Young adults face a rising tide of mental illness and loneliness. We propose that an overlooked barrier for social connection is how people perceive each other’s empathy. Here, our longitudinal study of an undergraduate student community (N=5,192) reveals that undergraduates who perceive their peers as empathic report better current and future well-being. Yet we document an ’empathy perception gap’: people systematically see others as less empathic than others see themselves. Students who perceived their peers as less empathetic were less willing to take social risks and grew more isolated over time. Read the full article at nature.com
