Attachment & Human Development, 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2014.969749

Assessing parental empathy: a role for empathy in child attachment Jessica A. Stern, Jessica L. Borelli* and Patricia A. Smiley Department of Psychology, Pomona College, Claremont, CA, USA (Received 3 April 2014; accepted 22 September 2014) Although empathy has been associated with helping behavior and relationship quality, little research has evaluated the role of parental empathy in the development of parent– child relationships. The current study (1) establishes preliminary validity of the Parental Affective and Cognitive Empathy Scale (PACES), a method for coding empathy from parents’ narrative responses to the Parent Development Interview – Revised for School-Aged Children (PDI-R-SC), and (2) tests a theoretical model of empathy and attachment. Sixty caregivers and their children completed a battery of questionnaire and interview measures, including the PDI-R-SC and the Child Attachment Interview (CAI). Caregivers’ interview narratives were scored for empathy using PACES. PACES showed good interrater reliability and good convergent validity with a self-report empathy measure. Parent empathy was positively related to child attachment security (using a continuous score for narrative coherence) and emotional openness on the CAI, as well as to child perceptions of parental warmth. Moreover, parent empathy mediated the relation between parents’ self-reported attachment style and their children’s attachment security. Implications for attachment theory and future directions for establishing scale validity are discussed. Keywords: empathy; attachment; parenting; middle childhood; assessment

To empathize is to understand and resonate with others’ emotional experience by taking their perspective (Rogers, 1959). Researchers conceive of empathy both as an internal emotional state, activated by situational factors (Barrett-Lennard, 1981; Nezlek, Feist, Wilson, & Plesko, 2001), and as a trait, associated with stable dispositional factors such as agreeableness (Graziano & Eisenberg, 1997; Hogan, 1969). Further, theorists distinguish between two types of empathy: Affective empathy is the automatic, at times unconscious, emotional resonance with another’s emotion and concern for another’s distress, whereas cognitive empathy is the conscious, intellectual understanding of another’s emotion that results from taking his or her perspective (Gladstein, 1983; Smith, 2006). The capacity to resonate with and understand others’ emotions is fundamental in the formation and maintenance of social relationships (e.g., Anderson & Keltner, 2002; Batson, 1991; Preston & de Waal, 2002), particularly within the family system (Twemlow, Fonagy, & Sacco, 2005). Evolutionary theory holds that empathy evolved in concert with the attachment system, enabling parents to recognize and respond to the biological needs of their offspring and to act altruistically in times of threat to ensure their survival (Darwin, 1922; Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1974; MacLean, 1985).1 Also drawing upon evolutionary theory, Bowlby (1969) and Ainsworth (1967, 1972) implicitly point to the importance of empathy in their discussion of maternal sensitivity to children’s emotional cues as motivating consistent *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] © 2014 Taylor & Francis

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and contingent responsiveness (Bell & Ainsworth, 1972). In a more explicit acknowledgement of the role for empathy in attachment, attachment-focused interventions such as Circle of Security (Marvin, Cooper, Hoffman, & Powell, 2002) describe the final phase of a parent’s process toward secure base provision as involving a critical “empathic shift” (Cooper, Hoffman, Powell, & Marvin, 2005). Despite the rich theoretical foundation for the role of empathy in parenting, little research has investigated the role of parent empathy in the context of parent–child attachment relationships, in part because adult empathy has been notoriously difficult to measure (Duan & Hill, 1996). In this paper, we review the literature on parent empathy and attachment and introduce a method for coding empathy from parent narratives to explore the role of empathy in the parent–child relationship. Our specific goals are to (1) develop a measure of empathy specific to the parent–child relationship, (2) establish preliminary validity of the empathy measure, and (3) test a theoretical model of the relation between parent empathy and parent–child attachment. Empathy and attachment Attachment theory proposes that patterns of caregiving behavior shape a child’s “internal working model” of the self and others, which informs socioemotional functioning throughout development (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978; Bowlby, 1980). Children who experience consistent, sensitive caregiving develop secure working models of relationships, whereas children who experience inconsistent, rejecting, or intrusive caregiving tend to develop insecure working models and are at greater risk for psychopathology (Cassidy, 1994; Main, 1996). Inherent in the secure model is the view that emotion expression is acceptable, that such expression is an effective means of eliciting sensitive responses from others, and that others are understanding and responsive to one’s needs (Cassidy, 1994). Attachment representations, initially rooted in early interactions with caregivers, then provide the framework for caregiving behavior later in development. These internal working models manifest in individuals’ emotional and behavioral responses to others’ distress and correspond to individual differences in brain structure and function (Cozolino, 2006; Siegel, 2001), forming the building blocks of empathy. For example, securely attached mothers demonstrate higher peripheral oxytocin response to contact with their infants than do insecure mothers (Strathearn, Fonagy, Amico, & Montague, 2009); oxytocin, in turn, has been associated with both initiation of caregiving behavior (Insel & Young, 2001) and empathic behavior (Bartz et al., 2010; Wu, Li, & Su, 2012). Conversely, adult attachment insecurity (particularly avoidance) is associated with lower levels of empathy (Joireman, Lasane, Bennett, Richards, & Solaimani, 2001; Wei, Liao, Ku, & Shaffer, 2011). Among adolescents, attachment security is associated with greater empathy and vagal tone during interactions with their mothers (Diamond, Fagundes, & Butterworth, 2012). In experimental research, contextual priming of attachment security has been shown to strengthen empathic responding and inhibit personal distress, providing evidence for a causal link between secure states of mind and empathy among adults (Mikulincer et al., 2001). In sum, this research points to a relationship between attachment representations and empathy within individuals; however, the role of parent empathy in the development of the child’s attachment remains unclear. One possibility is that empathy underlies the transmission of attachment representations from parent to child. Traditional theory holds that attachment transmission occurs

