Change in empathic disequilibrium across childhood and associations with socioemotional difficulties

Empathy, a socioemotional capacity with emotional and cognitive components, develops from infancy onward. An imbalance between these components, termed empathic disequilibrium, is related to socioemotional difficulties in adulthood, but how empathic disequilibrium changes across development and whether these changes relate to socioemotional difficulties, remain to be discovered. This study investigated changes in empathic disequilibrium with age in children aged 3 to 12 years and its associations with socioemotional outcomes. 303 children from the general population were assessed at three timepoints, four months apart. Parent-reported measures of cognitive and emotional empathy, along with socioemotional outcomes (conduct and emotional problems, callous-unemotional traits, and prosocial behavior), were analyzed. Considering within and between participant variability in age, we characterized empathic disequilibrium development, and examined whether socioemotional outcomes at the last timepoint moderated this trajectory. Empathic disequilibrium typically shifted from emotional-empathy dominance at age 3 years to equilibrium between ages 4.7 and 6.9. Afterwards, a trend toward cognitive-empathy dominance emerged, which declined during early adolescence. Children with socioemotional difficulties at the final timepoint showed distinct developmental patterns of empathic disequilibrium. Specifically, children with high emotional problems, callous-unemotional traits, and low prosocial behavior were less likely to achieve empathic equilibrium by age 12, with those showing high conduct problems reaching equilibrium later than their peers. This study illustrates how empathic disequilibrium develops from early childhood to adolescence and its links with socioemotional outcomes. These findings suggest that tracking empathic disequilibrium could help identify children who may benefit from tailored interventions.