Low empathy has been implicated in antisocial, aggressive, and criminal behavior, especially among adolescents. Less understood is the extent to which empathy is amenable to treatment, and whether an improvement in empathy can mitigate the deleterious effects of known risk factors, such as childhood maltreatment. A sample of 11,000 serious juvenile offenders in long-term residential placement is leveraged to examine whether over cumulative traumatic exposure, measured by the adverse childhood experience (ACE) score, is associated with the initial level of empathy at admission to a residential program, and whether changes in empathy during treatment moderate the impact of ACEs on juvenile recidivism. Results show youth with higher ACE scores have less empathy at admission and both ACEs and empathy predict recidivism. Most importantly, large gains in empathy are able to dampen the effect of ACEs on recidivism.

移情低落与反社会，侵略和犯罪行为有关，尤其是在青少年中。人们对移情在多大程度上可以接受治疗以及移情的改善是否可以减轻已知危险因素（例如儿童期虐待）的有害影响知之甚少。长期居住在地方的11,000名严重少年犯的样本被用来检查以不良儿童经历（ACE）得分衡量的过度累积的创伤暴露是否与入院计划时的同理心初始水平有关，以及治疗期间的共情变化是否能缓解ACE对青少年再犯的影响。结果显示，ACE分数较高的年轻人入院时的同情心较小，ACE和同情心都预示了累犯。最重要的是，