Jessica A Stern

University of Virginia | UVa · Department of Psychology

Empathy involves understanding and “feeling with” others’ emotions, and is an essential capacity underlying sensitive care in humans and other species. Evidence suggests that the roots of empathy appear early in ontogeny, and that individual differences in empathy bear meaningfully on children’s social behavior and relationships throughout developm...

Attachment was examined as a predictor of teens’ empathic support for friends in a multimethod longitudinal study of 184 U.S. adolescents (58% Caucasian, 29% African American, 13% other) followed from ages 14 to 18. Adolescents’ secure state of mind regarding attachment at 14 predicted teens’ greater capacity to provide empathic support during obse...

Recent social movements have illuminated systemic inequities in U.S. society, including within the social sciences. Thus, it is essential that attachment researchers and practitioners engage in reflection and action to work toward anti-racist perspectives in the field. Our aims in this paper are (1) to share the generative conversations and debates...

Decades of evidence demonstrate that insecure attachment is associated with increased risk for depressive symptoms. Yet research has focused on predominantly White samples, with little attention to whether developmental pathways vary by social-contextual factors like racial identity and neighborhood racism. This study examines whether longitudinal...

Empathic responding-the capacity to understand, resonate with, and respond sensitively to others' emotional experiences-is a complex human faculty that calls upon multiple social, emotional, and cognitive capacities and their underlying neural systems. Emerging evidence in adults has suggested that the hippocampus and its associated network may pla...

Adolescent success providing satisfying support in response to a close friend's call in a caregiving task was examined as a potentially fundamental developmental competence likely to predict future social functioning, adult caregiving security, and physical health. Adolescents (86 males, 98 females; 58% White, 29% African American, 8% mixed race/et...

Objective: This study examines the effects of a scalable psychoeducation intervention to improve students' mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants: In a sample of racially diverse undergraduates from a highly selective university (N = 66), students in the control group (mostly women) participated in courses as usual and students...

A central hypothesis in attachment theory is that parents' own attachment will influence their parenting behavior in ways important to children’s well-being; little is known, however, about mechanisms through which self-reported adult attachment style influences parenting behavior. This study examines prospective links between mothers’ insecure att...

Attachment theory proposes that a central function of caregivers is to provide protection and co-regulation of children’s distress in the context of threat, and that children’s secure attachment (confidence in a secure base/safe haven when needed) precipitates positive developmental cascades in part by supporting children’s emotion regulation. Yet...

This 17-year prospective study applied a social-development lens to the challenge of identifying long-term predictors of adult depressive symptoms. A diverse community sample of 171 individuals was repeatedly assessed from age 13 to age 30 using self-, parent-, and peer-report methods. As hypothesized, competence in establishing close friendships b...

This study examined development of emotional support competence within close friendships across adolescence. A sample of 184 adolescents (53% girls, 47% boys; 58% White, 29% Black, 14% other identity groups) participated in seven waves of multimethod assessments with their best friends and romantic partners from age 13 to 24. Latent change score mo...

Research on parent-child relationships demonstrates the importance of maternal sensitivity for the development of children’s emotion regulation, social competence, and health; thus, it is important to understand the emotional-cognitive capacities underlying maternal sensitivity. We followed 120 mothers and their full-term infants from the newborn p...

Experiences with parents and romantic partners during adolescence are theorized to have long-term effects on youth development. However, little research has empirically examined the relative contributions of experiences in each type of relationship at different points during adolescence to positive development in young adulthood. The goal of the pr...

Objective: Nearly 50% of adults under age 29 report using some form of online dating to find sexual partners or romantic relationships. Limited evidence suggests online and offline dating behaviors and experiences can vary. We aimed to expand understanding these differences by examining how attachment styles are associated with online and offline s...

Infancy is a sensitive period of human brain development that is plastically shaped by environmental factors. Both proximal factors, such as sensitive parenting, and distal factors, such as socioeconomic status (SES), are known predictors of individual differences in structural and functional brain systems across the lifespan, yet it is unclear how...

Maternal depressive symptoms (MDS) have been linked to both child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Theory suggests that child attachment security may be a protective factor against the negative effects of MDS. This study examined child attachment security as a buffer of the link between MDS and child internalizing and externalizin...

Ample research demonstrates that parents’ experience-based mental representations of attachment—cognitive models of close relationships—relate to their children’s social-emotional development. However, no research to date has examined how parents’ attachment representations relate to another crucial domain of children’s development: brain developme...

Central to attachment theory is the idea that behavior in close relationships can best be understood in context. Although decades of research have illuminated cross-cultural patterns of caregiving and attachment, there remains a critical need to increase research with African American families, examine the specific sociocultural context of systemic...

How do environmental morality and sustainable behavior emerge in childhood? We examined individuals’ moral judgments of environmental actions and their observed sustainable behavior in an environmental trade-off task in a sample of N = 555 young adults (Study 1) and N = 45 children ages 3–10 (Study 2). We show that both children and adults viewed p...

The present two-study investigation is the first to examine whether experimentally boosting attachment security (security priming) affects attitudes in the parenting domain for both parents and non-parents. Mothers (n = 72) and childless undergraduates (n = 82) were randomly assigned to a neutral or a secure prime condition and then completed measu...

Attachment theory suggests that insecurely attached individuals will have more difficulty seeking and receiving support from others. Such struggles in adolescence may reinforce negative expectations of others and contribute to relationship difficulties into adulthood. Using a diverse community sample of 184 adolescents followed from age 13 to 27, a...

