Linking Empathy to Psychological Intimate Partner Violence: The Mediation Analysis of Two Competitive Mediating Pathways

While empathy training has long been considered a cornerstone of clinical interventions for intimate partner violence (IPV), emerging evidence on the link between empathy and IPV perpetration suggests an inconsistent association. Guided by the double-edged sword theory and integrating attachment theoretical perspectives within the Chinese cultural context, this study established a competitive mediation model to explain this counterintuitive relationship. An online sample from 31 provinces in China, including 295 adults (69.8% women; M age = 29.50 years), completed questionnaires measuring empathy, emotion appraisal, attachment avoidance, attachment anxiety, and psychological IPV perpetration. Results suggested that empathy may be indirectly associated with higher psychological IPV perpetration through attachment anxiety, while simultaneously linked to lower psychological IPV perpetration through a mediation chain of emotion appraisal and attachment avoidance. These two competitive mediating pathways mutually canceled each other, potentially accounting for an apparent lack of association between empathy and psychological IPV perpetration. These findings suggested the necessity of screening for insecure attachment styles before empathy-based IPV intervention. For perpetrators with avoidant attachment, empathy training may be enhanced by incorporating emotion appraisal, whereas for perpetrators with anxious attachment, empathy interventions may warrant caution.