2020/09/01 by Judith A. Hall, Rachel Schwartz, Fred Duong · 1 citation
Medicine · Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Empathy and Medical Education #Media Influence and Health #Humor Studies and Applications #Personal distress #Empathy #Psychology #Prosocial behavior #Interpersonal Reactivity Index #Empathic concern #Perspective (graphical) #Perspective-taking #Interpersonal communication #Social psychology #Reactivity (psychology) #Set (abstract data type) #Distress #Developmental psychology #Clinical psychology
paper · doi:10.1080/00224545.2020.1796567
openalex publication_date 2020/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
The term “empathy” is popular, yet fuzzy. How laypeople define it has not been investigated. In Study 1, we analyzed 99 participants’ free narratives describing their personal definition, and in Study 1 (N = 191) and Study 2 (N = 351), we asked participants to rate a list of specific behaviors and tendencies for how well each one matched their personal definition. Out of 10 coded components, perspective taking was mentioned most often and personal distress (anxious reactivity in emotional situations) was never mentioned. Item ratings revealed four Empathy Concept factors: Prosocial Emotional Response, Interpersonal Perceptiveness, Other Perspective, and Anxious Reactivity. Other Perspective and Prosocial Emotional Response were most highly endorsed while Anxious Reactivity showed the lowest endorsement. Individuals varied widely in their endorsements of the factors. These results demonstrate that laypeople hold a multifactorial set of definitions of empathy and differ widely from one another in which ones they endorse.