Dyadic Empathy Following Childhood Trauma

The Role of Hostile Attribution Bias in Young Adult Couples

Léonard, Florence
Ramos, Brenda
Emond, Marianne
Pudelko, Apollonia H.
Roy, Arianne
Vaillancourt-Morel, Marie-Pier
Péloquin, Katherine
Daspe, Marie-Ève

Department of Psychology, Université de Montréal
Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières

Diane Elmore Borbon served as action editor.

Data will be made available on request from the authors. The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article.

Because this research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Québec Research Funds/Fonds de Recherche du Québec–Société et Culture (Grant 2020-NP-266284, awarded to Marie-Ève Daspe), for the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright license to any author accepted manuscript version arising from this submission.

Florence Léonard played a lead role in conceptualization, formal analysis, writing–original draft, and writing–review and editing. Brenda Ramos played a supporting role in data curation, formal analysis, methodology, and supervision and an equal role in writing–review and editing. Marianne Emond played a supporting role in data curation, methodology, and writing–review and editing. Apollonia H. Pudelko played a supporting role in data curation, methodology, and writing–review and editing. Arianne Roy played a supporting role in writing–review and editing. Marie-Pier Vaillancourt-Morel played a supporting role in writing–review and editing. Katherine Péloquin played a supporting role in writing–review and editing. Marie-Ève Daspe played a lead role in data curation, funding acquisition, investigation, methodology, project administration, resources, and supervision, a supporting role in conceptualization, and an equal role in writing–review and editing.

Florence Léonard, Department of Psychology, Université de Montréal, 90 Avenue Vincent-D’Indy, Outremont, QC H2V 2T2, Canada [email protected]

Received November 5, 2024

revised July 10, 2025

Accepted July 25, 2025

Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, & Policy Publish Ahead of Print, September 15, 2025. | DOI: 10.1037/tra0002033

Objective: Cumulative childhood interpersonal trauma (CCIT) is associated with important outcomes within romantic relationships, including lower dyadic empathy. Dyadic empathy is comprised of perspective-taking, that is, putting oneself in the partner’s place, and empathic concern, that is, emotions felt toward the partner’s emotional experience. As empathic difficulties may affect the quality of romantic relationships, it is important to better understand the mechanisms underlying the links between CCIT and empathy toward a partner. Hostile attribution bias (i.e., the tendency to perceive others’ intentions as negative), being positively linked to CCIT and negatively associated with empathy, appears to be a relevant, yet unexplored, mechanism in the link between CCIT and dyadic empathy. The present study examined the role of hostile attribution bias in the dyadic associations linking one’s CCIT to their own as well as their partner’s perspective-taking and empathic concern. Method: A sample of 190 couples aged 18 to 29 completed online questionnaires. Results: One’s CCIT was positively related to their own hostile attribution bias, which was negatively associated with both their own perspective-taking and their partner’s empathic concern. Conclusion: Targeting hostile attributions among individuals with CCIT might constitute an interesting pathway to enhance their own and their partner’s empathy within the relationship and, therefore, foster positive couple dynamics during young adulthood.