OBJECTIVE: Although ample evidence indicates that child health is compromised by early adversity (e.g., abuse and poverty), less is known about the contribution of parenting in low-stress contexts to child health, especially in infancy. This longitudinal study extends previous research on early adversity to ask the question: Does quality of parenta...

Maternal depressive symptoms (MDS) are inconsistently associated with lower rates of child prosocial behavior. Studies typically examine prosocial behavior as a unitary construct rather than examining its multiple dimensions, and rarely consider how the quality of the parent-child relationship could influence this association. OBJECTIVE: The curren...

Parental child-focused reflective functioning (RF)—understanding children’s behavior as a function of mental states—and parental empathy—understanding, resonating with, and feeling concern for children’s emotions—have each been linked to sensitive caregiving and children’s attachment security in separate studies, but they have been neither directly...

Individuals' social experiences are associated with their mental health, physical health, and even mortality. Over the last 30 years, researchers have examined the ways in which these social experiences might be associated with chronic inflammation—a component underlying many of the chronic diseases of aging. Little research, however, has examined...

The main research article (Beier et al., 2018, Child Development) describes children’s responses during nine tasks: 3 helping opportunities, 3 sharing opportunities, and 3 comforting opportunities. This document provides procedural details for each of those tasks, plus coding guides for deriving children’s prosocial scores and identifying additiona...

Additional methods and results for Beier et al. (2018), "Helping, Sharing, and Comforting in Young Children: Links to Individual Differences in Attachment".

Additional details for the Preschool Strange Situation protocol, as reported in Beier et al. (2018), "Helping, Sharing, and Comforting in Young Children: Links to Individual Differences in Attachment".

The first months after becoming a new parent are a unique and important period in human development. Despite substantial research on the many social and biological changes that occur during the first months of parenthood, little is known about changes in mothers’ attachment. The present study examines developmental stability and change in first-tim...

Research indicates that dispositional attachment security fosters empathy, and that short-term increases in security ("security priming") increase empathy and willingness to help others. In two experiments, we examined effects of recalling one's own vulnerability ( feeling hurt by a relationship partner) and security priming on empathy for a recipi...

Although evidence shows that attachment insecurity and disorganization increase risk for the development of psychopathology (Fearon, Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn, Lapsley, & Roisman, 2010; Groh, Roisman, van IJzendoorn, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & Fearon, 2012), implementation challenges have precluded dissemination of attachment interventions...

Few studies have examined stability and change in attachment during adolescence. This 5-year longitudinal study (a) examined whether prototype or revisionist developmental dynamics better characterized patterns of stability and change in adolescent attachment (at T1, N = 176; Mage = 14.0 years, SD = 0.9), (b) tested potential moderators of prototyp...

Invited comment in Post-Election Forum http://arrow-journal.org/open-up-lean-in-stay-with/

Though theory suggests that parents' empathy is important for children's empathic development, the transmission of empathy from parent to child remains poorly understood. The goals of this investigation were to test an intergenerational model of empathy with child attachment as a potential mediating mechanism and to replicate findings linking child...

Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969/1982, 1973, 1980) is, at its core, a theory of prosocial behavior. It explains how, in early childhood, interactions with mindful, caring, and supportive parental figures (“attachment figures”) create and solidify children’s positive mental representations of others (as competent, dependable, and well intentioned), t...

Davis' (1980) classic self-report measure of empathy, adapted for parents. Total 21 items across 3 subscales: empathic concern for child, taking child's perspective, and personal distress in response to child's distress.

An adapted version of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980) for parents. Subscales measure parental Empathic Concern, Perspective Taking, and Personal Distress when responding to children's emotions and behaviors.

In response to the high co-occurrence of anxiety symptoms in youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), several interventions have been developed for this population. In spite of promising findings, some youth with ASD respond only minimally to such interventions. To understand potential factors that may impact treatment response, the current study...

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This descriptive study examines the complexity of psychiatric comorbidity in treatment-seeking youth with ASD and anxiety symptoms. Forty-two parents of youth with ASD and anxiety (ages 8–14) completed a structured diagnostic interview (Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children-Present and Lifetime Version). Youth o...

Background: Anxiety disorders frequently co-occur in youth with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (ASD) (Leyfer et al. 2006; van Steensel et al. 2011). Cognitive-behavioral treatments (CBT) are well-established, evidenced-based treatments and have been used in youth with ASD in well-controlled research settings with encouraging results (Re...

Background: Adjustment problems such as anxiety have been widely reported in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD; Leyfer et al., 2006). In non-ASD community and clinical samples, cognition has been found to play a role in the development and maintenance of internalizing and externalizing problems (Schniering & Rapee, 2002, 2004a, 2004b)...

Anxiety disorders frequently co-occur in youth with autism spectrum disorders. In addition to developing efficacious treatments for anxiety in children with autism spectrum disorders, it is important to examine the transportability of these treatments to real-world settings. Study aims were to (a) train clinicians to deliver Facing Your Fears: Grou...

Questionnaire measure of parental empathy used in Stern, Borelli, & Smiley (2015).

Previous work suggested the association between intentionality and the reported time of action was exclusive, with intentionality as the primary facilitator to the mental time compression between the reported time of action and its effect (Haggard, Clark, & Kalogeras, 2002). In three experiments, we examined whether mental time compression could al...