Predicting Empathy Arousing Process and Affective Outcome by Trait Empathy, Target Sex, and Psychological Overlap between Target and the Self

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among variables of empathy arousing process, affective outcome, and trait empathy, and to examine the roles of target sex and psychological overlap as measured with Inclusion of Other in the Self (IOS) Scale. Measures of empathy arousing process and affective outcome were developed from the responses of female undergraduate and graduate students to two film stimuli. Results showed that affective outcome variables were explained significantly by empathy arousing process variables: parallel affective response was explained by automatic empathy, and other-oriented response by automatic empathy and role-taking. Trait empathy, conceptualized with four dimensions, explained not only affective outcome variables, but also empathy arousing process variables. Both empathy arousing process and affective outcome variables were high when representations of the self and the protagonist of the film overlapped, and low when they did not. But protagonist sex had no effect on the variables.View full abstract