Empathy refers to the thoughts and feelings of one individual in response to the observed (emotional) experiences of another individual. Empathy, however, can occur toward persons experiencing a variety of emotions, raising the question of whether or not empathy can be emotion specific. This paper discusses theoretical and empirical support for the emotion specificity of empathy. We present a new measure, the Emotion Specific Empathy questionnaire, which assesses affective and cognitive empathy for the six basic emotions. This paper presents the measure's psychometric qualities and demonstrates, through a series of models, the discriminant validity between emotion specific empathies suggesting empathy is emotion specific. Results and implications are discussed. © 2014 Olderbak, Sassenrath, Keller and Wilhelm.
CITATION STYLE
Olderbak, S., Sassenrath, C., Keller, J., & Wilhelm, O. (2014). An emotion-differentiated perspective on empathy with the emotion specific empathy questionnaire. Frontiers in Psychology, 5(JUL). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00653
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