We’ve all seen or experienced the loving care of a mother or aunt; middle-aged women are, and always have been, seen as devoted, kind and affectionate. A recent study provides factual evidence to support this long-held belief. 

Daniel Gruhn, an assistant professor of psychology at N.C. State, and his colleagues at the University of Michigan recently published an article in The Journal of Gerontology attesting that middle-aged women are more empathetic compared to men of their own age or other individuals younger or older than them.

To determine this, Gruhn and his fellow researchers examined self-reported empathy on various surveys from more than 75,000 people around the United States born between the 1920s and 1990s. The surveys were all voluntary, so no monetary compensation was exchanged for the participants’ time, and most of the questionnaires were conducted online.

The surveys started off by asking the participants their age, gender and ethnicity and then went on to ask questions assessing empathy on a five-point scale with responses ranging from “describes me well” to “does not describe me well.”

 “Women reported more empathy than men,” Gruhn’s article Empathic Concern and Perspective Taking, published in 2012, states.

The researchers found that in all age groups, women consistently scored higher than men in terms of empathy. However, what was striking was that there was an inverted-U shaped response for both men and women. Twenty-year-olds were less empathetic than middle-aged people, as expected, but those who were middle-aged seemed to be more empathetic than those who were elderly.  

Asserting that middle-aged women are the most empathetic of all, though, “brings to light more questions than it answers,” Faiza Mustafa, a senior in human biology, said. “Why is this the case? Is it a hormonal issue or does it have to do with the way women are raised in our society?”

Gruhn addressed the inevitable questions brought up by his research by attributing the empathy of today’s middle-aged to the era in which they were brought up.

“Americans born in the 1950s and ‘60s – the middle-aged people in our samples – were raised during historic social movements, from civil rights to various antiwar countercultures,” Gruhn’s article states.

Being brought up in this turbulent and egalitarian culture probably instilled a sense of morality in the generation.

“It may be that today’s middle-aged adults report higher empathy than other cohorts because they grew up during periods of important societal changes that emphasized the feelings and perspectives of other groups,” Gruhn’s article states. “They were more likely to react emotionally to the experiences of others, and they were also more likely to try to understand how things looked from the perspective of others.”

Anita Flick, a physician and an assistant professor of biology, believes the empathy of women in particular is due mainly to their social role and experiences as caregivers.

“Before I became a mother, I found it rather irritating that my pediatric patients’ parents would breathe down my neck when I was caring for them,” Flick said. “When I became a mother, though, I understood the parents’ concern and even welcomed it. I was able to connect with them on a level I had never been able to before.”

Using this study as a stepping stone, researchers in the field plan do more research into understanding the factors that make some people more empathetic than others. They also plan to investigate whether electronic media can play a role in bridging the gap in empathy between the young and the old.