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via behavioral mechanisms, such as sensitivity (Ainsworth et al., 1978); empirically, however, behavioral sensitivity accounts for only a small portion of the variability in intergenerational patterns of attachment, resulting in a “transmission gap” (van IJzendoorn, 1995). In recent years, attachment researchers have suggested that the remaining variance in the transmission gap may be explained by the way in which parents “engage with their [children] at a mental level” (Meins, Fernyhough, Fradley, & Tuckey, 2001, p. 638). In other words, attachment security develops out of parental sensitivity to the child’s physical needs (the level of behavior) as well as parental sensitivity to the child’s psychological needs (the level of mental representation). Researchers working in this area have delineated and assessed the metacognitive capacities underlying the development of attachment security. These constructs bear relevance to empathy in that parents must have some metacognitive awareness of the child’s mind in order to experience empathy for the child. Parental mind-mindedness, described by Meins (1997), refers to a parent’s tendency to treat his or her child as an individual with a mind, as assessed through the parent’s behavioral responses to, and verbal interpretation of, the child’s behavior. Meins and colleagues (2001) found that parents’ tendency to make appropriate mind-related comments to their infants (e.g., “What do you think that is over there?”) during parent–child interactions predicted infant attachment security. A mind-minded orientation is a prerequisite to empathy, because a parent must appreciate that the child experiences his or her own thoughts and feelings in order to empathize with these experiences. Building on this capacity, Oppenheim and Koren-Karie’s (2002) concept of insightfulness (originally termed “empathic understanding”) refers to a parent’s capacity to “see things from the child’s point of view” (Ainsworth, 1969). Parents identified as positively insightful about their children’s motives during a parent– child interactions, as assessed via interviews, were more likely to have securely attached children. In contrast, parents who had more misperceptions about the motives underlying their children’s behavior were more likely to have insecurely attached children (Koren-Karie, Oppenheim, Dolev, Sher, & Etzion-Carasso, 2002; Oppenheim, Koren-Karie, & Sagi, 2001). In many ways, insightfulness captures the core features of cognitive empathy, including perspective-taking, openness to new information about the child, and holding a complex view of the child’s mind (Oppenheim et al., 2001). However, this metacognitive capacity must be integrated with a parent’s emotional connectedness and resonance with the child’s experiences in order to be sensitive. For the sake of argument, let us briefly consider an extreme example: Psychopaths may demonstrate superior insightfulness into others’ minds (i.e., high cognitive empathy) but lack the capacity to feel with others’ experience (i.e., impaired affective empathy); this empathic imbalance is thought to underlie insensitive and manipulative interpersonal behavior (Blair, 2005; Hare, Hart, & Harpur, 1991). In cognitive science and psychoanalytic theory, certain aspects of both cognitive and affective empathy are captured in the construct mentalization, which involves “simultaneously feeling and thinking about feeling” (Twemlow et al., 2005, p. 276). Like empathy, mentalization is conceptualized as a part of the evolution of the attachment system, because awareness of one’s own and others’ mental states is essential for communication and collaboration among kinship groups (Fonagy, Gergely, & Target, 2007). Mentalization is operationalized in research studies as reflective functioning (RF), the capacity to reflect upon one’s own thoughts, emotions, motives, and behavior, as well as those of others, in a regulated manner (Steele &

