases and are not feasible for use with young children. Parent-reportmeasures may be used with younger children and provide a useful summary of children’s empathy across the parent’s mul-tiple observations of the child in different contexts. Parent reporters, however, are not immune to reporter biases; further,parents do not have direct access or insight into their children’s internal empathic states.

Other researchers have employed physiological measures to assess empathy in children. These measures have the ben-efits of minimizing reporter biases and being applicable across age groups and with children of different verbal abilities.Importantly, however, physiological measures lack specificity (i.e., activity of a particular system or brain region does notnecessarily indicate empathy, as opposed to other social processes). Vagal tone, for example, has been used both as an indexof empathy and as an index of emotion regulation (Porges, 2011).

A large proportion of empathy research in children to date has employed observational measures. Because empathy is asalient proximal motivator of behavior intended to relieve others’ suffering (Batson et al., 1981; Decety, Bartal, Uzefovsky, &Knafo-Noam, 2016; Eisenberg & Miller, 1987), prosocial behaviors such as helping, sharing, and comforting are oftenassumed to reflect empathy and are sometimes used to assess it. These measures are useful because they provide an ecolog-ically valid window into children’s observable responses to others’ distress. Importantly, however, empathy is an internalstate that cannot be directly observed, and children’s prosocial behavior may be motivated by other, less altruistic factors,such as compliance with adult authority, a sense of obligation or fairness, desire for affiliation, egoistic desire for praiseor fear of punishment, or deference to a peer’s social dominance (Eisenberg, VanSchyndel, & Spinrad, 2016; Hastingset al., 2007; Hepach, Vaish, & Tomasello, 2013a). To the extent possible, we focus on studies that tap empathy through meth-ods that capture emotion sharing, cognitive understanding, and concern for others’ well-being, typically in response toothers’ distress. Thus, we include studies that assess children’s prosocial overtures only when they clearly reflect concernfor others’ welfare (such as comforting in response to distress), and omit discussion of non-care behaviors such as cooper-ation and instrumental helping. We acknowledge, however, that comforting behavior is an imperfect proxy for empathy,despite its wide use in the child empathy literature.

In addition, some researchers differentiate empathy from related constructs such as sympathy and personal distress intheir operationalization and measurement. Most notably, Eisenberg and colleagues (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 1992, 2015) defineempathy as strictly involving emotional resonance or congruence with others’ emotions, whereas sympathy involves theother-oriented sense of concern or care. Although this is an important distinction, research on empathy in childhood stilloften treats sympathy as part of the operationalization of empathy. Indeed, many questionnaire measures of empathy con-tain items tapping both empathy and sympathy, obscuring which construct is (or is not) related to attachment. (For example,widely used self-report measures for adolescents and adults often tap individuals’ ‘‘empathic concern” for others, with itemsblending empathy and sympathy.) For the purposes of this review, we use ‘‘empathy” as a multidimensional term inclusiveof sympathy (i.e., other-oriented concern), in line with much of the adolescent and adult literature (e.g., Decety, 2015).

With regard to personal distress, there is widespread agreement that well regulated, other-oriented empathy should bedistinguished from dysregulated, self-focused negative emotion in response to others’ suffering (e.g., Batson, 1991, 2010;Davis, 1980; Eisenberg et al., 2015). Research demonstrates that behavioral and physiological indicators of self-regulationare positively associated with children’s empathy and prosocial behavior, whereas personal distress is negatively relatedor unassociated with empathy and prosociality (Eisenberg, 2000; Eisenberg & Fabes, 1990, 1991, 1995; Fabes, Eisenberg,& Eisenbud, 1993). Following this work, we differentiate empathy from personal distress and propose different hypotheseslinking attachment to each construct.

Attachment theory and the roots of empathy

Overview of attachment theory

Just as providing empathic care for others evolved from the mammalian caregiving system, so seeking care from others isthought to have its roots in the phylogenically ancient attachment system. According to attachment theory (Bowlby,1969/1982, 1973, 1980), these two biologically based behavioral systems evolved to work in concert to promote survivalin humans and some other animals, with infants’ expression of need, distress, or bids for closeness (‘‘attachment behaviors”)eliciting the proximity, protection, and comfort of their attachment figures (‘‘caregiving behaviors”) in times of threat. Thedynamic interplay between infants’ signals of distress and vulnerability, on the one hand, and caregivers’ attunement tothose signals, on the other, achieves homeostasis for each party, resulting in the infant’s physiological regulation, a felt senseof safety, and the provision of a secure base fromwhich the infant can explore the world (Bowlby, 1969/1982, 1984; Solomon& George, 1996). The theory states that all infants possess an adaptive, biologically based tendency to forge an attachmentbond to a close caregiver, and that infants’ own social behavior will grow from the foundation of this primary relationship.

Within the universal tendency to form an attachment to a caregiver, infants demonstrate substantial individual differ-ences in the organization of this attachment, according to the kind of care they have received (Ainsworth, 1967;Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). Infants who experience repeated interactions with a caregiver who is available,empathically attuned to the infant’s cues, and responsive to those cues form secure attachments, characterized in laboratory


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assessments by confident exploration of the environment, open expression of need and distress, and swift return to calmnessand exploration following reunion with the caregiver. Infants who experience the caregiver as inconsistently available, intru-sive, or misattuned to the infant’s signals develop insecure-resistant attachment, characterized by diminished exploration,heightened expression of need and distress (‘‘hyperactivating” strategies), and continued distress and anger even when con-tact with the caregiver is achieved. Infants who experience the caregiver as unresponsive to or rejecting of the infant’s needsdevelop insecure-avoidant attachment, characterized by inhibited expression of need and distress (‘‘hypoactivating” strate-gies), and avoidance of the caregiver when contact is available (Ainsworth & Bell, 1970; Ainsworth et al., 1978). Finally, thoseinfants who experience frightened or frightening caregiving demonstrate disorganized attachment, characterized by unusualbehaviors such as freezing or disorientation in response to the caregiver’s approach (Main & Solomon, 1990). The centralquestion on which the formation of each of these patterns turns is the extent to which the caregiver responds sensitivelyto the child’s distress.

These early patterns of interaction between infant and caregiver—particularly interactions around the management ofinfant distress—shape enduring mental representations of social relationships, what Bowlby (1969/1982) termed internalworking models (IWMs). IWMs organize cognitive processing of social information, inform emotional and physiologicalresponses to threat, and guide social behavior across development (Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985). These representationsare thought to serve as a principal mechanism through which early attachment experiences influence later social functioning(Bowlby, 1969/1982; Bretherton & Munholland, 2016). Consistent experiences of available caregivers’ sensitive responses todistress shape secure models of relationships, involving a sense of self and others as worthy of love and care, confidence andtrust in the availability of a secure base to turn to in times of need, and a view of negative emotion as capable of being gen-uinely expressed, accepted, joined, and regulated in the context of a responsive relationship. In contrast, painful experiencesof caregivers’ inconsistent or rejecting responses to distress shape insecure models of relationships, involving a sense of selfand others as unworthy of love and care, doubt in the availability of a secure base to turn to in times of need, and a view ofnegative emotion as overwhelming, unacceptable, or unable to be negotiated with a sensitive other. Secure and insecureIWMs differentially shape psychological functioning throughout childhood, with securely attached children consistentlydemonstrating greater social competence and better quality peer relationships than their insecure peers (Sroufe, Egeland,Carlson, & Collins, 2005; Thompson, 2016).

Mechanisms of influence

Cognitive modelsRecently, attachment researchers have proposed that the secure IWM may be an important mediator of the link between

attachment and empathy (Gross, Stern, Brett, & Cassidy, 2017; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2001, 2005, 2007; Shaver, Mikulincer,Gross, Stern, & Cassidy, 2016). Mikulincer and Shaver (2015) suggest that from a foundation of secure attachment arise pos-itive models of others that support empathy. In infants, secure attachment in the Strange Situation has been shown to predictmodels—that is, implicit expectations assessed via eye-tracking—that others respond sensitively to signals of distress(Johnson, Dweck, & Chen, 2007). By preschool age, children’s models can be observed in their play, with secure childrenenacting stories involving positive descriptions of story characters who are helpful in resolving distress (e.g., Bretherton,Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990; Cassidy, 1988; Main et al., 1985).

