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A bidimensional measure of empathy: Empathic Experience Scale
Marco Innamorati1,2, Sjoerd J H Ebisch1, Vittorio Gallese3,4
1Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, Institute of Advanced Biomedical Technologies (ITAB), G. d'Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy.
Plos One
|April 30, 2019
Summary
This study introduces a new, reliable, and valid empathy questionnaire. It distinguishes between vicariously experiencing and intuitively understanding others' emotions, offering a more nuanced assessment of empathy.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Social Sciences
Background:
- Empathy is crucial for social interaction.
- A phenomenological view defines empathy as intersubjective understanding.
- Empathy has perceptual (vicarious experience) and cognitive (intuitive understanding) dimensions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and validate a new questionnaire for assessing individual differences in empathy.
- To differentiate between vicarious experience and intuitive understanding of emotions.
Main Methods:
- Developed a 75-item empathy questionnaire, reduced to 30 items.
- Conducted exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with large samples (N=921, N=504).
- Administered concurrent and divergent measures for validation.
Main Results:
- The 30-item questionnaire demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties and a robust two-factor structure (Vicarious Experience, Intuitive Understanding).
- Achieved high internal consistencies (0.93 and 0.95).
- The questionnaire showed expected convergence with existing empathy scales, adding novel information.
Conclusions:
- The new questionnaire is a reliable and valid measure of empathy.
- It successfully distinguishes between perceptual (vicarious) and basic cognitive (intuitive) aspects of empathy.
- This bidimensional structure aligns with psychological and neuroscientific findings on emotion processing.
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