| Although the term "empathy" is brought up often in the conversations of behavioral scientists, mental health professionals, and lay persons, attempts to conceptualize and scientifically study the phenomenon have generated a great deal of confusion and controversy. This thesis critically reviews the literature on the concept of empathy, its operationalization, and its measurement. Controversies regarding both the predominance of cognitive or affective components, and the process and trait aspects of the phenomenon are explored. To further investigate these controversies, a study is conducted which explores the relationships between empathy conceptualized as a trait (either cognitive or affective), and empathy conceptualized as a process leading toward increased understanding.; The design of this study involved measuring subjects' empathic abilities from a number of different theoretical perspectives; and then having subjects conduct interviews which were video-taped by the experimenter. Each subject's empathic understanding during the interview was then assessed from three perspectives--their own, the interviewee's, and that of an independent judge. Furthering the investigation of empathy conceptualized as a process, a subgroup of subjects were given an instructional set encouraging them to listen in ways suggested by the literature to enhance empathic understanding. Other aspects of subject behavior during the interview (i.e., degree of affective expression, appropriateness of affective expression, degree of responsiveness, appropriateness of verbal and nonverbal behavior, degree of attunement, and level of relatedness) were also assessed.; Taken as sets, neither the cognitive nor the affective empathy measures contributed to significant proportions of variance in the empathic understanding measures. Similarly, the measurements of empathic understanding were not significantly affected by the instructional process manipulation. Some statistically significant correlation coefficients, however, were found among and between the empathy measures and the ratings of subject behaviors during the interviews. The implications of these findings are discussed in light of the current controversies, and suggestions regarding the conceptualization and study of empathy are put forth. |
