International Comparative Case Study of High School Students about Empathy

Abstract

In this study, we attempted to investigate the empathy ability of Korean adolescents. Davis’ Interpersonal Reactivity Index was applied to 1155 high school students in Korea, and the results were compared with those obtained from the survey of the American and Dutch students with similar ages. As a result, high school students in Korea had higher cognitive empathy than other countries. But, in cognitive empathy, Fantasy (FN) was lower than Perspective Taking (PT), unlike other countries. The mean score of women in all empathy subscales was higher than that of men. And there is significant difference between humanities and natural science high school students in PT, Empathic Concern (EC) and Personal Distress (PD). However, in the comparison of mean score’s effect size and correlation in the subscales of the empathetic scale, it was confirmed as an unstable structure in PD. Therefore, there is a need to educationally discuss how to improve this limitation of measuring empathy in the further research.