Dr. Sara H. Konrath - What is Empathy? lyrics

Past research on empathy is wrought with definitional issues. Some scholars have conceptualized empathy as a cognitive mechanism through which people are able to imagine the internal state of someone else (e.g., Borke, 1971; Deutsch & Madle, 1975), whereas others view empathy as an affective construct (e.g., Batson, 1987; Miller & Eisenberg, 1988). In turn, proponents of affective theories of empathy disagree over whether people's emotions are matched directly to another's affective state (Feshbach & Roe, 1968), whether empathy is simply a manifestation of sympathy (Hoffman, 1984), or whether people empathize to reduce their own stress about another's situation (e.g., Batson & Coke, 1981). Now, along with the advent of neuroscience and the rise of interest in the mirror neuron system (see Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004), it appears the debate over establishing a single operational definition of empathy is far from settled. However, in its most basic form, dispositional empathy can be seen as the tendency to react to other people's observed experiences (Davis, 1983c). Measures of empathy tend to focus on either a cognitive understanding of another's states (e.g., Hogan, 1969) or a vicarious other-oriented emotional response to these states (e.g., Mehrabian & Epstein, 1972). However, in the current study we operationalized empathy as defined by the Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980, 1983a, 1983c), the only personality scale that follows a multidimensional theory of empathy. The IRI is a 28-item scale that consists of four different 7-item subscales, representing different components of interpersonal sensitivity. Empathic Concern (EC) measures people's other-oriented feelings of sympathy for the misfortunes of others and, as such, is a more emotional component of empathy (e.g., “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me”). Perspective Taking (PT) is a more cognitive or intellectual component, measuring people's tendencies to imagine other people's points of view (e.g., “I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective”). The Fantasy (FS) subscale measures people's tendencies to identify imaginatively with fictional characters in books or movies (e.g., “I really get involved with the feelings of the characters in a novel”). Personal Distress (PD) may be less adaptive in that it measures more self-oriented feelings of distress during others' misfortunes (e.g., “When I see someone who badly needs help in an emergency, I go to pieces”). On average, females tend to score higher than males on each of the subscales (Davis, 1983c). The IRI is an ideal measure of empathy to use for a crosstemporal meta-an*lysis. One major strength of the scale is that it a**esses both cognitive and affective components of empathy, which could theoretically be changing at different rates over time. In addition, the IRI is reliable, well validated, and widely used. The scale carries substantial convergent and discriminant validity (Davis, 1994), the internal reliabilities of each subscale range from .71 to .77, and test–retest reliabilities of each subscale range from .62 to .71 (Davis, 1980). There is also high self–other agreement on IRI scores, which is demonstrated by corresponding scores between parents and adolescent participants (Cliffordson, 2001). Moreover, in one particular example of its predictive capabilities, Eisenberg et al. (2002) showed that scores on the EC subscale in a sample of 15- to 18-year-olds strongly correlated with scores on a prosociality scale measured with the same sample at ages 21 to 26.