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Steele, 2008). In parenting research, RF is assessed through narrative responses to interview questions that aim to capture parents’ ability to link mental states to behavior, to consider their child’s behavior in the context of the child’s stage of development, to be aware of intergenerational patterns of knowledge and behavior, and to take the interviewer’s perspective. Research by Fonagy and colleagues (1991, 2005) investigating the relations between parents’ own attachment history, parental sensitivity, and child attachment suggests that parental RF accounts for the observed “gap” in the intergenerational transmission of attachment (Slade, Grienenberger, Bernbach, Levy, & Locker, 2005). Like RF, parent empathy involves regulated reflection on others’ thoughts and emotions, including the ability to take others’ perspectives and to link mental states with behavior; both are thought to serve a regulating function for the child by organizing their psychological experiences. In addition to the reflective capacity to “observe the moment to moment changes in the child’s mental state” (Fonagy & Target, 1997, p. 691), empathy also involves parents’ moment-to-moment emotional experience of concern for and resonance with the child. Neurologically, Fonagy and colleagues (2007) point out that although empathy and RF “both rely on networks associated with making inferences about mental states of others, empathic responding also requires the additional recruitment of networks involved in emotional processing (Völlm et al., 2006)” (p. 295). We view parent empathy as distinct from RF in that (1) empathy captures a parent’s in-the-moment experiences of emotional connectedness with the child (rather than metaawareness of one’s mind and the minds of others); (2) empathy is specific to parent emotions that are resonant or congruent with the child’s (as opposed to reflective awareness of contrasting emotions between parent and child); (3) empathy focuses on the child’s experiences (as opposed to understanding of the self or of other adults); and (4) empathy is attuned primarily to the child’s experiences of distress or need. Consistent with this view, in the Circle of Security Intervention (Cooper et al., 2005), parent empathy and RF are evaluated separately on interviews assessing parents’ progress; over the course of the intervention, parent empathy is thought to develop through reflective dialogue with the therapist, supporting the notion that RF lays the foundation for empathy to arise (Powell, Cooper, Hoffman, & Marvin, 2014). In sum, metacognitive capacities such as RF are necessary but not sufficient for empathic parenting. If parental RF is “holding [the child’s] mind in mind” (Allen, Fonagy, & Bateman, 2008, p. 3), parent empathy is “holding the child’s experience in mind and heart.” RF gives parent and child a coherent model of the child’s mind, and empathy is the resulting cognitive and emotional state that motivates sensitivity and fosters a felt sense of interpersonal connection. In terms of transmission of attachment representations, we postulate that parents’ own attachment security allows them to empathize with their children’s emotions, motivating sensitivity toward the child’s physical and psychological needs. Further, because a parent’s empathic resonance with, and mirroring of, the child’s emotions convey a deeply personal understanding of the child’s moment-to-moment experience, the child feels emotionally connected and internalizes the view that difficult emotions can be expressed, accepted, and shared with others in a regulated manner. We propose that these experiences of empathic caregiving promote the development of attachment security within the child. Previous studies of attachment transmission have traditionally examined concordance between parents’ classification on the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI;

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George, Kaplan, & Main, 1985) and infants’ classification in the Strange Situation (e.g., Fonagy et al., 1991). Recently, however, questionnaire measures of adult attachment styles have gained favor; the Experiences in Close Relationships scale (ECR-R; Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998; Fraley, Waller, & Brennan, 2000), a self-report measure of adult attachment avoidance and anxiety in romantic relationships, is widely used in studies of empathy (e.g., Mikulincer & Shaver, 2005). In addition, researchers have paid increasing attention to attachment later in development, particularly middle childhood (see Kerns & Richardson, 2005). Building on the AAI protocol, the Child Attachment Interview (CAI; Target, Fonagy, & Shmueli-Goetz, 2003) provides a narrative measure of attachment classification for school-aged children. In the current study, we use both self-report and narrative-based assessment techniques to investigate the association between parents’ attachment styles and school-aged children’s attachment security. Specifically, we assess parent attachment style with the ECR-R and examine its correspondence with a new assessment of parent empathy based on Fonagy, Target, Steele, and Steele’s (1998) Reflective Functioning scale, and we assess child attachment security with the CAI (i.e., narrative coherence). Finally, we test a model of attachment transmission in which parent empathy mediates the association between parent and child attachment. The development of and rationale for the new empathy measure are described in the following sections.

