Empathy in Musicians: Self-Report Versus Performance on an Empathic Accuracy Task

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience of Music
• Social Psychology

Background:

• Music perception is linked to emotion processing.
• Musicians may possess enhanced empathy due to music's emotional and social components.
• Previous research suggests potential links between musical training and empathy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether professional musicians exhibit higher levels of empathy compared to non-musicians.
• To assess both self-reported and performance-based measures of empathy in musicians and non-musicians.

Main Methods:

• 25 professional musicians and 23 non-musicians completed the Empathy Quotient (EQ) self-report questionnaire.
• Participants also undertook an empathic accuracy (EA) performance measure using video clips of emotional narratives.
• EA was calculated by correlating participant ratings with target ratings of felt emotions.

Main Results:

• Musicians scored higher than non-musicians on both affective and cognitive empathy subscales of the EQ.
• No significant difference in empathic accuracy (EA) was found between musicians and non-musicians.
• Objective performance measures did not confirm enhanced empathy in musicians.

Conclusions:

• While musicians perceive themselves as more empathetic, objective measures do not support this.
• The study found no direct evidence of enhanced empathy in musicians using rich, multi-modal stimuli.
• Further research is needed to explore empathy in musicians in different contexts or with varied factors.