In social psychology, empathy is understood to mean a deep understanding of another person's perspective. However, empathy can be more easily understood when it is broken down into two categories: cognitive empathy, and emotional empathy.

We define cognitive empathy as the intuitive understanding of another's of another's perspective while emotional empathy involves actually experiencing another's emotions as they do. We hypothesize that individuals can have differing levels of each kind of empathy, and this can have implications for their life satisfaction and how they respond to the situations of others.

Procedure

This study uses psychology students from the University of Alabama to collect participants. These students are currently recruiting (as part of their grade) individuals they know to complete our questionnaire. This allows us to acquire a much larger sample size than if we simply used them as participants, and it also allows our sample to be more diverse in terms of age, education level, and family history.

With our 121-item self-report questionnaire, this study seeks to:

1. Identify predictive traits for both empathy systems (what makes people more likely to be high in cognitive or emotional empathy)

2. Untangle the effects of cognitive and emotional empathy on each of these traits

3. Identify the ideal balance between the two empathy categories (do people who measure at a particular balance of cognitive or emotional empathy do better in life satisfaction and other measures)

A challenge that comes when measuring positively perceived qualities like empathy is social desirability bias; participants may rate themselves in ways they believe others will view more positively. To account for this, our questionnaire is completely anonymized, so there is less pressure to answer in socially desirable ways. Additionally, we are using an informant design, where a secondary participant will rate each main participant to offset potential biases.

Results

Our data is currently undergoing analysis; more information will be forthcoming as we work through the results.

Potential Implications

Empathy is a psychological trait woven into the fabric of human social cognition, and it underlies many behaviors and psychological outcomes. The findings of this study can benefit clinicians in the field of mental healthcare by providing a more comprehensive model of the predictive factors and outcomes of cognitive and emotional empathy.