Parent empathy: existing research and measurement Previous research has assessed empathic parenting primarily via naturalistic observation of parent behaviors such as contingent responding and child-directed facial expressions. Measured in this way, empathic caregiving has been associated with young children’s empathic concern and altruism toward others (Zahn-Waxler, RadkeYarrow, & King, 1979). In addition, following participation in an attachment-based parenting intervention, mothers displayed increased empathic behavior toward their infants, who in turn were more likely to be securely attached (Lieberman, Weston, & Pawl, 1991). Research utilizing standardized questionnaire measures of empathy has also demonstrated associations between parent empathy and sensitive caregiving behavior. Parents with higher self-reported affective empathy on the Emotional Empathic Tendency Scale (EETS; Mehrabian & Epstein, 1972) show lower physiological distress in response to infant cries and are less likely to engage in child abuse (Mehrabian, Young, & Sato, 1988). Similarly, mothers’ self-reported empathic concern on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980) has been associated with reduced risk for child abuse (Perez-Albeniz & de Paul, 2003) and with fewer symptoms of psychopathology in school-aged children (Psychogiou, Daley, Thompson, & Sonuga‐Barke, 2008). Moreover, self-reported empathic concern is related to child and parent reports of maternal warmth (Soenens, Duriez, Vansteenkiste, & Goossens, 2007), or parenting behavior conveying affection, appreciation, and positive affect (Davidov & Grusec, 2006). Both observational and self-report measures of empathy have shortcomings, however. Although observational methods offer rich data on parent–child interactions, empathy is a largely internal, experiential process that cannot be inferred from behavior alone (Hoffman, 2000). For one, parents may exhibit sensitive behavior in response to social expectations or other factors, without empathizing with their child’s emotion. From a

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theoretical perspective, it is important to differentiate sensitive behavior from empathy (Duan & Hill, 1996). Questionnaire measures of empathy also have limitations: First, self-report measures present problems of social desirability (McGrath, Cann, & Konopasky, 1998) and validity (see Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006). Indeed, self-reported empathy is only weakly related to empathic accuracy, suggesting that individuals have limited knowledge of their empathic ability (Davis & Kraus, 1997; Ickes, 2003). Second, Holz-Ebeling and Steinmetz (1995) suggest that self-report measures reflect individuals’ attitudes toward empathy, rather than actual empathic tendencies. Third, many measures conflate affective empathy and personal distress, despite evidence that personal distress increases self-focus and inhibits empathic behavior (Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Sadovsky, 2006). Fourth, self-report measures assess empathy as a trait, ignoring situation- or relationship-dependent variability in empathic ability (Nezlek et al., 2001). Finally, these instruments assess empathy toward one’s same-age peers or “other people” generally, rather than toward one’s child specifically. The current study In the present study, we offer an alternative approach to assessing parent empathy by coding narrative responses to interview questions for empathy toward the child. Interview methodologies have a number of strengths: First, parenting narratives capture both external parenting behaviors and internal experiential processes, providing a fuller picture of how affective and cognitive empathy inform everyday parent–child interactions. Second, by tapping into non-conscious representations of the parent–child relationship rather than asking about empathy directly, interviews may reduce issues of response bias associated with self-report. Finally, when interviews probe for recent examples of parent– child interactions, the information provided may better capture parent empathy in specific emotional contexts. Drawing on established methods for assessing RF (Fonagy et al., 1998; Slade, Bernbach, Grienenberger, Levy, & Locker, 2004), we developed the Parent Affective and Cognitive Empathy Scale (PACES), a protocol for coding empathy through qualitative analysis of parents’ responses to open-ended interview questions about everyday interactions with their children. The specific research goals were to: (1) Develop the empathy scale: We describe the development of the Parent Affective and Cognitive Empathy Scale (PACES) and use it to code for empathy in parenting narratives; we then test the measure’s psychometric properties, including interrater reliability. (2) Establish scale validity: To establish scale validity, we test the hypotheses that PACES-coded empathy (1) is unrelated to parent and child demographic characteristics; (2) is positively related to self-reported parent empathy; (3) is positively related to child attachment security, emotional openness, and perceptions of parental warmth; (4) is negatively related to parent attachment anxiety and avoidance and to child dismissal of the parent; and (5) predicts child attachment security beyond self-reported parent empathy. (3) Evaluate a mediated model of attachment transmission: To evaluate the potential role of parent empathy in child attachment, we test the hypothesis that the relation between parent attachment anxiety and avoidance, on the one hand, and child attachment security, on the other, will be mediated by parent empathy.

