Attachment style and empathy: A meta analytic review

BELÉN MESURADO; MARÍA PAULINA GUERRA; FLORENCIA DE SANCTIS; MARÍA CRISTINA RICHAUD

Baltimore

Conferencia; 2019 SRCD Biennial Meeting; 2019

Society for Research in Child Development

Attachment has been defined as the strong affectionalbond to a particular other, which depends on the earlyinteractions between a child and its primary caregiver(Bowlby, 1973). Infants search for the caregivers assecure bases from which to explore the world andreturn to them to look for support and comfort(Ainsworth, 1979). If the caregiver has providedavailability for the child, it will develop positive internalworking models of self and others (Bretherton,Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990) and emotional regulationstrategies (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). These arerelated to socio-emotional skills, in particular, empathy,which contributes to the management of relationships(Khodabakhsh, 2012). Empathy is conceptualized as amultidimensional construct (Davis, 1983) with cognitiveand affective components but also includesneurobiological processes, which seem to be sharedwith attachment (Ruckstaetter, Sells, Newmeyer, &Zink, 2017).The objective of this meta-analysis is to examine therelations between secure and insecure attachmentstyle and empathy in children. We included longitudinaland cross-sectional studies on children and adolescentsthat were published from 2000 to 2019 written inSpanish and English. The dataset included were Scielo,LatinMed, PsychInfo, Dialnet, Science Direct,EbscoHost, JStor, and NCBI. We excluded the studiesthat focused on peer and partner attachment. We usedthe Comprehensive Meta-analysis V2 program tocalculate Forest plot, Funnel plot, and heterogeneity.The correlation between secure attachment and empathywas extracted from 14 papers. See Figure 1. The data werereported from 9204 participants. Results show a positiverelation between secure attachment and empathy, themean weighted correlation was r = .24, (95% CI= 0.23,0.27, Z-value= 24,234, p ≤.001). See Figure 4. Thecorrelation between insecure attachment and empathywas extracted from 7 studies. The data were reportedfrom 3386 participants. Towards avoidant attachment theresults show that there is a negative relation betweenanxious attachment and empathy, the mean weightedcorrelation was r=-.21, (95% CI= -0.25, -0.18, Z-value= -12.51; p≤.001). See Figure 5. In relation with anxiousattachment, results show that there is no relation betweenanxious attachment and empathy, the mean weightedcorrelation was r=-.01, (95% CI= -0.11, -0.04, Z-value= -4.629; p≤.000). See Figure 6. To conclude, our results confirm the positive relationbetween secure attachment and empathy found in theliterature (Zahn-Waxler & Radke-Yarrow, 1990). Moreover,we found a negative relation between avoidantattachment and empathy. This would be explained becauseavoidant attachment children may respond to other?sdistress with high physiological arousal, showing almost noconcern, and suppressing empathy in an attempt to ignoreor escape other?s pain (Stern & Cassidy, 2017). Finally,there are mixed results about the relation betweenanxious attachment and empathy. While some studiesfound a negative relation (Britton & Fuendeling, 2005),others found a positive association (Trusty, Ng, & Watts,2005; Wei, Liao, Ku, & Shaffer, 2011). Our results confirmthat there is no relation between anxious attachment andempathy. Further studies should be carried out to researchon this relation.