Author: Scotty Hendricks / Source: Big Think
- A new study suggests children who endure trauma grow up to be adults with more empathy than others.
- The effect is not universal, however. Only one kind of empathy was greatly effected.
- The study may lead to further investigations into how people cope with trauma and lead to new ways to help victims bounce back.
A new study published in PLOS One suggests that enduring a traumatic event in childhood can lead to higher levels of empathy as an adult. While it doesn’t apply to every form of empathy, it does show how hardships can be overcome and even turned into growth opportunities.
How did they find that out?
The first experiment asked 387 of adults if they had experienced childhood trauma, such as the death of a close friend or family member, a divorce in the family, being subjected to violence, or sexual abuse. Subjects were then asked to fill out an EQ quiz to determine how empathetic they were. A second survey involved 442 participants and used the IRI test to measure empathy levels.
But while both studies found that the test subjects who had endured trauma showed traits of affective…
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