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Empathy 1

Comm 506: Research Method Youjeong Kim October 28, 2005

Concept Explication: Empathy (Part I)

The study of why people help others starts from the concept of 'empathy' (e.g.,

Batson & Coke, 1981 ; Eisenberg, 1982). The term, empathy, is originally from the Greek

word enzpatkeia, which implies an active appreciation of another person's feeling

experience (Austin, 1967). Ernpathy was mainly explicated in the field o f social and

cognitive psychology or psychotherapy.

Theoretical definitions

Generally, empathy is defined as the ability to understand and feel other's

thinking or situation. Webster's I1 New College Dictionary (1995) defined it as

"identification with and understanding of another's feelings, situation, and motives".

When people read a story or watch TV, people are often "emotionally aroused"

partly caused by "the excitement of the story" (Stotland, 1969). The emotional process is

the result of 'empathy' by identifying a particular character in the story. Eisenberg and

Strayer ( 1 987) defined the empathy as 'vicarious sharing of affect' instead of

'identifying'. They described that empathy is "an emotional response that stems from

another's emotional state or condition and that is congruent with the other's emotional

state or situation."

Another approach to define 'empathy' is raised by from Rogers (1 975). He said

that empathy was a "process" and that it involved 'entering the private perceptual world

of the other and becoming thoroughly at home in it. It involves being sensitive ... to the

changing felt meaning which flow in this other person."

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Earlier, in 1949, psychotherapist Theodore Reik already described i t with four

phrases: Identification ("paying attention to another and allowing oneself to become

absorbed in contemplation of that person"), Incorporation ("making the other's

experience one's own via internalizing the other"), Reverberation ("experiencing the

other's experience while simultaneously attending to one's own cognitive and affective

associations to that experience"), and Detachment ("moving back from the merged inner

relationship to a position of separate identity, which permits a response to be made that

reflects both understanding of others as well as separateness from them").

The attempt to define empathy has been also made in the field of mass

communication, especially within the test of disposition theory developed by Zillmann

and Cantor (1972). The theory assumes that viewers hold same feeling with characters in

terms of empathy (Raney, 2004). In addition, mood management model of emotional

responding to television by Zillmann (1 988) is explained based on empathy. In this

theory, empathy is defined as "individual experience of emotions that are more

appropriate to the observed person's situation than to their own" (Mares & Cantor, 1992).

Operational definitions

Like many other psychological concept, empathy is an elusive concept to measure

definitely. The measurement is primarily based on self-reporting by survey.

Empathy is usually operationalized as "the degree of match or congruency

between self-report emotion and the emotion of stimulus" (stimulus person or protagonist

in a given vignette) (e.g., Feshbak & Roe, 1968; Lennon & Eisengerg, 1987; Strayer,

1987). Batson (1 998) argued that for occurrence of empathy, attachment to the person in

need should be preceded. He said that "one important cognitive factor creating

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attachment, and consequently empathy, is the perception of self-other similarities". To

measure the emotional match with the emotion of stimulus, FASTE method designed for

measuring affective empathy is employed.

Some researchers approached empathy with behavioral perspective. Dollard and

Miller (1950) defined i t as "copying the other person's feelings or responding with

appropriate signs of emotion." They observed subjects' physical responses while

'empathy' occurs. Murphy ( 1 947) wrote that "his muscles tighten as he watches the tug

of war; his larynx tires and his heels rise as the soprano strains upward." (p. 414).

To test empathy aroused by child abuse PSA, Bagozzie and Moore (1 994)

operationalized empathy with four dimensions developed by Davis ( 1 980) and Larsen,

Diener, and Cropanzano (1987). The four dimensions are ( 1 ) perspective taking

("tendency to adopt the point of view") (2) compassionlpity ("other-oriented feeling such

as concern") (3) protection motivation toward the victim ("the desire to protect the person

in need or intervene on one's behalf') and (4) fantasy elaboration ("the propensity to go

beyond information provided about a person in need to develop feelings o f identification

and other emotional attachment"). Based on four dimensions, subjects' response obtained

from open-ended question of "how to feel" were analyzed.

Some researchers attempted to apply the empathy into the research of online

communication (Preece, 1998; Preece & Ghozati, 1998). They defined i t as "the overall

feeling conveyed in the messages is mutual understanding and caring developed from

shared experience". Through analyzing the content of online communities, Preece and

Ghozati (2000) divided into two messages: empathic messages and hostile messages.