To better understand the specific components that make up the internal working model, attachment researchers havedrawn upon the work of cognitive theorists (e.g., Nelson, 1986; Nelson & Gruendel, 1986; Schank, 1982, 1999) to examinethe role of relational scripts in interpersonal functioning. Scripts are event schemas that organize behaviors in a specifictemporal-causal sequence; for instance, in Schank and Abelson’s (1977) classic example, one’s repeated experiences of din-ing at various restaurants result in a ‘‘restaurant script” that organizes the events one expects to transpire in any restaurant(e.g., getting a table, reading the menu, ordering, receiving food, paying the check). Similarly, from consistent experiences ofa responsive caregiver providing help and comfort in times of threat, children are thought to construct secure base scripts thatinvolve (a) an event that precipitates distress and a bid for help, (b) a caregiver’s recognition of this bid and offer to help, and(c) effective resolution of the problem and regulation of distress that allows for a return to normalcy (Waters & Waters,2006). Thus, secure base scripts reflect specific knowledge of how caregiving events typically proceed, and they make upone important component of secure IWMs (broader representations of the self, others, and the world; Bretherton, 1987,1990, 1991; Main et al., 1985; Waters, Rodrigues, & Ridgeway, 1998; Waters & Waters, 2006). Empirically, secure base scriptknowledge is greater in children with secure attachment histories (Bretherton et al., 1990). Research in adults has linkedsecure base script knowledge to better-regulated, sensitive responses to others’ distress (Groh & Roisman, 2009), thoughdata in children are lacking. Secure base scripts may thus constitute a mechanism by which attachment is linked to empathy;that is, secure attachment may provide a salient behavioral script, activated in times of threat, for how to recognize andrespond empathically to others’ bids for help—a child’s implicit ‘‘how to” manual for providing comfort and aid to a dis-tressed other.

In the adult literature, empirical work demonstrates that secure adult attachment is associated with positive IWMs of selfand others in ways relevant to empathy. For example, securely attached adults tend to view others with greater esteem andacceptance (e.g., Luke, Maio, & Carnelley, 2004), to trust others and attribute positive intentions to their behavior (e.g.,Collins & Read, 1990), and to hold less hostile attitudes toward out-group members (e.g., Mikulincer & Shaver, 2001); theyalso view themselves as competent in giving effective care to others (Kunce & Shaver, 1994). These positive IWMs of others


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and the self are thought to explain, in part, why adult attachment security has been repeatedly associated with greaterempathy and lower personal distress (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2001; Mikulincer, Shaver, Gillath, & Nitzberg, 2005;Mikulincer et al., 2001). Moreover, building on this evidence of a link between ‘‘dispositional” security (similar to what istypically assessed in childhood) and adults’ empathy, researchers have developed creative ways of boosting the felt senseof attachment security through priming that activates secure attachment representations (e.g., by presenting a picture ofa parent holding a calm infant). Consistent with studies of dispositional attachment security, these studies of experimentalactivation of secure IWMs find evidence of links between security priming and empathy toward both romantic partners(Mikulincer, Shaver, Sahdra, & Bar-On, 2013) and strangers in distress (Mikulincer et al., 2001, 2005). Thus, accumulatingevidence from the adult literature suggests the confidence in the self and others associated with secure IWMs—whetherestablished from a childhood history of responsive caregiving or experimentally induced in a laboratory setting—permitsincreased empathy to others’ distress (for reviews see Mikulincer & Shaver, 2015, and Shaver et al., 2016).

LanguageAlongside cognitive models, languagemay function as an additional mechanism linking attachment to empathic develop-

ment. A growing body of work suggests that securely attached children engage in more elaborative, organized discourseabout emotions with parents (e.g., Gini, Oppenheim, & Sagi-Schwartz, 2007; Laible, 2004a; Oppenheim, Koren-Karie, &Sagi-Schwartz, 2007). Parents’ and children’s use of emotion-focused language, in turn, has been linked to children’s empa-thy and concern for others (Garner, 2003), as well as other dimensions of conscience development (Laible, 2004b). Thus,secure attachment may provide a foundation for shared discourse on emotion-related topics that foster children’s empathicattunement to others’ emotions. In one study, for example, preschool children’s attachment security predicted mothers’ andchildren’s references to emotions during conversations about children’s behavior, and mothers’ references to emotions dur-ing these conversations were also related to aspects of children’s conscience development (Laible & Thompson, 2000).

Emotional and self-regulatory capacitiesDimensions of emotional functioning are also thought to play a key role in understanding the link between attachment

and empathy (e.g., Shaver et al., 2016). Substantial research has shown that emotional competencies such as emotion recog-nition and understanding, affective resonance, effortful control, and self-regulation are central to empathic respondingacross development, allowing children to see, interpret, and feel others’ emotions without becoming overly distressed them-selves (e.g., Batson, 1991; Decety & Jackson, 2004; Decety & Meyer, 2008; Eggum et al., 2011; Eisenberg, 2000; Eisenberget al., 1996; Geangu, Benga, Stahl, & Striano, 2011; Hastings & Miller, 2014; Hoffman, 2000). Children’s attachment historieshave been empirically linked to many of these competencies; for example, compared to insecure children, secure childrendemonstrate better emotion recognition (i.e., the ability to recognize others’ emotions from behavioral cues; Steele,Steele, & Croft, 2008), emotion understanding (i.e., knowledge of the causes and consequences of emotions; Denham,Blair, Schmidt, & DeMulder, 2002; Laible & Thompson, 1998), and effortful control (i.e., the ability to suppress a dominantbehavioral response to enact another response; Viddal et al., 2015; see also Bernier, Carlson, & Whipple, 2010;Kochanska, 2001; Volling, McElwain, Notaro, & Herrera, 2002). Indeed, a recent meta-analysis of child attachment and emo-tion understanding found a medium and significant overall effect size for the association across 10 studies, with no signif-icant moderators (Cooke, Stuart-Parrigon, Movahed-Abtahi, Koehn, & Kerns, 2016).

Most importantly, attachment theory proposes that security lays the foundation for children’s capacity to regulate emo-tion (i.e., to monitor and modulate emotional reactions to accomplish one’s goal; Bowlby, 1973, 1980, 1988; Thompson,1994). Over time, infants’ experience of caregivers’ attuned co-regulation of distress is thought to become internalized asself-regulation—a capacity to acknowledge, accept, and cope effectively with negative emotion oneself, as was once doneby one’s caregiver (Bowlby, 1973, 1980, 1988). Decades of well-replicated research have shown that securely attached chil-dren are better able to regulate emotion, as assessed via physiological, behavioral, and questionnaire measures (e.g., Calkins& Leerkes, 2011; Cassidy, 1994; Hofer, 1994; Kerns, Abraham, Schlegelmilch, & Morgan, 2007; Kobak, Cole, Ferenz-Gillies,Fleming, & Gamble, 1993; Mikulincer, Shaver, & Pereg, 2003; Sroufe, 2000). In turn, emotion regulation has been repeatedlylinked to empathy in children and adolescents (e.g., Bandura, Caprara, Barbaranelli, Gerbino, & Pastorelli, 2003; Eisenberg,2000; Eisenberg, Smith, Sadovsky, & Spinrad, 2004; Eisenberg et al., 1994, 1996; Padilla-Walker & Christensen, 2011).One study to date has documented the full mediation model in children, with securely attached preschoolers demonstratingbetter emotion regulation abilities, which in turn predicted mother-reported empathy (Panfile & Laible, 2012). Thus, for thesecurely attached child, witnessing another’s distress is neither trivial nor overwhelming; a history of sensitive care allowsher to respond with appropriate emotional arousal and regulation, so that personal distress does not get in empathy’s way.

In contrast, attachment avoidance has been linked to ‘‘hypoactivating” emotion regulation strategies, characterized bysuppression, minimization, and underreporting of negative emotion despite evidence of physiological dysregulation inresponse to stress (infants: Spangler & Grossmann, 1993; Spangler & Schieche, 1998; school-aged children: Borelli, West,Weekes, & Crowley, 2014; adolescents: Spangler & Zimmermann, 1999; White et al., 2012; adults: Dozier & Kobak, 1992).Thus, one might hypothesize that avoidant children may respond to others’ distress with high physiological arousal whilebetraying little behavioral evidence of concern, suppressing feelings of empathy, and generally attempting to ignore orescape others’ pain. Attachment anxiety, on the other hand, has been linked to ‘‘hyperactivating” emotion regulationstrategies, characterized by high emotionality, sensitivity to social acceptance/rejection, and outward anxiety in responseto stressors (Kobak & Sceery, 1988; Kobak et al., 1993; see also Cassidy & Berlin, 1994). Thus, one would expect that


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anxious/resistant children may respond to others’ distress with personal distress, moderate levels of empathy (especiallytoward a target from whom the child seeks acceptance and closeness), and displays of care that blend self-focused andother-focused motives.

