Matthew Marvin, a fifth-year clinical science doctoral student, recently published a paper in the Journal of Family Theory & Review where he introduces and defines maternal positive empathy, or the mother’s capacity to empathize with the positive emotion states of the child like joy, pride, and excitement. He argues that a mother’s capacity to empathize with positive internal states in the child may support young children’s development in unique ways.
Continue reading this Q&A to learn about this paper and why it matters.
What are the key points of the paper?
In this integrative review, I propose a construct of study that has not received any attention in the parenting literature—maternal positive empathy, or the mother’s tendency to resonate with the positively valence affective states of her child (e.g., joy, pride, comfort). There is a large literature on maternal/parental empathy, but it almost exclusively focuses on empathic resonance with negatively valence internal states (e.g., fear, pain, sadness, anger). In this paper, I integrate self-determination theory, attachment theory, and positive psychology to make predictions regarding the role of the maternal positive empathy in supporting the child’s socioemotional development in several domains and shaping the emotional climate of the family system.
What impact do you hope this study will have?
I hope that this paper will help to motivate empirical studies of the effects of positive empathy and other positive affective processes within the family context. There are existing interventions that focus on augmenting positive emotion processes within the family context. However, none identify or center positive empathy in particular. However, as I argue in this paper, helping parents to recognize and resonate with the positive emotions of their child may foster their children’s development in unique ways and also benefit parents themselves due to the salutary effects of shared positive emotion.
Why should we care about these findings?
In recent years, psychological research has increasingly recognized the importance of protective factors, resilience, and positive emotion. The study of these types of sources of
Resilience and factors that promote well-being expands our conception of health beyond just the absence of suffering or dysfunction.