(PS8-D86) A Person-centered Approach to Emerging Adults’ Empathy: Associations with Emotion Dysregulation and Functional Impairment

Empathy involves being able to understand and respond to others’ emotional experiences. While empathy is generally viewed as a positive trait, more research has documented the potentially harmful impact of high empathy on individuals’ well-being. Thus, we aim to explore membership in distinct empathy profiles and their relationship with critical outcomes such as emotion dysregulation and impairment in functioning. Participants (N = 976) completed three questionnaires: Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), and Weiss Functional Impairment Rating Scale (WFIRS). Latent profile analysis was conducted to identify the empathy profiles based on the four subscales of the IRI (i.e., perspective taking, personal distress, fantasy, empathic concern) as reported by emerging adults. The analysis identified a three-class solution as having the strongest fit with the data (convergence statistic = 1.0008, indicating the model fit the data well; posterior predictive p = .56, indicating that the solution is likely to be reproduced upon resampling) and accurately classified 82.4 % of the sample according to Nagin’s (2005) criterion of posterior probabilities of correct class assignments (i.e., cases are accurately grouped, similar to entropy). The three-class solution comprises profile 1 - low empathy (N = 460; below the sample average on all four dimensions of empathy), profile 2 - high empathy with low personal distress (N = 104; above the sample average on all scales but well below average on personal distress), profile 3 - high empathy with high fantasy (N = 412; above the sample average on all scales and well above average on fantasy). A MANOVA was conducted to perform a comparison among the three profiles on emotion dysregulation (DERS) and impairment in functioning (WFIRS). The mean level of emotion dysregulation, F(2, 801) = 19.84, p < .001, partial η² = .047, and impairment in functioning, F(2, 801) = 7.68, p < .001, partial η² = .019, varied across the three empathy profiles. Specifically, profile 2 had lower mean emotion dysregulation and functional impairment than those in profiles 1 and 3. No significant difference in emotion dysregulation and impairment was found between profile 1 and profile 3. The current study identified not only the benefits of empathy but also the disadvantages when empathy is accompanied by high personal distress and perhaps fantasy. These exploratory results draw attention to the importance of preventing emotional exhaustion in training and treatments that aim to promote and foster empathy.