I Feel Your Pain—And Worry About It, Too

Examining the connection between empathy and anxiety

Expressing empathy toward others-over hardships, joys and everything in between-is a vital part of interpersonal interactions. When our loved ones are suffering, we experience many reactions, from concern to sympathy to upset. But what happens if we experience too much? For some people, the best-intended empathy can end up spiraling into anxiety.

A group of Adelphi researchers wondered about the relationship between empathy and anxiety. Travis Nair '21, Stephanie Waslin, PhD '24, and Gabriela Rodrigues, PhD '24, doctoral students and adjunct professors in the Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology; Derner doctoral student Saumya Datta, MA '23; Michael Moore, PhD, professor and director of Derner's PhD Program in Clinical Psychology; and Laura E. Brumariu, PhD, professor and associate dean for professional programs and student advancement at Derner, conducted meta-analyses of existing data, hoping to synthesize an answer. The results of their work were published in the article "A meta-analytic review of the relations between anxiety and empathy" (Journal of Anxiety Disorders, January 2024).¹

Drilling Down on Theory

Theory suggests that when people excessively engage in empathy, they may put themselves at risk for greater levels of anxiety. "We were curious how individuals who are more anxious experience empathy and vice versa," the researchers write, as well as "whether people who experience more anxiety tend to be more sensitive or concerned with others' emotions and, in turn, more empathic, or if individuals high in empathy tend to have more or less clinical anxiety."

When designing their study, the research team encountered a challenge: how to understand empathy itself. The definition of empathy is the capacity to understand and share others' emotions. But for the purposes of their work, the team made an additional distinction between "general empathy" and separate "cognitive" and "affective" components. Affective empathy is the capacity to share others' emotions, while cognitive empathy is the capacity to understand another's emotions or adopt their perspective. By differentiating between these three types of empathy, they would be able to more accurately review and collate the results of previous studies.

All told, the team included 115 articles and one dissertation in their study, representing multiple forms of anxiety as well as clinical measurement mechanisms. With thousands of data points considered across three meta-analyses, they came to a clear conclusion. Participants with higher anxiety experienced greater general empathy and, in particular, affective empathy. Furthermore, individuals who tend to react to others' negative emotions with "self-focused" feelings of fear or distress appeared to be at greater risk for clinical anxiety.

Certain manifestations of affective empathy, such as sorrow for others' emotional states, allowed participants to preserve some distance from excessive and potentially detrimental empathetic connection. This might be a manifestation of sympathy, the team posits, which involves concern for someone else without necessarily feeling a similar emotion.

Surprisingly, cognitive empathy was shown to not have a meaningful relationship to clinical anxiety. However, this may present its own opportunity for further research and practice, the team suggests. People with anxiety disorders, who often have higher rates of affective empathy, could be trained to modulate their empathic responses. Clinical interventions could support them "in maintaining appropriate boundaries with others and using coping strategies when faced with others' negative emotions," as the paper notes.

Future Implications

To the researchers, these findings feel more like a beginning than a definitive conclusion. In the future, the research labs of Drs. Brumariu and Moore are interested in evaluating circumstances in which empathy may be adaptive or present a possible risk for anxiety and other mental health concerns. They also suspect that anxiety could interfere with people's ability to accurately read others' emotions, especially based on facial expressions. With these questions in mind, the Derner labs are continuing their collaborations on further meta-analyses. As the team expresses in their paper, "Our results only underscore the need to assess how and under what conditions empathy may relate to psychopathology."

¹Nair, T. K., Waslin, S. M., Rodrigues, G. A., Datta, S., Moore, M. T., & Brumariu, L. E. (2024). A meta-analytic review of the relations between anxiety and empathy. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 101, 102795. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2023.10279

About Our Faculty

Laura E. Brumariu, PhD, is associate dean for professional programs and student advancement in the Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology and professor of psychology. Her research interests reflect a developmental psychopathology perspective and explore how and why children's relationships with attachment figures influence their social and emotional development.

Michael Moore, PhD, is associate professor and director of the PhD program in clinical psychology in the Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology. Dr. Moore's research involves examining how people think and how it affects their mood, and how people attribute causes to events in their lives and how this may place them at risk for depression or anxiety.