Neurobiological programmingBecause attachment is an ethological theory, Bowlby (1969/1982) emphasized that evolutionarily conserved, non-

representational (i.e., biological) mechanisms must also play a role in the attachment system. As suggested in the previoussection on self-regulation, a growing body of literature demonstrates that attachment experiences shape biologicalresponses to threat, with secure attachment generally predicting less neuroendocrine and physiological reactivity to stres-sors (e.g., Borelli et al., 2010; see Cassidy, Ehrlich, & Sherman, 2013; and Hane & Fox, 2016). Most relevant, a small body ofresearch suggests that child attachment insecurity—particularly avoidance and disorganization—predict lower vagal regula-tion, as indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA; Burgess, Marshall, Rubin, & Fox, 2003; Hill-Soderlund et al., 2008;Oosterman, De Schipper, Fisher, Dozier, & Schuengel, 2010). RSA, in turn, has been repeatedly linked to empathic behaviorand is often used as a physiological index of empathy (e.g., Côté et al., 2011; Fabes, Eisenberg, Karbon, Troyer, & Switzer,1994; Fabes et al., 1993; Stellar, Cohen, Oveis, & Keltner, 2015). This is in keeping with Porges’s (2011) polyvagal theory,which implicates vagal activity as important both to the attachment system and to empathy and caregiving behavior.

In addition to vagal regulation, epigenetic programming of hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenocortical (HPA) axis and oxy-tocin system appears to link early caregiving experiences to later social behavior. Data from the rodent and primate litera-ture suggest that, over time, attachment-related experiences become ‘‘biologically embedded” by programming HPA-axisreactivity (see Polan & Hofer, 2016). Specifically, sensitive parental care appears to promote down-regulation of offspring’sstress response and to buffer against fear and avoidance learning in a variety of species (Bisaz & Sullivan, 2012; Cameronet al., 2005; McCormack, Newman, Higley, Maestripieri, & Sanchez, 2009; Meaney & Aitken, 1985; Suomi, 1997); reducedfear and avoidance, in turn, may allow attention and other resources to turn toward helping others. Moreover, these effectson the fear system can be transmitted intergenerationally via epigenetic mechanisms, with sensitive caregiving experiencesdecreasing hippocampal glucocorticoid receptor (GR) expression and altering methylation of genes involved in oxytocinreceptor binding that influence the caregiving behavior of the next generation (Champagne et al., 2006; Liu et al., 1997;see Meaney, 2001; and Roth & David Sweatt, 2011). In humans, oxytocin receptor genetic variation has in turn been asso-ciated with empathy (e.g., Rodrigues, Saslow, Garcia, John, & Keltner, 2009; Wu, Li, & Su, 2012), and experimental adminis-tration of oxytocin has been shown to improve empathic accuracy in adults (Bartz et al., 2010; Domes, Heinrichs, Michel,Berger, & Herpertz, 2007) and in children with social impairments (Guastella, Howard, Dadds, Mitchell, & Carson, 2009).Thus, neurobiological mechanisms related to stress regulation and oxytocin activity may be important in explaining howattachment-related experiences get ‘‘under the skin” to influence empathic development (see also Feldman, 2016; andRosenblatt, 1994, 2003).

Parenting antecedents

In addition to exploring the mechanisms mediating the link between attachment and empathy, it may be useful to con-sider the common developmental antecedents that both secure attachment and empathy share. In particular, both secureattachment and empathy are thought to be products of sensitive caregiving. Decades of empirical work have provided supportfor Bowlby’s (1969/1982) original thesis that parents’ sensitive responsiveness to children’s distress is a key building block ofsecure attachment (Ainsworth, 1969; Ainsworth et al., 1978; De Wolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997; Isabella, 1993; Laranjo,Bernier, & Meins, 2008; Moss et al., 2011; van den Boom, 1994). Related evidence shows that parents’ own empathy predictssecure child attachment (Leerkes, Parade, & Gudmundson, 2011; Oppenheim, Koren-Karie, & Sagi, 2001; Stern, Borelli, &Smiley, 2015). Likewise, following Hoffman’s (1977, 2001) theory of empathic development, parents’ empathy and sensitiv-ity to their children’s distress has been shown to predict children’s empathy across multiple stages of development (Davidov& Grusec, 2006; Eisenberg et al., 1992, 1993, 1996; Fabes, Eisenberg, & Miller, 1990; Garner, 2006; Hastings et al., 2007;Hawk et al., 2013; Taylor, Eisenberg, Spinrad, Eggum, & Sulik, 2013; Trommsdorff, 1991). Conversely, children of abusive par-ents (who are, by definition, highly insensitive, and often unempathic; Perez-Albeniz & de Paul, 2003) are both more likely tobe insecurely attached (e.g., Cyr, Euser, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2010) and more likely to show deficits inempathy (e.g., Straker & Jacobson, 1981). Thus, sensitive, empathic parenting appears to provide a common foundation fromwhich both security and empathy can grow.

The idea that sensitive parenting contributes to children’s empathy is similar in some ways to social learning theory,which states that children witness, internalize, and imitate the empathic (or unempathic) behavior that adults model(e.g., Staub, 1978). Crucially, however, the attachment perspective emphasizes that children’s empathy arises not merelyfrom witnessing parents’ empathic care or from receiving instruction about empathic care but from being the recipient ofsuch care themselves (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2015; Shaver et al., 2016; for similar arguments, see Zahn-Waxler et al.,1979). More broadly, the attachment perspective holds that social competencies such as empathy develop out of experiencesin a mutually responsive relationship, without requiring active socialization efforts (Ainsworth, Bell, & Stayton, 1974);rather, the role of socialization in children’s empathic development may be better understood as building upon a foundationof attachment security that enables positive influences by parents, teachers, and peers to be integrated into the child’s


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developing empathy. Thus, attachment and socialization likely interact to predict aspects of moral development, such thatsecurely attached children are more open to parents’ socialization influences (Kochanska, Aksan, Knaack, & Rhines, 2004).

Moderators

In addition to socialization, attachment likely interacts with other moderating factors at multiple levels of analysis. At theindividual level, child gender, genetics, and temperament may influence the degree to which attachment contributes toempathic development. For example, some research suggests that both parenting and attachment interact withdopamine-system genes to predict children’s prosocial behavior (Bakermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 2011; Knafo,Israel, & Ebstein, 2011), and a similar story of differential susceptibility may be true for empathy. At the dyadic level, char-acteristics of the target such as familiarity and relationship to the child may interact with attachment to predict child empa-thy. Two alternative hypotheses are possible here: It may be that attachment is linked to empathy more strongly for kin andfamiliar peers, because attachment is thought to be most influential in social contexts involving close relationships (Bowlby,1969/1982). On the other hand, because empathy evolved to promote caring behavior toward kin, perhaps most childrenshow empathy toward family members and close friends (at normative developmental levels independent of attachment),whereas individual differences emerge for empathy for unfamiliar peers (a more demanding social context), with securechildren being more likely to have the psychological resources to empathize with a stranger (for findings showing thatattachment security predicts sharing only in more costly or emotionally demanding situations, see Paulus, Becker,Scheub, & König, 2016).

At the group level, gender and group norms for empathic responding, as well as the group membership of the target, maymoderate the link between attachment and empathy. For example, evidence from the adult literature suggests that attach-ment security may enhance individuals’ empathy for out-group members by reducing perceptions of threat from the out-group (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2001); however, the authors note that attachment security alone may be insufficient to coun-teract systemic cultural factors that reduce empathy toward particular groups (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007), indicating thatadditional socialization is needed to promote empathy in out-group contexts. In children, too, it is likely that socializationefforts beyond secure attachment may be necessary for promoting empathy toward out-group members.

Finally, at the societal level, cultural factors likely moderate the degree to which attachment is influential in children’sempathic development. Because attachment theory has always been concerned with the adaptive function of behavior incontext (e.g., Ainsworth, 1984, 1985), it is important to bear in mind that the development of both attachment and empathyoccurs within a broader bioecological context (see McGinley, Opal, Richaud, & Mesurado, 2014), and that the results ofempirical studies may depend in part upon these and other contextual variables.

