Network analysis of empathy, negative mood states, relationship satisfaction, sensory processing sensitivity, and alexithymia

Background: Mood disorders, like anxiety and depression, are the most prevalent mental health issues that significantly impact both individuals and society. Thus, the exploration of risk and protective factors that may influence anxiety and depression symptoms is of great importance. Studies have shown that higher emotional empathy is often linked to increased anxiety and depression, yet results are mixed. Understanding this link in more depth may be relevant for psychotherapists, as it may help them in creating effective treatment plans for anxiety and depression. Therefore, this study aims to explore the interplay between different facets of emotional empathy and anxiety/depression to understand their complex relationships better.Methods: We used data from 3382 adult participants (mean age=31.76±13.13; 66.29% Females), which were collected through an online cross-sectional survey. Participants were assessed using several scales measuring depression, anxiety, alexithymia, empathy, marital satisfaction, and sensory aspect of the sensory processing sensitivity (SPS). Network analysis was conducted to examine the direct and indirect relationships between variables. Bootstrapping was used to explore the stability of our findings.Results:On the level of total scores, empathy was positively related to higher levels of anxiety/depression, the SPS, relationship satisfaction and negatively related to alexithymia. At the item level, positive empathy item: “When someone close to me is happy, it affects me deeply (in a positive way)” was indirectly linked to lower anxiety through higher relationship satisfaction. Negative empathy items were unrelated to anxiety. No relationship was found between empathy and depression items. Bootstrapping revealed that stability of all links between empathy and anxiety/depression was acceptable. Conclusion: Our evidence suggests that deconstructing empathy to individual items may lead to more specific information about its link with anxiety/depression. This finding needs to be replicated, however. Future empathy researchers should also use longitudinal designs to examine potential causal relationships between empathy and anxiety/depression.