Who cares? Middle-age women.
That's one way to describe the findings of a new study that looked at empathy and age. Researchers took stock of empathy questionnaires completed by more than 75,000 people and found that empathy peaks when people are in their 50s. Consistent with earlier research, women in general were more empathic than men.
The scientists said that more research is needed on these findings, which might be attributable to some other factor related to aging or might arise from the experience of this particular cohort, whose lives encompassed social upheavals, such as the civil-rights movement, "emphasizing the feelings and perspectives of other groups."
The study also found that young adults in 2010 scored lower in empathy than their counterparts a decade earlier.
"Empathic Concern and Perspective Taking: Linear and Quadratic Effects of Age Across the Adult Life Span," Ed O'Brien, Sara H. Konrath, Daniel Grühn and Anna Linda Hagen, The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences
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