Commonalities and Distinctions

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Theoretically, the empathy is grouped as explanatory and descriptive definition.

Whereas some scholars attempted to explain why 'empathy' occurs, some attempted to

describe emotional status when 'empathy' occurs. Specifically, Hoffman (1 982) stated

just emotional 'empathy' status, 'vicarious sharing of affects' while many scholars tried

to provide psychology basis for occurrence of 'empathy' such as 'identification with or

understanding the others' feeling' (authors of Webster Dictionary), 'excitement of the

story' (Stotland, 1969), and 'emotional response that stems from or that is congruent with

another's feeling' (Eisenberg & Strayer, 1987).

The alternative definitional distinction in the group can be made: status and

process of empathy. In particular, Rogers (1975) and Reik (1949) saw empathy as a

process or emotional transfer.

The operational definitions are largely divided by how empathy is measured.

Hogan (1969) said that empathy is "an intellectual or imaginative apprehension of

another's condition or state of mind" and Batson (1998) said that empathy is occurred

through 'self-other similarity.' Both focused on cognitive aspect of empathy. The

cognitive aspect based on internal process is invisible and the measurement is relied on

respondents' self-report. In contrast, of many scholars who focused on affective aspects

of empathy (e.g., Eisenberg & Strayer 1987), some researchers developed physical

measurement to assess emotional transfer (Hamilton, 1973; Lennon, Eisenberg & Carroll,

1986). For example,

watching films. This

Recommendations

researchers reported children's facial

measurement is physically visible.

and gestural responses while

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Theoretically, the concept of empathy was explicated in terms of subjective and

physiological state of 'emotional arousal.' And operationally, the measurement of

empathy was primarily relied on respondents' self-reporting of 'how they feel' using

open-ended questions or 7-point Likert scale. In particular, open-ended questions are very

useful to develop empathic dimensions and items for pretest. When using 7-point Likert

scale, employing various emotional items are recommended considering individuals'

varying awareness about their feelings and ability to interpret (Lacey, 1950).

In addition, for analyzing empathic messages shown in online communication,

various items such as emoticon (e.g., "*""*" or ":)" for smile, or "t.tW for upset or cry) or

the double use of fluctuation for emphasizing the emotion (e.g., "!!") are recommended to

be included for empathy measurement.

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Concept Explication: Empathy (Part 11)

To measure a person's emotional reaction in terms of sharing or feeling another

person's internal state (empathic response), usually self-report using seven-point Likert

scales as well as open-ended questions is employed.

Development of Measures

Self-reports for measuring empathic emotion are obtained by asking to rate the

degree to which subjects are feeling or experiencing emotional status with the endpoints

labeled "not at all" and "extremely" on seven-point Likert scale. The questionnaires

usually contain several adjectives describing emotional reactions to the stimulus such as

sympathetic, compassionate, alarmed, grieved, upset, tender, and the like (Batson, 1987).

Often single item is employed to measure empathy. For example, Vorderer,

Knobloch, and Schramm (2001) showed a movie and then asked subject to rate on a 5 -

point Likert scale to the following question: "Right now, do you feel for Stefen (who was /

the protagonist)?" The measurement using a single item on 5 or 7-point Likert scale (e.g.,

do you feel the situation? Or do you feel the protagonist's feeling?) is very problematic in

terms of validity. In particular, because this question cannot measure the match of

emotion between stimulus and response, and cannot capture the emotional status well, it

has low construct validity. To reduce this problem, some researchers employed more

items entailing empathic-related adjectives. Moore, Hams, and Chen (1995) developed

empathic emotional scale. Ln their study, after being exposed to the advertisement,

subject's emotional status has been measured as three seven-point unipolar items from 1

"not at all" to 7 "very" in terms of concerned, con~pnssionate, and sympathetic.

Nevertheless, the emotion itself is so huge and vague that capture all internal states

Empathy 7

exactly by just adding some more adjectives, and thus it is hard to reduce the problem of

low construct validity within emotional item measurement.

