Empathy Measurement

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Empathy Measurement

• Sibylle Enz

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Psychological Empathy Measures

• Self-Description
• Questionnaires
• Empathy as an ability
• Face Recognition
• Picture Stories
• Somatic and Psychophysiological Measures
• Behavioural Measures

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Psychological Empathy Measures Questionnaires

• Subjects rate their tendency to react
  empathically on a series of items ? easy and
  differentiated

I can tell by looking at a person whether they
are happy. 0 1 2 3 4 I strongly
agree I strongly disagree

• Problems
• Situational context of empathic reactions
• Influence of introspective and verbal skills
• Influence of self-presentation

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Psychological Empathy Measures Empathy as an
Ability

• Emotional Face Recognition
• Subjects identify emotions on the basis of
  pictures of facial expressions
• E.g. Ekman Friesen (1975) facial emotion
  expressions
• Very limited perspective on empathy
  interpersonal accuracy

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Psychological Empathy Measures Empathy as an
Ability

• Which emotion is the person on the photo
  currently experiencing?

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Psychological Empathy Measures Picture Stories

• Picture Stories
• Affectively charged stories Subjects label
  feelings of characters and indicate own feelings
• ? Empathy same/similar emotion

• Pros
• Interview-based approach subjects report
  subjectively experienced emotions
• Easy and differentiated

• Cons
• Influence of introspective and verbal skills
• Influence of self-presentation
• Degree of emotional match?

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Psychological Empathy Measures Somatic/Psychophysi
ological Measures

• Presentation of affectively charged stories,
  usually on videotapes
• Measurement of observers reaction via
• Somatic indices
• Physiological indices
• Empathy scored for adequate observers reaction

• Somatic Indices
• Facial
• Gestural
• Postural
• Paraverbal

• Physiological Indices
• Skin conductance
• Heart rate
• Palm sweating
• Skin temperature
• Vasoconstriction
• Electromyographic procedures

• Pros
• Less vulnerable to verbal skills and
  self-presentation
• Cons
• Psychophysiological Indices Differentiation?
  Devices?
• Somatic Indices Expressive styles? Observer bias?

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Psychological Empathy Measures Behavioural
Measures

• Empathy is seen as precondition for observable
  behaviour
• By assessing this behaviour, empathy is measured
• E.g. helping/prosocial behaviour
• Kobayashi Painting aquarelle
• Problem
• Relation between behaviour and empathy?

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Summary

• Is it really empathy I am assessing?
• Self-presentation
• Emotional arousal
• Liking
• combination of empathy measures!