Integration and theoretical model

Thus, from an attachment perspective, we view empathy as arising out of the experience of relational security, in complexinteraction with moderators at multiple levels of analysis. Specifically, we join others in proposing that attachment securitypromotes empathic responding through (a) cognitive models (i.e., components of IWMs, including secure base scripts) thatguide social cognition, affect, and behavior; (b) self-regulation capacities that enable emotional identification with the painof others’ suffering without personal distress; (c) shared emotional discourse between parents and children; and (d) neurobi-ological processes that ‘‘program” biological and behavioral responses to others’ distress. In addition, we draw attention to therole of sensitive parenting behaviors that underlie the development of individual differences in both attachment and empa-thy. The proposed theoretical model is illustrated in Fig. 1.

Developmental considerations

Importantly, each of the mediating and moderating processes described above occur in the context of the developing child,and it is likely that the relation between attachment and empathy is developmentally constructed. That is, secure attach-ment may set into motion a ‘‘developmental cascade” (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010), in which, for example, early attachmentsecurity fosters the development of self-regulatory capacities in preschool, which in turn set the stage for positive peer inter-actions in middle childhood; these interactions with peers may provide greater opportunities to practice emotion under-standing and empathy, contributing to increasing empathic capacities during the course of adolescence. As they gaingreater control over their social lives, secure adolescents may actively self-select into more empathic, emotionally compe-tent peer groups, reinforcing their empathic tendencies over time (see Cassidy, Aikins, & Chernoff, 2003, for a link betweenattachment and peer selection).

Given these developmental considerations, one might hypothesize that the proposed link between attachment and empa-thy (a) may be indirect, working through multiple mediating mechanisms in a cascade of influences over time; and (b) maytake time to consolidate, and therefore may be weakest in infancy, when children’s capacity for emotion regulation and cog-nitive representation are primitive. Similarly, the importance of specific mediators and moderators likely changes overdevelopment, such that cognitive mechanisms like IWMs may become increasingly important as children develop greaterrepresentational capacities, and that moderators such as gender and group norms may exert greater influence over time,


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Fig. 1. Attachment theoretical model of individual differences in empathy.


as children’s awareness of these norms increases. In the following section, we review the empirical evidence to date at dif-ferent stages of development.

Research examining attachment and empathy from childhood to adolescence

Infants and toddlers

Children’s initial attachment representations are thought to form in the first year of life, as observed in their behavior inthe Strange Situation at 12 months (Ainsworth et al., 1978). Early precursors to empathy such as affect mirroring and emo-tion contagion are evident from birth (Dondi, Simion, & Caltran, 1999; Hoffman, 2000; Sagi & Hoffman, 1976). More differ-entiated concern for others’ welfare is observable by 10 months of age, with attempts to help and soothe others in distressemerging in the second year (Radke-Yarrow & Zahn-Waxler, 1984; Roth-Hanania, Davidov, & Zahn-Waxler, 2011; Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, Wagner, & Chapman, 1992). Although significant change in many aspects of social functioning is pos-sible throughout development, arguably, the foundations for both secure relationships and empathic tendencies are con-structed in infancy.

Despite putative difficulties in the operationalization and measurement of empathy in young children, studies in this per-iod are methodologically rigorous, often utilizing gold standard observational measures of both attachment and empathy. Inone such study, van der Mark, van IJzendoorn, and Bakermans-Kranenburg (2002) employed naturalistic observationalmethods to assess 125 female infants’ empathy across two contexts at ages 16 and 22 months. At both time points, attach-ment was assessed in the Strange Situation, and empathy was coded from infants’ responses to mothers’ and strangers’ sim-ulations of pain and sadness in both home and laboratory settings. Higher empathy scores were awarded to children whodisplayed clear concern and attempts to help or soothe the victim. Results indicated that attachment security at 22 monthswas associated with concurrent empathic concern for the stranger only, controlling for temperamental factors; however,models using 16-month assessments or empathy toward the mother were not significant. Similarly, Bischof-Köhler(2000) reported that secure attachment in the Strange Situation in infancy prospectively predicted more empathic andprosocial responses to a distressed experimenter among 39 2-year-old Swiss children.

Other empirical work has employed adult report questionnaires to assess child empathy. In a study of 91 12-month-olds,for example, maternal reports of child empathy were highest among infants classified as secure in a modified StrangeSituation procedure, followed by avoidant infants, with resistant and disorganized infants receiving the lowest scores(Carter, Little, Briggs-Gowan, & Kogan, 1999). Although the three-way comparison (A/B/C) was only marginally significant


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(p < .10) due to small cell sizes, a follow-up pairwise comparison found that secure infants were significantly more empathicthan insecure infants as a group. A second study employing adult-report measures examined associations among mother’sreports on the Attachment Q-Sort (AQS;Waters & Deane, 1985), the Emotion Regulation Checklist (Shields & Cicchetti, 1997),and two questionnaire measures of empathy in a sample of 64 toddlers (age 36 months). Attachment security contributed tochildren’s empathy indirectly via emotion regulation; that is, toddlers who were more secure were rated by their mothers asbetter able to regulate their emotions, which in turn predicted greater empathy. Further, the validity of mothers’ reports wassupported by the fact that mother-reported empathy in turn predicted toddlers’ observed attempts to help an experimentersoothe a crying baby (Panfile & Laible, 2012).

Related work examining parental sensitivity (a key precursor to secure attachment) has demonstrated positive longitu-dinal associations between early parental sensitivity and toddlers’ observed empathic behavior in response to distressexpressed by their caregiver as well as by an experimenter (e.g., Kiang, Moreno, & Robinson, 2004; Zahn-Waxler et al.,1979). Conversely, in a study of toddlers in a daycare setting that compared the behavior of non-abused and abused children(who tend to be insecurely attached; Cyr et al., 2010), Main and George (1985) observed that abused toddlers were much lesslikely to respond with empathy and comfort to peers’ distress; indeed, they often responded with fear, anger, or physicalattacks.

Thus, the research on attachment and empathy in infants and toddlers to date is sparse, providing only preliminary evi-dence for a link between security and empathy in young children. Two studies have found direct associations betweenattachment and empathy in infants and toddlers, and one additional study supports the proposed theoretical model of emo-tion regulation as a mediator of this link. However, the equivocal findings reported by van der Mark et al. (2002) merit con-sideration. One explanation is that, as predicted, the link between attachment and empathy is weakest in infancy, whenrepresentations and self-regulatory abilities are still consolidating, such that the link emerges only when assessed closerto the second year of life. A second explanation may relate to potential moderators; if, for instance, further research indicatesthat attachment’s influence on empathy is stronger in boys than girls, then effects may fail to emerge in all-female sampleslike that of van der Mark et al. (2002). In addition to gender, contextual variables such as the target of children’s empathymay moderate the association with attachment in this period; specifically, the more consistent evidence suggests thatinfants and toddlers who are securely attached (or, in related literature, have experienced more sensitive caregiving) demon-strate increased empathy toward other children or an adult experimenter. Less clear is whether attachment contributes toyoung children’s empathy toward their mothers. Notably, van der Mark et al. (2002) reported that toddlers’ empathy fortheir mothers was high, on average, at both time points (and significantly higher than empathy for the stranger at 22months), supporting the hypothesis that relatively high empathy for kin may be developmentally normative, and thatattachment-related differences may be more likely emerge in more demanding contexts (e.g., with a stranger in distress).On the other hand, we cannot altogether rule out the possibility that attachment also informs empathy toward mothers,though it may do so later in development. It is likely that most infants’ and toddlers’ experiences with their mothers involveclearly differentiated roles (i.e., mother serving as caregiver when the child is distressed but not vice versa), leaving limitedopportunities for young children to extend caregiving toward their mothers, as is appropriate for their stage of development;indeed, ‘‘role-reversal” of the caregiver–child dynamic is often viewed as problematic, and role-reversing behavior ofpreschoolers in the Strange Situation is coded as an indicator of disorganization (D—controlling/caregiving; see, e.g., Moss,Bureau, Cyr, Mongeau, & St-Laurent, 2004). Thus, we might expect that security is unrelated to empathy toward attachmentfigures in early childhood, but that a link emerges later in childhood, as children gain more experience witnessing their owncaregivers’ distress and develop greater competence in the skills needed for empathic responsiveness. In addition to devel-opmental considerations, empathy toward the mother may represent a special case in which maternal characteristics inter-act with attachment to shape child responses, a possibility explored further in research with preschoolers.

