The effectiveness of helping skills training for undergraduate students: Changes in ethnocultural empathy

Using the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy, we examined pre-post changes in empathy directed toward people from different racial/ethnic cultural groups than one's own for 189 undergraduate students from 20 sections of helping skills classes. We hypothesized that racial minority students and women would score higher than their respective counterparts in ethnocultural empathy at the beginning of the semester. We also expected that White students would grow more than racial minority students in ethnocultural empathy by the end of the semester. Using latent growth modeling, we found that racial minority women tended to report significantly higher initial levels than racial minority men and White students on all dimensions of ethnocultural empathy. In addition, race predicted ethnocultural empathy changes by the end of the semester, such that White women and men on average showed (a) more growth on the Empathic Feeling and Expression subscale than did racial minority women and men and (b) more growth on the Empathic Perspective Taking subscale than did racial minority women. Findings suggest that helping skills training may be particularly effective for helping White students gain empathic understanding and expression for individuals from different racial/ethnic backgrounds. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).