Empathy : a comparitive study of professionals and trained lay counsellors using hypothetical situations

The study was conducted on 12 professionals and 12 trained lay counsellors. The two groups were matched for sex (7 males and 5 females) and their mean age was 27.5 and 32.25 years respectively. Ten hypothetical problem situationts were given and empathy was assessed using, accurate empathy rating scale by two independent raters. The inter rater reliability was found to be quite high (.61 significant at .01 level). There was no significant difference between the two groups and the sex groups. On comparing the results with the scores on audiotaped interview, there, was no significant correlations obtained between the two methods. Problems involved in assessing empathy from questionnaire and suggestions for further research are also discussed.