A Review of the Literature on the Empathy Construct Using Cluster Analysis

Abstract

Empathy plays a central role in human behavior and is a key aspect of social functioning. The extensive research on the empathy construct in fields such as psychology, social work, and education has revealed many positive aspects of empathy. Through the use of cluster analysis, this research takes a new approach to reviewing the literature on empathy and objectively identifies groups of empathy research. Next, this study relates the information systems (IS) discipline's focus on empathy research through the projection of IS empathy paragraphs into those clusters, and identifies areas of empathy research that are currently being largely overlooked by the IS field. The use of cluster analysis and projection for conducting a literature review provides researchers with a more objective approach for reviewing relevant literature.

Writing Qualitative IS Literature Reviews—Guidelines for Synthesis, Interpretation, and Guidance of Research

“…A literature review's level of documentation precision should be aligned with this goal. I suggest that researchers provide the information in the Appendix (see, e.g., Melville et al, 2004;Schryen, 2013) Miaskiewicz & Monarchi, 2008). Readers can find a good example of a detailed description of the literature search process in Muller & Ulrich (2013) (cf.…”

A Glimpse into Policy Informatics: The Case of Participatory Platforms that Generate Synthetic Empathy

“…There is a need to integrate findings from other disciplines such as social work, psychology, and education in designing synthetic environments. The IS designers need to be mindful of the human-centered designs and focus more on the people component in addition to the technology component [Miaskiewicz and Monarchi, 2008]. Consequently, more research in this direction will help develop frameworks for training IS designers to be mindful of the human components in designing participatory spaces for public deliberation.…”

“…Although the concept of empathy is widely explored in face-to-face interactions, critics argue that technology-mediated collaboration platforms based on textual communication, such as discussion forums, are unable to capture these expressions and strip the richness of interactions upon which empathy is engendered. From this vantage point, IS discipline is far removed from other disciplines [Miaskiewicz and Monarchi, 2008], but technology-mediated collaboration does not have to result in thin communication. On the contrary, the advancement in technology offers a growing toolset for engendering empathetic feelings between participants as people become more dependent on technology to interact.…”

Scalable Information Systems

“…The clusters are constructed to be as internally homogenous as possible while also being as externally heterogeneous as possible. Numerous clustering algorithms have been used for the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data, and interested readers are encouraged to read the review of data clustering (Miaskiewicz and Monarchi 2008). Although several clustering algorithms exist, Ward's minimum variance criterion was chosen for this analysis (Punj and Stewart 1983).…”