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      Elevated empathy in adults following childhood trauma

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          Abstract

          Traumatic events increase the risk of depression, but there is also evidence that adversity can lead to posttraumatic growth, including increased compassion and prosocial behavior. To date there is no empirical research pinpointing childhood trauma to an increase in trait empathy in adulthood. Although somewhat counter-intuitive, this might be predicted if trauma not only increases fear of future threat but also renders the individual more sensitive to suffering in others. We explored this possible link using multiple studies, self-report measures, and non-clinical samples. Results across samples and measures showed that, on average, adults who reported experiencing a traumatic event in childhood had elevated empathy levels compared to adults who did not experience a traumatic event. Further, the severity of the trauma correlated positively with various components of empathy. These findings suggest that the experience of a childhood trauma increases a person’s ability to take the perspective of another and to understand their mental and emotional states, and that this impact is long-standing. Future research needs to test if this is seen on performance measures, and how these findings extend to clinical populations.

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          Most cited references40

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          Positive change following trauma and adversity: a review.

          Empirical studies (n = 39) that documented positive change following trauma and adversity (e.g., posttraumatic growth, stress-related growth, perceived benefit, thriving; collectively described as adversarial growth) were reviewed. The review indicated that cognitive appraisal variables (threat, harm, and controllability), problem-focused, acceptance and positive reinterpretation coping, optimism, religion, cognitive processing, and positive affect were consistently associated with adversarial growth. The review revealed inconsistent associations between adversarial growth, sociodemographic variables (gender, age, education, and income), and psychological distress variables (e.g., depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder). However, the evidence showed that people who reported and maintained adversarial growth over time were less distressed subsequently. Methodological limitations and recommended future directions in adversarial growth research are discussed, and the implications of adversarial growth for clinical practice are briefly considered.
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            Sex differences in the brain: implications for explaining autism.

            Empathizing is the capacity to predict and to respond to the behavior of agents (usually people) by inferring their mental states and responding to these with an appropriate emotion. Systemizing is the capacity to predict and to respond to the behavior of nonagentive deterministic systems by analyzing input-operation-output relations and inferring the rules that govern such systems. At a population level, females are stronger empathizers and males are stronger systemizers. The "extreme male brain" theory posits that autism represents an extreme of the male pattern (impaired empathizing and enhanced systemizing). Here we suggest that specific aspects of autistic neuroanatomy may also be extremes of typical male neuroanatomy.
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              Assessment of Individual Differences in Empathy

              Mark Davis (2018)
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: MethodologyRole: Writing – original draft
                Role: SupervisionRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Formal analysisRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: SupervisionRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                3 October 2018
                2018
                : 13
                : 10
                : e0203886
                Affiliations
                [1 ] The City College and Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, New York, United States of America
                [2 ] Autism Research Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
                [3 ] Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
                [4 ] Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, and The Anna Freud Centre, London, United Kingdom
                Max-Planck-Institut fur Psychiatrie, GERMANY
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1560-1418
                Article
                PONE-D-18-12798
                10.1371/journal.pone.0203886
                6169872
                30281628
                fc72ddd9-1b9c-4471-bc7b-3ba268f440d4
                © 2018 Greenberg et al

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 27 April 2018
                : 29 August 2018
                Page count
                Figures: 2, Tables: 2, Pages: 13
                Funding
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100003343, Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust;
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000265, Medical Research Council;
                Award Recipient :
                DMG was funded by the Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust during this period of work. SBC was supported by the Medical Research Council UK and the Autism Research Trust during the period of this work.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Biology and Life Sciences
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                Emotions
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                Emotions
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                Mental Health and Psychiatry
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                Child Abuse
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                Research and Analysis Methods
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                Data and scripts can be accessed at OSF.io: https://osf.io/wuc3y/?view_only=47063a3eaa75491bbceb0b3b0a834558.

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