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. 2017 Jul 24;12(7):e0181606.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0181606. eCollection 2017.

Adversity, emotion recognition, and empathic concern in high-risk youth

Jodi A Quas  1 , Kelli L Dickerson  1 , Richard Matthew  2 , Connor Harron  3 , Catherine M Quas  4
Affiliations

Adversity, emotion recognition, and empathic concern in high-risk youth

Jodi A Quas et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Little is known about how emotion recognition and empathy jointly operate in youth growing up in contexts defined by persistent adversity. We investigated whether adversity exposure in two groups of youth was associated with reduced empathy and whether deficits in emotion recognition mediated this association. Foster, rural poor, and comparison youth from Swaziland, Africa identified emotional expressions and rated their empathic concern for characters depicted in images showing positive, ambiguous, and negative scenes. Rural and foster youth perceived greater anger and happiness in the main characters in ambiguous and negative images than did comparison youth. Rural children also perceived less sadness. Youth's perceptions of sadness in the negative and ambiguous expressions mediated the relation between adversity and empathic concern, but only for the rural youth, who perceived less sadness, which then predicted less empathy. Findings provide new insight into processes that underlie empathic tendencies in adversity-exposed youth and highlight potential directions for interventions to increase empathy.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: One of the authors, CQ, is employed at a commercial company, Bluefish Dental. There are no patents, products in development, or marketed products to declare. This does not alter our adherence to all of the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Group differences in emotion understanding for the positive images.
Asterisks denote significant group differences within each emotion between the two adversity-exposed groups and the comparison group, post hoc ps < .05. Rating scales ranged from 0–2.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Group differences in emotion understanding for the ambiguous images.
Asterisks denote significant group differences within each emotion between the two adversity-exposed groups and the comparison group, post hoc ps < .05. Rating scales ranged from 0–2.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Group differences in emotion understanding for the negative images.
Asterisks denote significant group differences within each emotion between the two adversity-exposed groups and the comparison group, post hoc ps < .05. Rating scales ranged from 0–2.
Fig 4
Fig 4. Multiple mediation model for the ambiguous images.
Values shown are unstandardized regression coefficients, with significant paths, p < .05, bolded. * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001, t = .053 - .058.
Fig 5
Fig 5. Multiple mediation model for the negative images.
Values shown are unstandardized regression coefficients, with significant paths, p < .05, bolded. * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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