Research: How Seven Different “Empathies” Correlate With Personality
“Empathy” is not one thing. Researchers have used the word to describe emotional reactions, cognitive perspective-taking, personal distress, and immersion in fictional characters; among others. In this academic paper, published in the Journal of Individual Differences, we asked whether these different “empathies” are actually measuring the same underlying construct, or whether they capture genuinely distinct psychological profiles.
Using a data-driven approach, we derived seven empathy facets from three standard empathy instruments and correlated each with a broad battery of 25 personality variables. The short answer: it depends entirely on which empathy you measure. Some facets — like tenderhearted concern and perspective-taking — had nearly identical personality profiles. Others, like anxious reaction to others’ distress, had a profile that contradicted the rest. The “empathic person” shifts depending on how empathy is defined.
View the published journal article (paywalled): https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000426
View the pre-print (not paywalled): https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/8egzb_v1