Preschoolers

As children enter the preschool years, their empathic capacities become increasingly selective, reflecting greater under-standing of display rules, gender norms, and contextual factors such as group membership and the proximal causes forothers’ distress (Eisenberg et al., 2015; Hay & Cook, 2007). For example, 3-year-olds are more likely to display empathic con-cern when others’ distress is clearly justified (i.e., appropriate to the harm that caused it) than when it is not (Hepach, Vaish,& Tomasello, 2013b). Preschoolers’ emerging verbal ability and wider repertoire of emotion regulation strategies also set thestage for more mature emotion understanding and perspective taking (e.g., Denham, Caverly et al., 2002; Denham et al.,2003; Strayer, 1980). At the same time, children’s attachment increasingly shapes their interactions with social partnersbeyond parents, including siblings, teachers, and peers (Booth-LaForce & Kerns, 2009).

Among the first evidence for attachment-related differences in social functioning, including empathy, were data from theMinnesota Longitudinal Study, which traced children’s social development from infancy to adulthood (see Sroufe, 2005).Waters, Wippman, and Sroufe (1979) first reported on 32 preschoolers’ (age 3½) social behavior—coded from classroomobservations over a 5-week period—in relation to their attachment history, as previously assessed in the Strange Situationat 15 months. Among other dimensions of social competence, children who were securely attached in infancy displayedgreater empathy toward their preschool peers compared to insecure infants. To complement the observational findings, fur-ther analyses of 40 children at age 4 revealed that teacher-reported empathic behavior was most characteristic of securechildren and least characteristic of avoidant children, with resistant children falling in between (Sroufe, 1983). In a


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follow-up study of 24 preschoolers, empathy was coded from children’s observed reactions to naturalistic situations inwhich a peer became distressed in the classroom (Kestenbaum, Farber, & Sroufe, 1989). Children who had been identifiedas securely attached as infants displayed significantly more empathy (i.e., concerned facial expressions, attempts to comfortthe distressed peer, low personal distress) compared to avoidant children; resistant children, however, did not differ signif-icantly from secure children.

More recent investigations of the association between attachment and empathy in preschool have yielded mixed results.Murphy and Laible (2013) found that mother-reported security on the AQS when children were 42 months positively pre-dicted children’s observed empathic responses to a laboratory simulated baby cry at 48 months, even after controlling forempathic concern at 42 months; however, attachment security was not significantly related to empathic concern whenthe two constructs were measured concurrently. In a study of 62 preschoolers using the observer-rated AQS, children’ssecure attachment to their mothers was unrelated to their observed concern and comforting responses to peers’ distress;instead, the quality of children’s relationship to their teachers predicted comforting behavior in the classroom, suggestingthat teachers’ influence may be more salient in a classroom context (Mitchell-Copeland, Denham, & DeMulder, 1997). Finally,Iannotti, Cummings, Pierrehumbert, Milano, and Zahn-Waxler (1992) reported that children’s secure attachment assessed inthe Strange Situation at age 2 positively predicted their observed prosocial behavior toward peers at age 5, which includedbehaviors linked to empathy such as helping and compassionate responses to peers’ emotional distress. On the other hand,attachment was not significantly related to other indicators of empathy, such as children’s understanding of, and affectiveresponses to, pictures of others’ emotions (Iannotti et al., 1992). Importantly, the authors report results for security vs. inse-curity in the Strange Situation but do not explore distinct insecure classifications, obscuring potential differences betweenthe specific groups.

Research on children’s empathy toward a sibling has yielded additional equivocal findings. Teti and Ablard (1989) foundthat children (Mage = 4 years) who were securely attached—as assessed on the mother-reported AQS—were more likely tooffer empathic care (i.e., verbal reassurance, physical comfort, and sensitive redirection) to their younger siblings when theybecame distressed during a separation from the parent; conversely, the number of children who aggressed against their dis-tressed sibling was significantly greater among insecure children. In a subsequent longitudinal investigation, however, infantattachment in the Strange Situation (assessed for both mothers and fathers) did not significantly predict individual differ-ences in empathy toward a sibling in distress when children were 4 years old; however, resistant children were more likelythan secure children to exhibit unempathic behaviors such as hostility and conflict toward the younger sibling (Volling,2001), pointing to the importance of examining how specific types of insecure attachment relate to children’s emergingempathy.

Maternal characteristics introduce further complexity into the picture: Some data suggest that young children ofdepressed mothers demonstrate unusually high levels of empathy and comforting behavior toward the mother (but lessempathy toward an experimenter; Apter-Levy, Feldman, Vakart, Ebstein, & Feldman, 2013), presumably reflecting children’sadaptation to an environment in which a parent requires additional emotional care (e.g., Radke-Yarrow, Zahn-Waxler,Richardson, Susman, & Martinez, 1994; Rehberg & Richman, 1989; yet see Frankel, Lindahl, & Harmon, 1992, for null results).In a study of 52 depressed and 38 non-depressed mothers and their preschool-aged children, Radke-Yarrow et al. (1994)observed the highest levels of empathic behavior toward mothers’ simulations of sadness among children who (a) weresecurely attached in the preschool Strange Situation, (b) demonstrated problems with affective reactivity, and (c) had moth-ers with severe depression. None of these characteristics alone was a strong predictor of child empathy; rather, the interac-tion among child- and family-level characteristics shaped children’s behavior. One interpretation of these findings is thatchildren with an underlying predisposition to affective reactivity may be more susceptible both to the negative impactsof maternal depression on affect regulation and to the positive impacts of secure attachment on social development (i.e.,a differential susceptibility model; see Belsky & Pluess, 2009). These results point to the importance of considering maternalcharacteristics, including mental health, when examining children’s empathy toward the mother.

A parallel body of work has examined capacities related to cognitive empathy, or the ability to identify and understandothers’ emotional states and to take others’ perspectives (e.g., Davis, 1980; Decety, 2015). For example, Laible and Thompson(1998) found that preschool children who were more secure on the mother-reported AQS were more accurate in identifyingothers’ negative emotions in a structured puppet story task and during interviews about peers’ emotions in naturalistic sit-uations. Similarly, Laible (2004b) reported that attachment security on the mother-reported AQS was strongly positivelyassociated with 3- to 5-year-old children’s accurate recognition of others’ facial expressions and identification of others’emotions in a story task. These findings offer a counterpoint to the null findings reported by Iannotti et al. (1992) and suggestthat securely attached preschoolers may be better able to recognize others’ negative emotions and take others’ perspectiveswhen tasks are presented in the context of a story or a real-world situation with peers.

Finally, preliminary data from our lab showed that 4-year-olds’ internal working models of attachment—assessed using aplay-based story-stem task—were concurrently associated with their empathic responding to a distressed experimenter;however, IWMs were unrelated to mother-reported and child-reported empathy (Stern, 2016). Findings suggest thatpreschoolers’ attachment representations relate only to specific dimensions of empathy and highlight the importance ofemploying multimethod assessment in the study of empathy.

Thus, the evidence on attachment-related differences in empathy in preschool children is particularly mixed, and appearsto depend upon study design and methodology: Longitudinal studies employing observational measures of children’s empa-thy have generally found that preschoolers with secure attachment histories are more likely to respond empathically to


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strangers and peers in distress. In contrast, mixed and null results have emerged from cross-sectional studies and studiesassessing preschoolers’ empathy toward their mothers or siblings. The evidence from this developmental period suggeststhat attachment-related differences in empathy may indeed be developmentally constructed, with differences emergingprincipally from longitudinal investigations. Data also point to the importance of contextual and methodological moderators,given evidence that a child’s relationship to the target—as well characteristics of the target such as maternal mental health—represent important moderators of the link between attachment and empathy.

School-aged children

In early and middle childhood, the focus of children’s social world begins to shift toward peers, yet attachment to parentscontinues to influence children’s everyday interactions (Booth-LaForce & Kerns, 2009; Kerns & Brumariu, 2016; Schneider,Atkinson, & Tardif, 2001). For example, children who were securely attached as infants and preschoolers demonstrate bettersocial adjustment and higher quality peer interactions at age 8 (Bohlin, Hagekull, & Rydell, 2000; Booth, Rose-Krasnor,McKinnon, & Rubin, 1994). Along with other social faculties, empathy appears to increase over the course of the school years,particularly in girls, and is a robust predictor of prosocial behavior (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 1987; Litvack-Miller, McDougall, &Romney, 1997). Consistent with the theory outlined above, emotion regulation appears to be a key mechanism linkingattachment with social functioning in middle childhood (e.g., Contreras, Kerns, Weimer, Gentzler, & Tomich, 2000).

