Background: Empathy is critical to adolescents' psychological adjustment, yet its role in well-being remains poorly understood—largely due to empathy's "double-edged" nature. Multidimensional well-being was operationalized using the Well-Being Profile (WB-Pro), a positive mental health framework that defines 15 dimensions as positive opposites of psychopathology. While empathy is a core WB-Pro component associated with prosocial functioning, it has been operationally conflated in prior research—despite theoretical distinctions between cognitive empathy (e.g., perspective-taking) and emotional empathy (e.g., affective resonance). Prior network-based research further indicates that the empathy component within the WB-Pro—often emphasized for its role in emotional contagion—exhibits limited or negative associations with adolescent well-being. However, no studies to date have disentangled how cognitive versus emotional empathy interact with other WB-Pro dimensions.
Methods and Results: Study 1 (N = 2,201, Mage = 12.07, SD = 3.01, 8-19 years) employed a cross-sectional design, treating empathy as defined in the original WB-Pro. Network analysis revealed optimism as the most central node, while empathy was negatively associated with optimism, suggesting that heightened emotional sensitivity may undermine happiness. Study 2 (N = 587, Mage = 14.74, SD = 2.731, 12-18 years) used a two-wave longitudinal design over six month and further distinguished empathy into cognitive and emotional components. Vitality and engagement emerged as central nodes, with cognitive empathy positively linked to both, indicating its protective role in sustaining long-term well-being. In contrast, emotional empathy was inversely associated with positive emotions and self-acceptance, underscoring potential risks when it remains unregulated.
Conclusion and Implications: Together, these findings demonstrate the utility of the WB-Pro for capturing dynamic associations between empathy and well-being and highlight the need to promote cognitive rather than purely emotional empathy in adolescent interventions.