Frameworks of Caring and Helping in Adolescence: Are Empathy, Religiosity, and Spirituality Related Constructs?

Caring and helping are suggested as mechanisms that link empathy to religiosity and spirituality. To test this assertion, 428 adolescents completed self-report measures of religious attendance, importance of spiritual or religious beliefs, care, volunteerism, and affective and cognitive subscales of empathy. Sex differences also were examined. Importance of beliefs was associated with empathic concern and perspective-taking forms of empathy. Unexpectedly, religious attendance was not related to either subscale of empathy. Through a series of regressions, care was shown to mediate the relations between importance of beliefs and empathic concern and perspective taking, and volunteerism mediated the relation between importance of beliefs and perspective taking. Care, especially, should continue to be examined for its bridging function between empathy and religiosity and spirituality. Gender role and biological sex distinctions should also be examined in future studies.