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.

Introduction

Psychological and physical trauma can have profound effects on development and well-being throughout the life-course. Because traumatic events in childhood occur at key psychosocial and biological stages of development, their impact can continue into adult life. People who experience a childhood trauma are at risk for a variety of negative health outcomes, but paradoxically there are opportunities for personal growth [1,2]. Although there is an abundance of research on the negative outcomes of trauma, emerging evidence suggests that experiencing adversity can also increase posttraumatic growth including compassion and prosocial behavior [3,4]. However, research has yet to pinpoint if traumatic events, particularly in childhood, link to trait empathy in adulthood. We address this gap in the literature by testing if trait empathy differs for adults who experienced a childhood trauma compared to those who did not. If empathy is indeed altered in adults with a childhood trauma, this would suggest that its impact on empathy is long-standing and transgressed throughout adulthood.

Trauma and maltreatment can lead to an array of negative outcomes for the victim. These include aggressive and violent behavior [5], and depressive and psychotic symptoms [6,7]. Trauma and maltreatment can also lead to a variety of psychiatric conditions including borderline personality disorder (BDP), bipolar disorders, and major depression [8–11]. Childhood trauma and major depression is associated with atypical neuroanatomy in women [12], likely a consequence of the trauma and depression, and there are also genetic associations with childhood trauma and negative outcomes, including aggressive behavior and BPD [13–15], likely part of the complex causal risk factors.

Though research mainly focuses on the negative outcomes of trauma (often within clinical populations), recovery and resilience after a trauma is also observed in the general population [16]. Resilience in the aftermath of a trauma can result from varied factors and pathways, including ‘self-enhancement’, coping styles, and personality traits [17–19]. Resilience after a trauma is also associated with differences in neurobiology [20]. Further, trauma provides an opportunity for growth and transformation. That is, a person can show positive psychological changes and personal improvements after the trauma as a result of learning gained through coping with the trauma [21–23].

Surprisingly, there has been little research into the relationship between trauma and empathy. Empathy is the ability to recognize another’s thoughts and feelings, and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion [24]. Cognitive empathy is synonymous with theory of mind or ‘mind-reading’, the ability to place oneself in another person’s shoes, to imagine their mental and emotional states, and predict their behavior on the basis of these mental states [25]. Affective empathy is the drive to respond to another person’s mental states with an appropriate emotion [24]. Sympathy is a special case of affective empathy that reflects a person’s response to the distress of another, which may lead to attempts to alleviate their pain or suffering [24].

There is reason to expect that empathy may play a role in the aftermath of a traumatic event. Trauma increases attention to emotion [26], environmental cues [27], and increases amygdala responsiveness (which involves emotional attentiveness) [28–31]. This increase in awareness could improve the ability to recognize, understand, and react appropriately to these states in others, in comparison to individuals who have not had a traumatic experience. Yet, although there has been some work on clinician’s empathy when treating trauma victims, there has been almost no empirical work on the impact of trauma on the empathy of the victim [32,33]. Recent research by Lim and DeSteno [3] suggests that the severity of past adversity can lead to increased compassion and that this link is mediated by empathy. Research has also shown that adversity can be linked to an increase in prosocial and altruistic behavior [4,34]. This prior theory and research provides a rationale for why heightened empathy may be observed after traumatic events. Hence, we hypothesized that empathy in adulthood would be observed to be elevated for individuals with a childhood trauma compared to those without a trauma. Given that empathy has multiple facets, we predicted that both cognitive empathy and affective empathy would be elevated: cognitive empathy (also referred to as “mentalizing”) is the ability to understand another’s thoughts and feelings, whereas affective empathy is the ability respond to another person’s mental state with an appropriate emotion [24].