Journal
HEALTHCARE
Volume 11, Issue 17, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/healthcare11172464
Keywords
well-being; affective support; community engagement; ageing; mental health; socio-emotional skills; empathy; socio-cognitive rehabilitation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Aging is influenced by genetics, behavior, and empathy, which in turn affects social support. This study investigated how empathy mediates the relationship between age and perceived social support. The results showed that empathy fully mediated the relationship between age and appraisal, belonging, and tangible scores, and only mediated the relationship between age and SSQ6-People.
Aging involves several changes depending on genetic and behavioral factors, such as lifestyle and the number and quality of social relationships, which in turn can be influenced by empathy. Here, the change in the perceived social support across the lifespan as a function of empathy was investigated, considering the mediating role of empathy after controlling for gender and education. In total, 441 people (18-91 years old) filled in the Italian short version of the Interpersonal Support Evaluation List (ISEL-12), the Social Support Questionnaire (SSQ6), as well as the Empathy Questionnaire (EQ), and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (RMET). The mediation analyses with ISEL-12 showed that age and the EQ fully mediated the relationship between age and appraisal, belonging, and tangible scores. Further, the EQ fully mediated only the relationship between age and SSQ6-People. These results showed that empathic skills are key in the relationships between age and social support. This suggests that empathy can trigger social support and, ultimately, well-being if stimulated across the lifespan, especially from a young age; this would help to form the socio-emotional competence across the years as a sort of cushion that can be useful in the older to fulfill active aging.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available