Date of Award

8-2025

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Erin Tully

Abstract

The current study examined associations between children’s affective empathy towards others positive and negative emotions, indexed physiologically and using parent and self-report measures, and children’s maladaptive interpersonal guilt and adaptive reparative behaviors (N=117). Regarding empathy towards others’ negative emotions, researchers (Tone and Tully, 2014) have argued that very high levels of negative empathy may be a risk factor for developing maladaptive interpersonal guilt in dysregulated children. Thus, children’s physiological emotion regulation capacity was tested as a moderator of the association between children’s negative empathy and guilt-related responding. Children’s regulation capacity significantly moderated the association between parent-reported negative empathy and parent-reports of children’s reparative behaviors such that for children with low to moderate regulation capacity higher negative empathy was associated with higher levels of reparative behaviors whereas for children with strong regulation capacities negative empathy was unrelated to children’s repair. Additionally, higher parent-reported positive empathy was associated with higher reparative behaviors. Thus, caregivers may aim to enhance children’s positive empathy to support children’s repair. Children’s positive and negative empathy were not associated with their self-reported maladaptive guilt, and physiological indices of children’s empathy were not associated with children’s maladaptive guilt or reparative behaviors. Perhaps maladaptive guilt is less related to empathy and is more related to perseverative negative thinking or to personal distress, a self-focused response to others’ negative emotions.

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