Attempting to overcome the low construct validity, nevertheless, has been made

by changing questionnaire to open-ended style by some researchers. FASTE method used

by Batson (1998) measures empathic emotion by asking children describe how they feel

after reading short stories or watching visual stimuli depicting a story. Bagozzi and

Moore (1994) asked subjects to "describe all the feelings" that they experienced when

they were exposed to child abuse ad. By two judges, the responses were categorized by

four dimensions: perspective taking (e.g., "I felt the pain as if I had been struck),

compassiodpity (e.g., "I felt pity for the kid"), protection motivation toward victim (e.g.,

"I wanted to step between the parent and the child), and fantasy elaboration (e.g., "the

little boy did not do anything wrong"). This method is also problematic in terms of

accuracy. Although respondents know what they were feeling while watching stimulus,

they were not willing to report their true feelings. Some people may want present

themselves to be more sympathetic and compassionate while some might want to appear

strong (Batson, 1987). Open-ended questions always have this kind of response bias that

hurts internal validity. Bagozzie and Moore (1 994) attempted to reduce internal validity

problem of their measurement. In study 2, based on categorized four dimensions, they

measured with six empathy items by asking subjects to rate disagree (1) or agree (7) on

seven-point scale. This kind of measure is called paper-and-pencil measures which focus

on empathy as a "vicarious emotional response to the perceived emotional experiences f

others, in particular, the experience to the perceived sharing of feelings, at least at the

gross affect (pleasant-unpleasant) level" (Bryant, 1987). The Mehrabian and Epstein

Empathy 8

measure (1972) of empathy is widely used paper-pencil measures. It consists of 33 items

and subjects are asked to rate each item on interval scale from +4(very strong agreement)

to -4(very strong disagreement). To be scored on empathic response, 16 items require

agreement and remaining 17 items require disagreement. Resulting measures showed

high internal consistency ( r = .79) and 2-week test-retest reliability for the empathy

measure showed stability (Kalliopuska, 1983 ).

For children, non-verbal methods such as facial, gestural, or vocal responses are

acceptable to measure empathic emotion (Marcus, 1987). Although it lowers self-

presentation bias, the ratings are conducted by experimenter subjectively and thus could

capture the other emotions as well as empathic response. It can bring discriminant

validity problem. Some researchers employed physiological (heart rate) indexes

Eisenberg and his colleagues hypothesized that vicariously induced sadness (empathy)

was correlated with HR deceleration (Eisenberg, Fabes, et al., 1989; Eisenberg, McCreath,

& Ahn, 1988). Even though it was internally consistent based on test-retest reliability

coefficients, construct validity is still problematic because positive emotions induced by

empathy could not be captured by HR change.

Research Question

For adults, controlling for gender and age, what is the relationship between media

coverage about natural disaster and empathic response and what is the relationship

between aroused empathic response by media coverage and decision to help?

After showing news about Katrina and subsequent 2 types of red-cross Public

Service Ads (emotional vs. rational) promoting donation or voluntary work for Katrina

victims, subjects are asked to report empathic response.

Empathy 9

Rationale

To measure empathic response by media coverage about Hurricane Katrina, my

study would be primarily based on the method conducted by Bagozzie and Moore (1 994).

In the first experiment, they employed open-ended questions by asking subjects to

describe all feelings while watching a PSA about child abuse and two coders analyzed i t

within four dimensions (e.g., perspective taking, compassion, protection motivation,

protection motivation, fantasy elaboration) developed by Davis (1 980) and Larsen,

Diener, and Cropanzano (1987).

Similarly, my study will use this category except protection motivation (which is

not relevant to natural disaster) to measure which type o f PSA (rational o r emotional) will

have more empathic response. For example, subjects will be given a simple 7-point

Likert scale (e.g., do you feel for the situation or victims?) from 1 "not at all" to 7

"extremely." The question could screen some responses which do not feel anything after

watching the news and PSA (subjects who mark I "not at all"). All people do not have

empathy after watching news stories about natural disaster victims. By screening those

responses, descriminant validity problem might not be occurred. If subjects answer "yes,"

they are asked to answer following questions about empathic emotion on seven-point

Likert scale (If answer "no," they skip following questions). For example: For the

question of that "I felt as though I was right there in the ad experiencing what the victims

were experiencing," subjects are asked to rate how much they agree from 1 "strongly

disagree" to 7 "strongly agree." Aggregated score obtained from responses will be the

degree of empathy to the stimulus.

Empathy 10

As I stated above, emotional scale consisted of some items is hard to capture all

internal states of subjects. Ln particular, when empathy is operationalized as "the degree

of match or congruency between self-report emotion and the emotion of stimulus

(Feshbak & Roe, 1968; Lennon & Eisengerg, 1987; Strayer, 1987)," and measured the

empathy in terms of the congruency of emotion, even the evaluation of stimulus'

emotional status by researchers might not be exact. Given the fundamental problem of

empathy measurement, to some extent, this measurement could reduce the problem of the

internal validity.

Empathy 11

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