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Method Participants Sixty primary caregivers (54 mothers, 6 fathers) ranging in age from 27 to 57 years (M = 36.8, SD = 6.6) participated in this study, as part of a larger research project. Their children (50% female) ranged in age from 7 to 12 years (M = 9.9, SD = 1.5). This community convenience sample was ethnically diverse, with 28% of caregivers identifying as Non-Hispanic White/European-American, 42% as Hispanic-American/ Latino, 17% as Black/African American, 3% as Asian/Asian-American/Pacific Islander, 5% as “Other.” Regarding marital status, 58% of caregivers were married, 34% were single, and 8% were widowed. Parents’ median annual income was US$41,000–US$60,000.

Materials Parent measures Following are descriptions of the materials and instruments used for assessing parent empathy and attachment style. Parent Development Interview – Revised for School-aged Children. The original Parent Development Interview (PDI-R; Slade, Aber, Berger, Bresgi, & Kaplan, 2003) is an hour-long, semi-structured clinical interview regarding parents’ mental representations of their children. In the interview, parents describe specific instances in which they or their children experienced certain emotions (e.g., “Can you tell me about a time in the last week or two when [child’s name] felt upset?”). The interview has been used with a variety of samples, including mothers of infants (e.g., Suchman, DeCoste, Castiglioni, Legow, & Mayes, 2008) and adolescents (Shulman, Davila, & ShacharShapira, 2011). The interview was adapted for use with parents of school-aged children (PDI-R-SC; Slade et al., 2009) by (1) removing nine questions from the original 30 to shorten the length of the interview; (2) adding two questions regarding attachment-related experiences (e.g., parents’ responses when the child was hurt or ill); and (3) modifying questions for developmental relevance to parents of school-aged children.2 There are 13 emotion-related questions on the PDI-R-SC, for which responses were coded for parent empathy, and 10 general questions concerning the parent’s view of the child, for a total of 23 interview questions. Interviews were audio recorded for transcription. Parent Affective and Cognitive Empathy Scale (PACES). The PACES scoring system was modeled after Slade’s (2004) adaptation of the Reflective Functioning scale (Fonagy et al., 1998) for use with the PDI. The new scoring system was developed through qualitative analysis of 20 parent interviews, 10 from an intervention program with substance-using mothers of toddlers and 10 from the current project (mothers and fathers of 7- to 12-year-olds). This combined sample was used in the development process to ensure that scale points were applicable to both clinical and community populations with children of different ages. Adjustments to the scoring protocol were made in consultation with a clinical psychologist and attachment researcher (second author), and the finalized measure was used to score 60 interviews for the current study.

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In scoring the interviews, the coder’s task is to rate parents’ empathy from their narrative responses to each of the 13 emotion-related questions on the PDI-R-SC. For each question, coders rate the extent to which parents evince at least one of three types of empathy: If a response contains evidence of affective empathy, coders rate the quality of parents’ emotional resonance with the child’s experience, in particular, whether the parent describes a regulated emotional response that is similar to or congruent with the child’s. If a response includes evidence of cognitive empathy, coders rate the quality of parent insight into the child’s emotional experience; in particular, whether the parent shows understanding of relations between the child’s situation, emotion, and behavior. If a response includes empathic behavior, coders rate whether the parent uses empathic insight to guide reactions to the child’s cues and to help the child regulate emotion. Table 1 provides examples of each type of parent empathy. Parents may demonstrate up to three types of empathy within a single response. Because cognitive and affective empathy often overlap and inform one another (Decety, 2010), only a single empathy score is assigned for each interview question; this score captures the parent’s level of empathic functioning across all types of empathy. The extent to which parents demonstrate empathy is then rated on an 11-point scale, based on the Reflective Functioning scoring system. As in the RF scoring system, the scale ranges from -1 (anti-empathic, hostile, rejecting) to 9 (exceptional, insightful), with a mid-point score of 5 (basic empathy). However, unlike the Reflective Functioning scale, only parents’ insights into the child’s internal states are scored, and links between incongruent states may be assigned low scores (e.g., “I saw [child] was happy, and it just made me mad”). The 13 item scores (one score for each question) are averaged to yield one global score across the entire interview. Thus, the scores capture parent empathy in specific interactions with the child (item scores) and in the parent–child relationship Table 1.

