Attachment style and empathy in health care counseling: Is there an association

This study explored the relationship between attachment style and empathy within a health care setting. Accurate empathy skills when expressed by health care professionals (HCPs) during health coaching sessions have been linked to enhanced health outcomes for patients. Early social-emotional exchanges with care-givers and later with prominent adults in one's life create a mental script that can guide interpersonal dynamics in both personal and professional settings. Internal working models of the world, categorized as adult attachment styles, may determine the ability to communicate accurate empathy (perception of the other person's internal frame of reference). Motivational Interviewing, a communication style that trains HCPs to express empathy as a principle of practice, provided the context for observing and evaluating an HCP's ability to communicate empathy in a brief telephonic health coaching session with a patient. The strength of associations between evaluated empathy, self-reported empathy, and self-reported attachment, were not found to be significant in this research.