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Empathy types in medical and pedagogical professions
Christoph M Paulus1, Saskia Meinken1
1Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany.
Current Issues in Personality Psychology
|September 15, 2025
Summary
Medical and educational professionals show distinct empathy profiles. Nursing staff frequently exhibit high emotional concern and perspective-taking with low distress, highlighting the need for empathy training in education.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Medical Education
- Social Work
Background:
- Empathy profiles vary across professions.
- Four empathy profiles were defined: Situation-dependent altruists (A), High-functioning empaths (B), Low neurotic empaths (C), and Low empaths (D).
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the distribution of empathy profiles in medical and educational professions.
- To compare empathy characteristics between medical and educational professionals.
Main Methods:
- Utilized the German version of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) to measure empathy.
- Sample included 439 subjects from medical (doctors, nurses) and educational (teachers, social workers) fields.
Main Results:
- No significant difference in empathy profile distribution between the two broad occupational groups.
- Nursing staff showed overrepresentation of profile B (high affective/cognitive empathy, low distress) and underrepresentation of profile C (high distress, low affective/cognitive empathy).
- Both nursing and pedagogical staff were most frequently observed in empathic patterns A and B.
Conclusions:
- Empathy typologies effectively describe affective and cognitive empathy aspects.
- Empathy training is crucial, particularly for pedagogical education where it is currently lacking.
- Results underscore the importance of tailored empathy development in professional training programs.
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