Types of empathy and illustrative examples.

Scoring Category

Type of Empathy Expressed

Affective Empathy

Resonates with child’s emotion Takes emotional perspective of child Regulates empathic response

Cognitive Empathy

Empathic Behavior

Example

“[Child] was happy, so I started to feel happy, too.” “When [child] told me what her friend had said, I felt angry on her behalf.” “It was a scary moment, but I made myself calm down so [child] wouldn’t be afraid.” Takes cognitive perspective “If I had been in [child’s] shoes, I would’ve of child thought the teacher was being mean, too.” Attributes plausible emotion “I think [child] felt a little nervous when I to child left him with his grandma.” Explores potential causes for “[Child] probably felt frustrated because she child’s emotion couldn’t keep up with the older kids.” Links child’s emotion to “[Child] was really quiet on the ride home behavior because he was so embarrassed.” Empathy with child’s emotion “I could tell that [child] was feeling left out, informs sensitive response so I made sure to spend some quality time with him that day.” Communicates empathy to “I told [child] I understood how guilty she child felt, and that I had felt the same way.”

Note: Examples illustrate mid-range empathic responses (score of 5 on PACES).

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more broadly (global score). For the purposes of the current study, global scores were used in all analyses. Parent interviews were transcribed verbatim and coded for empathy by the first author. PACES empathy scores were normally distributed for each of the 13 questions on the PDI-R-SC. On average, empathy was lowest in narratives concerning the parent’s feelings of neediness (M = 2.47, SD = 1.69) and highest in narratives concerning the child’s need for attention (M = 4.37, SD = 1.98). The measure demonstrated high internal consistency (α = .91) across the 13 interview questions, and the scree plot from an exploratory factor analysis using principal axis factoring indicated that all scored interview questions loaded onto a single factor. To establish interrater reliability, a second coder trained in the PACES protocol scored 15 (25%) of interviews. The intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) for global empathy scores was .78 (see Table 2). Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy. The QCAE (Reniers, Corcoran, Drake, Shryane, & Völlm, 2009, 2011) is a 31-item self-report measure of empathy based on factor analyses of previously established empathy measures such as the Empathy Quotient (EQ; Baron-Cohen, Richler, Bisarya, Gurunathan, & Wheelwright, 2003), the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980), and the Hogan Empathy Scale (HES; Hogan, 1969). The QCAE includes subscales for cognitive empathy and affective empathy and shows good internal consistency across genders and good convergent validity with existing self-report measures of empathy (Reniers et al., 2011). The QCAE was included in this study to assess convergent validity with the PACES system, as well as potential differences between classic self-report measures and a system for coding empathy from parenting narratives. Cronbach’s α for the QCAE was .88 in this sample. Parent Empathy Measure. The Parent Empathy Measure (PEM) is a 24-item self-report measure of parent empathy designed specifically for this study. It draws upon existing measures of empathy such as the Basic Empathy Scale (BES; Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006), Table 2. Descriptive statistics and pre-conference Intra-class Correlation Coefficients (ICCs) for PACES item scores on the Parent Development Interview. Interview Question Topic Positive interaction with child Negative interaction with child Parent’s feelings of anger Parent’s feelings of guilt Parent’s feelings of fear Parent’s feelings of neediness Caring for child when sick Caring for child when hurt Child’s feelings of being upset Child’s feelings of fear Child’s feelings of rejection Child’s need for attention Separation from child Average

M

SD

ICC

3.73 3.58 3.47 3.16 3.42 2.47 2.95 3.00 3.80 3.66 3.82 4.37 3.84 3.53

1.48 1.73 1.83 1.70 1.88 1.69 1.41 1.82 1.57 1.90 1.72 1.98 1.54 1.21

.68** .85*** .79** .67** .88*** .64* .73** .84*** .66** .64** .74** .82*** .66* .78***

Notes: Means and standard deviations were calculated from the 60 interviews scored by Coder 1. ICCs were calculated from the subsample of 15 interviews scored independently by Coder 1 and Coder 2. *p

Assessing parental empathy: a role for empathy in child attachment.

Although empathy has been associated with helping behavior and relationship quality, little research has evaluated the role of parental empathy in the...
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