ABSTRACT

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.

摘要

“同理心”这个词很流行，但也很模糊。外行人如何定义它尚未研究。在研究 1 中，我们分析了 99 名参与者描述他们个人定义的自由叙述，在研究 1（N = 191）和研究 2（N = 351）中，我们要求参与者对特定行为和倾向的列表进行评分一个符合他们的个人定义。在 10 个编码组件中，最常提到观点采择，而个人痛苦（情绪情况下的焦虑反应）从未被提及。项目评级揭示了四个共情概念因素：亲社会情绪反应、人际感知、其他观点和焦虑反应。其他视角和亲社会情绪反应的认可度最高，而焦虑反应的认可度最低。个人对这些因素的认可差异很大。这些结果表明，外行人持有一套多因素的同理心定义，并且与他们所认可的定义大相径庭。