Empathic development during adolescence: religiosity,the missing link?

While theories regarding the development of empathy hypothesise increased empathy scores during adolescence, data among adolescent samples tend not to find such a relationship. The present paper proposes religiosity as the missing link to account for this discrepancy between theory and findings, on the theory that decreasing religiosity during adolescence is likely to depress empathy scores at precisely the same time as increasing cognitive skills are likely to enhance empathy development. Data from 569 school children, aged 11–17 years, who completed both the Junior I₆ Empathy Scale and the Attitude towards Religion Scale ASC4B, demonstrate that, while there is no direct correlation in the sample between age and empathy, there is a significant positive correlation between age and empathy after controlling for differences in levels of religiosity.