Despite insightful research on the development of empathy across middle childhood (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 1987), its rela-tion to attachment remains unclear. To our knowledge, no studies have specifically examined the association betweenattachment and empathy in school-aged children. Two related bodies of literature, however, provide indirect evidence ofan attachment–empathy link in this period. First, in the bullying literature, middle school students’ self-reports of attach-ment and empathy together were found to predict their role in bullying situations; that is, children who were more secureand empathic were more likely to report that they would intervene on behalf a victim being bullied (Nickerson, Mele, &Princiotta, 2008). Although the association between security and empathy was not reported, the findings suggest that secu-rity and empathy may function together in promoting caring behavior toward vulnerable individuals. Second, in the clinicalliterature, insecure IWMs of attachment in early and middle childhood (assessed using a play-based story-stem task) havebeen associated with increased risk for callous-unemotional traits, foremost among which are lack of empathy and poorattunement to others’ emotions; notably, children with disorganized IWMs showed particularly elevated callous-unemotional traits (Pasalich, Dadds, Hawes, & Brennan, 2012). Similarly, lower parental sensitivity and negative represen-tations of the family (measured using the attachment-based Family Drawing Paradigm; Kaplan & Main, 1986) were associ-ated with greater callous-unemotional traits in a large longitudinal study of children (Wagner et al., 2015). This is in linewith Bowlby’s early observations that youth with disrupted attachment bonds showed a troubling disregard for others’ suf-fering (Bowlby, 1944). What is most clear, however, is that research on attachment-related differences in empathy duringthis developmental period is sorely needed.

Adolescents

In adolescence, children increasingly explore their autonomy within the relatedness of their attachment relationships(Allen & Hauser, 1996). This period is marked by the increasing importance of peers, who may at times provide a secure basefor the adolescent or call upon the adolescent to provide a secure base for them in times of distress (Allen & Tan, 2016;Furman & Buhrmester, 1992). In addition, the sociocognitive advances of adolescence—including improvements in theoryof mind, emotion understanding and regulation, and self-awareness—enable greater capacities for empathy (Eisenberg,2000; Hart & Fegley, 1995), as well as adolescents’ ability to report on their own internal states and attachments.

Research on attachment and empathy in adolescence has yielded the most consistent results. A study of 2,665 Italian ado-lescents (age 14–19 years) found that self-reported secure attachment to parents on the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attach-ment (IPPA; Armsden & Greenberg, 1987) was associated with greater self-reported empathic concern and perspectivetaking on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980), with a medium effect size (Laghi, D’Alessio, Pallini, &Baiocco, 2009). In one of the largest studies on this topic to date, Li et al. (2015) investigated associations among attachment,empathy, and aggressive behavior in a sample of 6,301 Chinese early adolescents (age 11–14 years). Children’s self-reportedattachment security with both mothers and fathers on the IPPA was positively associated with their empathic concern andperspective taking on the IRI. Effect sizes were small, with stronger associations for maternal (than paternal) attachment.Further, attachment security and perspective taking each were negatively associated with adolescents’ self-reported aggres-sion (Li et al., 2015). This pattern of results has been observed in older adolescents as well: Laible, Carlo, and Raffaelli (2000)reported that security on the IPPA was positively related to 16-year-olds’ empathy on the IRI, and both constructswere inversely related to aggression (Laible et al., 2000). Similarly, in a socioeconomically diverse sample of 756 Korean7th- to 9th-graders, secure maternal attachment on the IPPA was positively related to students’ self-reported empathy(a small effect size), which in turn predicted lower rates of self-reported bullying behavior (You, Lee, Lee, & Kim, 2015).

As a counterpoint to the findings related to aggression and bullying, Thompson and Gullone (2008) found that security onthe IPPA was positively associated with Australian 12- to 18-year-olds’ self-reported empathy, which in turn predicted theirprosocial behavior and humane treatment of animals. Similarly, in a sample of 69 Canadian high school students, attachment


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security was positively related to adolescents’ self-reported ‘‘helpful, empathic behavior,” which included their provision ofcomfort and sympathy toward others in distress (Markiewicz, Doyle, & Brendgen, 2001).

Just one study to date has illustrated the mediating role of emotion regulation in the attachment–empathy link in ado-lescence. Among 148 middle adolescents, parental attachment on the IPPA positively predicted teens’ empathic concern onthe IRI, with a small effect size; further, the association was mediated by emotion regulation (but not an alternate mediator,negative emotionality), such that more secure adolescents reported better regulatory capacities, which in turn supportedtheir empathy (Murphy, Laible, Augustine, & Robeson, 2015).

In one of the few adolescent studies integrating a biological perspective, Diamond, Fagundes, and Butterworth (2012)examined 14-year-olds’ attachment (i.e., self-reported anxiety and avoidance on the Adolescent Attachment Scale; Miller& Hoicowitz, 2004), resting vagal tone, and empathy, as indexed via observed behavior toward their mothers duringconflict-related discussions. Adolescents’ observed empathic sensitivity toward their mothers was predicted by their attach-ment style, such that attachment-anxious adolescents showed reduced empathy for their mothers’ negative emotions (butnot positive emotions), whereas attachment-avoidant adolescents showed reduced empathy for their mothers’ positive emo-tions (but not negative emotions), each with small effect sizes. Although resting vagal tone was not directly related to ado-lescent attachment or empathic sensitivity, an interaction emerged such that empathic sensitivity was highest amongadolescents with low attachment anxiety and high vagal tone (Diamond et al., 2012). Vagal tone reflects the activity ofthe vagus nerve—part of the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system involved in down-regulating theheart (Beauchaine, 2001)—and is thought to index affect regulation and empathy (see Hastings & Miller, 2014; Porges, 2011).

Thus, the adolescent research has consistently demonstrated a positive association between secure attachment andempathy. The majority of studies to date, however, have employed cross-sectional designs and self-report assessments ofattachment and empathy, raising concerns regarding shared method variance and highlighting the need for more longitudi-nal, observational work in this developmental period. Nevertheless, this body of work helps to build a bridge linking earlierstudies of attachment and empathy in childhood with the robust findings on security and empathy in adulthood. Acrossnumerous studies utilizing a variety of methodologies—including experimental induction of attachment security via prim-ing—adult attachment researchers have repeatedly demonstrated an association between security and empathy for others indistress (e.g., Britton & Fuendeling, 2005; Gillath, Shaver, & Mikulincer, 2005; Joireman, Needham, & Cummings, 2002;Mikulincer et al., 2001, 2003, 2005; see Mikulincer & Shaver, 2005, 2015; and Shaver et al., 2016, for reviews). The strongevidence in adulthood, coupled with the promising research in adolescence, suggest that studying the developmental rootsof empathy from an attachment perspective is indeed a worthwhile pursuit.

Discussion and future research

Since Bowlby and Ainsworth’s initial observations in the 1960s and 70s, researchers have demonstrated the downstreameffects of early attachment on a variety of social outcomes, including social competence, peer relationships, aggression, andpsychopathology (for reviews see Weinfield, Sroufe, Egeland, & Carlson, 2008; and Thompson, 2016). Among the mostimportant of these social outcomes, in our view, is empathy—the capacity to feel others’ emotions, to take their perspective,and to respond to their expressions of need and distress with concern and care. In this paper, we have provided an attach-ment theoretical framework for understanding and predicting the development of individual differences in empathy frominfancy through adolescence. The model also provides a means of interpreting the empirical literature, which we discussbelow.

As our review indicates, however, the body of work examining attachment and empathy in childhood is surprisinglysmall, and the evidence is mixed: A slight majority of the studies reviewed demonstrate positive associations betweenattachment and empathy, and no studies report negative associations between attachment security and empathy, but impor-tantly, many show null effects or conditional effects. Speaking broadly, the evidence is weakest in infancy, generally positivein the toddler years, contextually dependent in preschool, lacking in middle childhood, and consistently positive in adoles-cence. Throughout development, effect sizes are small, suggesting that, in general, the magnitude of any direct link betweenattachment and empathy remains relatively consistent, even as important dimensions of children’s attachment relationshipsand capacity to care for others change with age.

