# Do Children’s Attachment Security and Empathy Facilitate Story Appreciation?

## TL;DR

This study explores how children's attachment security and empathy affect their emotional responses and liking of stories.

## Contribution

The study introduces a multiple mediator model linking attachment security, empathy, aesthetic emotions, and story liking in children.

## Key findings

- Attachment security is associated with more positive emotions and increased story liking.
- Empathy is linked to emotions of affinity but does not significantly affect story liking.
- Aesthetic emotions mediate the relationship between attachment security and story liking.

## Abstract

In a sample of 295 native Farsi speaking children between 6 and 10 years, we investigated to what extent children experienced aesthetic emotions during story listening. Since previous research has shown that aesthetic evaluation has dispositional components, we also investigated the influence of child-reported attachment security and mother-reported child empathy on the experience of aesthetic emotions and story liking. By means of a multiple mediator model, we tested how aesthetic emotions acted as mediators of the relationship of attachment security and empathy with story liking. Results showed that attachment security was related to more pleasing and captivating emotions (with a trend for less negative emotions), and thereby, increased story liking. Empathy was linked to emotions of affinity, but these did not predict story liking, resulting in a nonsignificant effect of empathy on story liking.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-025-00339-4.