Parents’ empathic accuracy in dyadic and triadic interactions and associations with family time

Parents’ accuracy in understanding each other’s mental states during interactions, referred to as empathic accuracy (EA), is important for maintaining high relationship quality by fostering care and emotional closeness. Nevertheless, EA may decline in the early years following childbirth. Concurrently, parents tend to spend less time together, and when they do, they must split their attention between the partner and the child, which may reduce their ability to track their partner’s mental states. While extensive research has examined EA in couples interacting in dyadic contexts, few studies have focused on parental interactions in dyadic and triadic contexts. Building on Icke’s conceptualization of EA, this study examined differences in parents’ EA across two interactional contexts: dyadic interactions (mother-father) vs. triadic interactions (mother-father-child). The Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM) was employed to examine the associations between EA and the family time (i.e., time spent with partner only, with child only, or in triad). Forty parents-child triads participated in a videotaped free play procedure. Subsequently, parents completed a structured video-review task to measure EA. Family time was measured using self-report questionnaires. The results revealed that parents understood each other’s thoughts more easily in dyad than in triad. No significant difference was observed for feelings. APIM analyses revealed that mothers and fathers had higher EA in triad when the father reported spending more time with the partner and with the child separately. Taken together, these results suggest that lower accuracy for thoughts, but not feelings, is observed when the child is present. Additionally, fathers’ involvement as reflected by the time they spend with their family may support mutual understanding between parents during triadic interactions. Overall, these findings indicate that supporting opportunities for parents to spend time together in shared contexts could be relevant to foster mutual understanding.