鶹Ӱ alumna Jessica Stern ’12 returned to the College this past fall as an assistant professor of psychological science. Her research focuses on close relationships as a foundation for mental health, brain development, and social behavior from infancy through adulthood.
Last month, her research paper “,” published in Child Development, was selected by at UC Berkeley as one of the most provocative and influential findings on the science of a meaningful life published in 2024.
We talked to Stern about this study and how Pomona set her on her career path.
What is the central research question of your study?
Adolescents get a notoriously bad rap. The misconception goes something like this: Teens are self-focused, easily pressured to do bad things by their peers, and lacking mature social skills like empathy. But does the evidence really bear this out?
Not really. In our observations of teenagers, many are deeply engaged in supporting others, particularly their friends, and interactions with peers often encourage them to be prosocial, rather than antisocial. Our research team wanted to understand: How do teens learn empathy? How is empathy transmitted from one generation to the next? And what’s the role of teenage friendships?
How did you collect the data?
The , led by Dr. Joe Allen at the University of Virginia, began in 1998. Our team tracked 184 teens for more than two decades, from age 13 into their mid-30s. Every year, we invited teens to the research lab with their parents and closest friend, and we recorded videos of their interactions with each other. When teens were 13 years old, we observed them talking to their moms about a problem they could use help or advice about, and we tracked how much empathy moms showed to their teens during that conversation. We looked for things like how emotionally engaged the mom was, whether she had an accurate understanding of the teen’s problem, and how much help and emotional support she provided to the teen.
Then, every year for seven years after that, we observed teens talking to their closest friend about a problem their friend needed help with. We looked for those same types of empathic behaviors in how the teen treated their friends when they were ages 13 to 19.
When some of those same teens were starting to have kids of their own about a decade later, we sent them surveys asking about their parenting behavior and their children’s empathy.
What were the key findings of your research?
We found that teens who experienced more empathy from their mothers at age 13 were more likely to “pay it forward” by showing empathy for their closest friends across the adolescent years. For the teens who later had children, practicing empathy with close friends in late adolescence predicted more supportive parenting behavior a decade later. Their supportive parenting was related to greater empathy in the next generation of young children.
So we were able to see how empathy is transmitted across three generations: from parents to teens to their future children. What most surprised us is that teenage friendships appear to play an underappreciated role in shaping later parenting, perhaps by providing a “training ground” for practicing empathic care.
What do you hope will be the impact of your findings?
Our message to parents is this: If we want to raise kind, empathic teens, we need to give them first-hand experiences of receiving empathy from adults at home. More than lectures, pressure, or “why can’t you be more like so-and-so,” teens need to feel what it’s like to be understood and supported. This gives them a model of empathy in action, so they can “pay it forward” to others.
We also hope these findings will give parents some peace of mind, knowing that teens’ desire to hang out with friends is probably a boon for their social development (and perhaps their future success as caregivers). Supporting teens to cultivate close, mutually supportive friendships may be important for them to hone their social skills by practicing caregiving for their friends.
Tell us about how it all began at Pomona.
More than a decade ago, when I was a student at Pomona, I took a child development class with Professor Pat Smiley. We were assigned to volunteer in local schools, and in class we would discuss our observations of children’s interactions with peers and adults. That experience completely changed the trajectory of my education and career path. I wanted to understand why kids were so different from one another, particularly in terms of key social skills like empathy and prosocial behavior. The interest stuck: I’ve been doing research on what shapes empathy and social relationships in children, teens and adults ever since that first class at Pomona.