There are multiple possible explanations for these mixed findings. First, as discussed previously, the proposed linkbetween attachment and empathy may be developmentally constructed. That is, associations may emerge consistently onlylater in development, as children gain greater representational and regulatory skills. From a neurobiological perspective, theinfluence of secure attachment on biological systems may take time to canalize (see, e.g., Blair & Raver, 2012; Gottlieb,1991); for example, epigenetic programming of the HPA-axis may require repeated exposure to sensitive care or continuedreinforcement of relational security over time. Alternately, attachment-related individual differences in empathy mayemerge alongside developmentally normative maturation of the caregiving system in adolescence, including changes in oxy-tocin and vasopressin function. This perspective would help explain why results are weakest in infancy and seemingly moreconsistent in adolescence.

Second, in a similar vein, it is likely that any influence attachment may exert on empathy would be indirect, operatingthrough multiple mediating mechanisms in a developmental cascade (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010). The study by Panfileand Laible (2012), for example, demonstrated that emotion regulation fully mediated the link between preschoolers’ secure


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attachment and empathy, and that the direct path from attachment to empathy was not necessary for the good fit of the pathmodel. Thus, the theorized influence of attachment on empathic development may operate via multiple intermediary path-ways (including those presented in Fig. 1), such that studies that test only for a direct effect may miss the fuller developmen-tal picture of how these constructs are (or are not) related.

Third, the methodology used to measure both attachment and empathy varies widely across development, with obser-vational measures most common in the first years of life, use of adult-report increasing in preschool, and self-report dom-inating in adolescence. Studies employing longitudinal designs with observational methods generally show positiveassociations between security and empathy in childhood (e.g., Bischof-Köhler, 2000; Kestenbaum et al., 1989), whereaspicture-based and emotion-labeling measures of empathy often yield null results, perhaps due to the cognitive and verbaldemands of the task (e.g., Iannotti et al., 1992). Studies that rely on adolescent self-report also tend to show positive results,though, as mentioned previously, this approach introduces the problem of shared method variance. In addition, the mostfrequently used attachment measure in studies of adolescents has been the IPPA, a measure that was not originally designedto assess adolescent–parent attachment; future research should rely on more well validated measures of adolescent attach-ment (discussed in further detail below). A final consideration is the context of the empathy task: The higher levels of empa-thy observed in secure children are more apparent when the target is a peer or a stranger, and less so when the target is themother or a sibling, suggesting that the child’s relationship to the target is indeed an important contextual moderator of theproposed link between attachment and empathy. It may be that the more consistent results observed in adolescence are inpart attributable to the use of empathy questionnaires that assess general tendencies and are therefore noncontextual.

Fourth, beyond target characteristics, attachment may interact with additional moderators outlined in Fig. 1 in the pre-diction of empathy. In particular, evidence suggests that children with specific temperamental traits (i.e., high reactivity) orgenes (particularly serotonin transporter 5-HTTLPR and dopamine-related genes such as DRD4) are differentially susceptibleto their caregiving environment (Belsky & Pluess, 2009); that is, children may be more or less influenced by the quality oftheir environments, ‘‘for better and for worse.” Research has shown, for example, that positive parenting predicts prosocialbehavior only among children carrying the dopamine receptor D4 7-repeat allele (Knafo et al., 2011); similarly, in a study ofschool-aged children, those who were securely attached gave more in a donating task only if they had less efficientdopamine-related genes (Bakermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 2011). Extending these results from the prosocial liter-ature, it may also be reasonable to hypothesize that attachment is relevant to empathic development only among childrenwho are more temperamentally or genetically susceptible to caregiving influences, and not for children without these traits.

Finally, we must bear in mind the possibility that attachment is in fact unrelated to children’s empathy, and that the pos-itive results to date can be explained by a third variable or by measurement error. For example, it is possible that childrenwho are generally more socially competent are both more likely to be viewed by their mothers as secure on measures likethe mother-reported AQS and more likely to offer comfort in observational tasks due to their more advanced knowledge ofsocially desirable behavior (and not necessarily empathy). As Sroufe (2016) notes in the most recent edition of the Handbookof Attachment, we must be mindful of the fallacy that ‘‘all good things go together” in development and look closely at theevidence for which specific aspects of development relate or do not relate to attachment.

What is most apparent from the literature reviewed is that additional investigation is needed to better understand theassociation between attachment security and empathic development, particularly in infancy and middle childhood. Nextwe outline a research agenda for future work to bring this complex and equivocal picture into focus.

Directions for future research

Developmental approachesFirst, understanding empathy in childhood from any perspective requires taking a developmental approach. Longitudinal

studies employing measures of attachment and empathy at multiple time points may clarify how attachment does or doesnot shape pathways to empathy at specific ages. Moreover, assessing potential mediators at different stages of developmentcould be useful in understanding the cascade of influences that contribute to children’s empathy over time. Such approachescould also shed light on the stability and change of empathy over development (e.g., perhaps empathy-related responding isless stable among anxious-resistant children; or perhaps secure attachment buffers against age-typical decreases in empathyduring adolescence). Research in this vein requires attention to measurement issues such as task demands (i.e., ensuring thatyoung children’s performance on an empathy task is not unduly limited by verbal or cognitive demands), consistency ofmeasurements across ages, and the developmental appropriateness of attachment and empathy assessments, which we dis-cuss further below.

Assessing attachmentPerhaps most importantly, future examination of attachment and empathy requires appropriate and carefulmeasurement

of each construct, particularly given the wide variation in methodologies used to study both attachment and empathy inchildren. With regard to attachment, researchers should rely on gold-standard measures such as the Strange Situationand other observational separation–reunion procedures that have been validated for use with children through age 6 (seeSolomon & George, 2016). Other well validated measures for young children include the Attachment Story Completion Task(Bretherton et al., 1990) and the AQS (Waters & Deane, 1985). In adolescence, the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; George,Kaplan, & Main, 1985) is considered a valid measure of attachment that, like the aforementioned observational measures of


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young children, has been empirically linked to early caregiving experiences (see Hesse, 2016). The Child Attachment Inter-view (Shmueli-Goetz, Target, Datta, & Fonagy, 2004) is a more recently developed measure of attachment in middle child-hood, informed by both the Strange Situation and the AAI, and the preliminary data on its validity has been promising(Shmueli-Goetz, Target, Fonagy, & Datta, 2008; Venta, Shmueli-Goetz, & Sharp, 2014). Many of these measures have the ben-efit of distinguishing among specific attachment classifications, which is particularly important for testing hypotheses that,for instance, avoidant individuals may show the most impairment in empathy (e.g., Kestenbaum et al., 1989; Sroufe, 1983),or that anxious/resistant individuals may show a blend of empathy and personal distress.

For older adolescents, the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale (ECR; Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998) is a self-reportmeasure of attachment style with subscales for both avoidance and anxiety; use of this measure—particularly in conjunctionwith observational measures of attachment obtained earlier in life—may be useful in examining continuity (or discontinuity)with the adult literature, which typically employs the ECR in studies of attachment and empathy (e.g., Mikulincer et al., 2001,2005). Bringing these measures together in longitudinal studies of attachment and empathy (i.e., by assessing attachment atmultiple time points) could help to disentangle longitudinal effects that unfold over development from concurrent effects atspecific ages (see van der Mark et al., 2002, for an example of this approach).

Assessing empathyIn the case of empathy, integrating behavioral and biological indices of children’s responses to naturalistic displays of dis-

tress may be optimal for capturing empathy for multiple reasons: (1) naturalistic distress presents an ecologically valid stim-ulus, representing others’ strife in ways that reflect everyday encounters with social partners (as when a stranger stubs hertoe or a peer has his feelings hurt); (2) a naturalistic distress stimulus is highly salient and likely to elicit immediate, auto-matic emotional reactions that may better capture individual differences in empathy and personal distress; (3) behavioraland biological responses to others’ distress involve fewer cognitive and verbal demands than story-based, emotion-labeling, or self-report measures; and (4) as a consequence, these measures can be applied more consistently across agegroups, as well as across languages and cultures. To extend the adolescent literature in particular, it will be important tointroduce more objective measures to reduce problems of reporter bias and shared method variance that result from theexclusive use of self-report. Naturalistic empathy tasks simulating others’ distress could readily be adapted from establishedparadigms used with younger children, as well as those used with adults (e.g., experimenter simulating pain or ‘‘live” videofeed of an adolescent peer in distress). These paradigms could be strengthened in future studies by adopting behavioral cod-ing systems that differentiate sympathy (e.g., a child saying, ‘‘I’m sorry that happened”) from empathy (e.g., a child saying, ‘‘Iknow you’re sad”), and by clarifying criteria for what constitutes regulated empathy vs. personal distress.

