In plain language
Decades of research show that empathy — understanding and feeling others’ emotions — makes young people more likely to help others. This study asked whether a newer construct from the mindfulness literature, nonattachment, adds something beyond empathy. Nonattachment is a flexible, balanced way of relating to your experiences without clinging to them or pushing them away; the idea is that people who are not caught up in excessive self-concern have more mental room to notice and respond to others in need.
Rather than relying on teens rating their own niceness, the researchers asked 1,831 fifteen-year-olds to nominate classmates who were genuinely helpful and kind, and then tested whether students’ self-reported empathy and nonattachment predicted how often their peers nominated them. Using multilevel Poisson models, both empathy and nonattachment independently predicted peer-judged helpfulness and kindness from both same-sex and opposite-sex classmates — with one curious exception: girls’ nonattachment did not predict prosocial nominations from boys.
The most striking result came from the strictest tests. Once self-esteem and how well-liked a student was were added to the models, empathy no longer predicted peer nominations — but nonattachment still did. In other words, teens who can hold their experiences lightly are reliably seen by their peers as kind and helpful, and this cannot be explained away by confidence or popularity. The findings suggest nonattachment is a distinct, potentially trainable pathway to prosociality in young people.
Key findings
- In a sample of 1,831 fifteen-year-olds, empathy and nonattachment each independently predicted peer nominations of helpfulness and kindness in multilevel Poisson models.
- The effects held for nominations from both same-sex and opposite-sex peers, with one exception: girls’ nonattachment did not predict prosocial nominations from boys.
- Cognitive empathy mattered more than affective empathy when boys were being nominated, whereas affective empathy mattered more when girls nominated girls.
- When self-esteem and peer-nominated liking were added as controls, empathy no longer predicted prosocial nominations — but nonattachment continued to explain substantial variance.
- Although self-reported nonattachment correlated substantially with self-esteem, its link to peer-judged prosociality could not be attributed to self-esteem.
- Boys and girls nominated largely different classmates as likable and prosocial, but adolescents high in nonattachment were commonly recognized as prosocial by both.
How to cite
APA
Sahdra, B. K., Ciarrochi, J., Parker, P. D., Marshall, S., & Heaven, P. (2015). Empathy and nonattachment independently predict peer nominations of prosocial behavior of adolescents. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 263. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00263
BibTeX
@article{sahdra2015empathy,
author = {Sahdra, Baljinder K. and Ciarrochi, Joseph and Parker, Philip D. and Marshall, Sarah and Heaven, Patrick},
title = {Empathy and nonattachment independently predict peer nominations of prosocial behavior of adolescents},
journal = {Frontiers in Psychology},
year = {2015},
volume = {6},
pages = {263},
doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00263}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
- Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis
- Nonattachment research & practices (non-attachment.com)
Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.