Everyday Emotion Regulation and Empathic Accuracy in the Parent–Adolescent Relationship

Empathic accuracy, the ability to accurately infer another’s emotions, is critical for relational well-being. Adolescence is marked by heightened emotional intensity and increased conflict within the parent–adolescent relationship. It is therefore important to identify factors that contribute to accuracy in these relationships. Developmental theories suggest that perceivers’ emotion regulation supports empathic accuracy, yet little is known about whether targets’ regulation is associated with perceivers’ accuracy, particularly in naturalistic settings and during adolescence.This study addressed this gap using 28-day daily diary data from 112 parent–adolescent dyads. Each day, both members reported on their own emotions and regulation strategies and inferred their partner’s emotions. Empathic accuracy was calculated as the correlation between inferred and reported emotions. Actor–Partner Interdependence Models tested between- and within-person associations among regulation and accuracy.Consistent with the hypotheses, greater use of typically maladaptive strategies for regulating negative and positive emotions by the target was associated with lower empathic accuracy by the perceiver at both between- and within-person levels among parents and adolescents. In addition, targets’ greater use of adaptive strategies to regulate positive (but not negative) emotions was linked to higher empathic accuracy for both perceivers and targets, though only at the within-person level.The findings shed new light on how targets’ emotion regulation is associated with perceiver empathic accuracy in parent–adolescent relationships, and on the importance of adaptive positive emotion regulation. Results suggest new directions for clinical interventions aimed at improving family relationships by supporting adolescents’ and parents’ regulation to foster mutual understanding.