This is not to say that researchers should do away with questionnaire measures of empathy; rather, because empathy is acomplex andmultidimensional construct, researchers should employmultimethod approaches to its study; that is, researcherscould draw upon a combination of questionnaires from multiple reporters (e.g., mother, father, teacher, peer, self), codedbehavioral responses to naturalistic displays of distress, aswell as biological indices (e.g., heart rate deceleration, RSA suppres-sion, pupil dilation, eye tracking; for examples of biological methods used to study normative prosocial development, seeDecety, Michalska, & Kinzler, 2012; Fabes et al., 1993; Hepach, Vaish, & Tomasello, 2012; see also Hastings & Miller, 2014;Porges, 2011). Such an approach would help researchers (a) to examine specific dimensions of empathy, (b) to establish con-vergent validity among multiple metrics, (c) to distinguish empathy from prosocial behavior motivated by other factors; and(d) to test newhypotheses regarding the origins of individual differences. For example, do avoidant children show typical phys-iological reactions to others’ distress but subsequently suppress their response, reporting lowempathy and failing to act appro-priately to care for others? Or do avoidant children also show differences in early, low-level perceptual and physiologicalprocessing of others’ distress? Research in this vein could probe empathy from a developmental systems perspective, examin-ing potential attachment-related differences atmultiple levels of analysis (see, e.g., Cicchetti &Dawson, 2002;Marshall, 2013).

Perhaps most importantly, we encourage researchers to be clear in their operationalization of empathy, to be mindful ofthe language used to specify its dimensions, and to tailor measurement of empathy in line with these considerations.

Investigating mediatorsFuture research should go beyond simple direct effects to examine potential indirect pathways and mediating mechanisms

linking attachment and empathy, drawing on the model outlined in Fig. 1. Of the mediators proposed here, emotion regu-lation has received the most empirical support for its association with both attachment and empathy across age groups (e.g.,Calkins & Leerkes, 2011; Cassidy, 1994; Eisenberg, 2000), whereas the roles of IWMs, scripts, language, and neurobiologicalprogramming merit further examination. Researchers could test developmental models focusing on the roles of specificmediators at different ages, examining, for instance, whether attachment in infancy shapes a rudimentary behavioral scriptfor caring for others in preschool; but perhaps this script becomes less relevant over time, as children grow increasinglyaware of the complexities of their social environment, and instead, attachment-related differences in parent–childemotion-focused dialogue become more relevant to empathic abilities in middle childhood. Thus, investigating potentialmediating mechanisms and indirect pathways is particularly important for clarifying the developmental story of empathy.

Investigating moderatorsAlongside the exploration of mediating mechanisms, it will be important to examine potential moderators of the link

between attachment and empathy, and to examine attachment itself as a moderator of other influences on children’s


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empathy, such as socialization (Hastings et al., 2007; for a similar model of children’s conscience development, see Fowles &Kochanska, 2000, and Kochanska et al., 2004). One hypothesis is that secure attachment and socialization independentlyyield only weak influences on empathic development (i.e., perhaps each is necessary but not sufficient for empathy), but thattheir combined influence (as when a securely attached child’s empathic behavior is reinforced by a sensitive caregiver) isstronger. Further, as discussed above, examination of child-level moderators such as genetics and temperament could shedlight on whether attachment-related experiences have differential effects on children depending on their plasticity or sus-ceptibility to environmental influences (e.g., Bakermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 2007, 2011). It is possible, for exam-ple, that only children with greater susceptibility to rearing influences experience empathy-enhancing effects of secureattachment and empathy-inhibiting effects of insecure attachment.

In addition to parent- and child-level moderators, research may benefit from greater sensitivity to the role of context andculture in shaping children’s relationships to their caregivers, as well as their empathic development. Ainsworth’s first writ-ings emphasized the role of context in understanding children’s attachment behavior (Ainsworth, 1979), and empathyresearch has shown that factors such as in-group identity (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007), perceptions of status and power(Côté et al., 2011), the presence or absence of emotional distress cues (Vaish, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2009), and rules fordisplaying distress in different contexts (Hepach et al., 2013b) influence empathy in both children and adults. It seems likelythat these and other contextual variables may moderate any influence of children’s attachment on their empathic respond-ing. With respect to culture, Ainsworth’s (1969) cross-cultural approach to studying attachment in Uganda and Baltimorehas been carried forward in recent work examining culture-specific dimensions of attachment and sensitive parenting(Mesman, van IJzendoorn, & Sagi-Schwartz, 2016). Culture has also been shown to modulate adults’ empathic responsesto others’ emotions (e.g., Cassels, Chan, & Chung, 2010; de Greck et al., 2012). It may be that cultural norms regarding appro-priate and effective responses to others’ distress shape whether and how parenting influences children’s empathy. For exam-ple, perhaps secure attachment does not predict empathy in cultures that encourage empathy, because the norms of thegroup compensate for or buffer against negative individual-level effects of insecure attachment. Although the studies ofattachment and empathy reviewed here found similar evidence across multiple countries (e.g., Australia, Switzerland,US), most studies to date have drawn on racially homogenous samples and have not examined cultural differences. Thus,enhancing diversity in both the populations studied and the contexts in which studies occur represents an important nextstep toward understanding the association between attachment and empathy in childhood and investigating ‘‘what is pre-dictive for whom” in empathic development.

Experimental designsIn order to test potential causal links between attachment and empathy, researchers could employ experimental designs,

adapting tasks from both the adult attachment literature (e.g., Mikulincer et al., 2001) and studies of prosocial developmentin infants (e.g., Vaish et al., 2009). For example, research could examine whether experimental priming of attachment secu-rity (e.g., via presentation of pictures of close, smiling parent–child dyads) would enhance empathy as it does in adults(Mikulincer et al., 2001). In addition, experimental manipulations of potential contextual factors affecting empathy, suchas characteristics of the target (e.g., familiar vs. unfamiliar, in-group vs. out-group, peer vs. sibling), could be useful in exam-ining the role of contextual moderators, as discussed above.

Intervention researchFinally, future research should examine potential implications of the model proposed here for intervention. A first impor-

tant step is to examine whether interventions to promote secure attachment also benefit children’s empathy (and whetherincreases in security track with improvements in empathy from pre- to post-intervention). If such effects are observed, addi-tional work could examine whether existing programs to enhance empathy and curb aggression and bullying in childhood(e.g., Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011; Greenberg et al., 2003) could benefit from integrating anattachment theoretical approach—for example, through training teachers to provide a secure base for children in the class-room and to respond sensitively to students’ emotions (Al-Yagon & Mikulincer, 2006; Mitchell-Copeland et al., 1997). Onepromising intervention, the Roots of Empathy program (ROE; Gordon, 2005), brings parent–infant dyads into school class-rooms to model sensitive parenting and to facilitate children’s empathic understanding of infants’ needs as a model forunderstanding the needs of others. Fourth- to seventh-grade children who participated in the program showed significantimprovements in empathic responses to infant crying and peer nominations of prosocial behavior, as well as reductionsin teacher-reported aggression (Schonert-Reichl, Smith, Zaidman-Zait, & Hertzman, 2012). The ROE intervention offers a cre-ative example of how attachment theoretical perspectives might be integrated into educational programs to foster children’sempathy.

Conclusions

In sum, the evidence to date offers a complex and equivocal picture of the role of attachment in children’s empathicdevelopment. Although there is evidence that secure attachment predicts greater empathy in some studies, the mixedfindings highlight the need for further research that examines attachment and empathy with mindfulness of context,


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measurement, and developmental factors. Here we have offered a theoretical model of attachment and empathy to guidethis important endeavor to further understand the relational roots of empathy in childhood.

Acknowledgments

Preparation of the manuscript was supported in part by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research FellowshipProgram under Grant No. DGE 1322106, awarded to the first author. We gratefully acknowledge the input and ideas of mem-bers of the Maryland Child and Family Development Lab: Jackie Gross, Bonnie Brett, and David Martin. We also thank SamihaIslam for her careful attention to detail and coordination in finalizing the manuscript.

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