Empathy as a Social Skill
Research has found that teens are more vulnerable to peer pressure when they struggle with social settings or have impaired social skills. (Inguglia, 2019) (Laghi, 2019). Specifically, adolescents with higher levels of empathy were better able to manage social interactions in general. They also had increased self-esteem. These qualities gave them the skills and confidence they needed to better manage and resist peer pressure. (Laghi, 2019).
There are four aspects of empathy:
Tendency to spontaneously adopt the psychological point of view of others in everyday life (“I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective”)
Tendency to imaginatively transpose oneself into fictional situations (“When I am reading an interesting story or novel, I imagine how I would feel if the events in the story were happening to me”)
Tendency to experience feelings of sympathy and compassion for unfortunate others (“I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me”)
Tendency to experience distress and discomfort in response to extreme distress in others (“Being in a tense emotional situation scares me”)
Take the Empathy Quiz to see how you score on each of these areas. Download this printable version here if you want to have your teen take the quiz offline.