How do laypeople define empathy?

Hall, Judith A.; Schwartz, Rachel; Duong, Fred

doi:10.1080/00224545.2020.1796567

Cited by 35 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Because the definition of empathy is not always clear among researchers (Batson, 2009; Hall & Schwartz, 2019) or laypeople (Hall et al, 2021), our baseline survey provided a glossary of terms that participants would later report on. We defined what we meant by empathy opportunity, empathy, emotion sharing, perspective taking, compassion, and prosocial acts (see Material S2 at https://osf.io/zd6wv/).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Definitions and demand. We chose to supply a definition of empathy to our participants to reduce noise from varying lay theories of empathy (Hall et al, 2021). By defining empathy as a process involving three related but distinct experiences, however, we may have introduced demand, resulting in participants inflating reports of the co-occurrence of all three processes or otherwise influencing participants' reports (although similar results were reported for participants' own empathy and empathy received).…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Experience of Empathy in Everyday Life

2021

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We used experience sampling to examine perceptions of empathy in the everyday lives of a group of 246 U.S. adults who were quota sampled to represent the population on key demographics. Participants reported an average of about nine opportunities to empathize per day; these experiences were positively associated with prosocial behavior, a relationship not found with trait measures. Although much of the literature focuses on the distress of strangers, in everyday life, people mostly empathize with very close others, and they empathize with positive emotions 3 times as frequently as with negative emotions. Although trait empathy was negatively associated only with well-being, empathy in daily life was generally associated with increased well-being. Theoretically distinct components of empathy—emotion sharing, perspective taking, and compassion—typically co-occur in everyday empathy experiences. Finally, empathy in everyday life was higher for women and the religious but not significantly lower for conservatives and the wealthy.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Experience of Empathy in Everyday Life

2021

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“…We chose to supply a definition of empathy to our participants, to reduce noise from varying lay-theories of empathy (Hall et al, 2020). By defining empathy as a process involving three "related but distinct" experiences, however, we may have introduced demand, resulting in participants inflating reports of the co-occurrence of all three processes or otherwise influencing participants' reports (although similar results were reported for one's own empathy and empathy received).…”

Section: Definitions and Demandmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because the definition of empathy is not always clear among researchers (Batson, 2009;Hall & Schwartz, 2019) or laypeople (Hall et al, 2020) alike, our baseline survey provided a glossary of terms that participants would later report on. We defined what we meant by: empathy opportunity, empathy, emotion-sharing, perspective-taking, compassion, and prosocial acts (Material S2).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Experience of Empathy in Everyday Life

Depow¹,

Francis²,

Inzlicht³

2020

Preprint

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We used experience-sampling to examine perceptions of empathy in the everyday lives of a group of 246 U.S. adults, quota-sampled to represent the population on key demographics. Participants reported an average of about 9 opportunities to empathize per day, with these experiences being positively associated with prosocial behaviour; a relationship not found with trait measures. While much of the literature focuses on the distress of strangers, in everyday life, people mostly empathize with very close others; and they empathize with positive emotions three times as frequently as with negative emotions. Though trait empathy was only negatively associated with well-being, empathy in daily life was generally associated with increased well-being. Theoretically distinct components of empathy—emotion sharing, perspective taking, and compassion—typically co-occur in everyday empathy experiences. Finally, empathy in everyday life was higher for women and the religious, but not significantly lower for conservatives or the wealthy.

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“…It could be a desire for relatedness with another person, hoping to bask in the glow of another's success, or sadistically wanting to bask in the agony of another's tragedy. In many cases, it will be an other-oriented caring for another person, the kind of other-oriented motivation that clinicians and laypersons typically imply when using the term “empathy” (see Hall et al, 2021a; 2021b) and which has been widely measured in empathy research (see Zaki, 2017). Whatever the nature of the motivation for an empathizer in any particular case, it will likely entail emotional content that is not isomorphic to the emotion of the other person.…”

Section: The Rim's Two “Frenemy” Pillars: Isomorphic Matching and Sel...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Why We Should Reject the Restrictive Isomorphic Matching Definition of Empathy

2022

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A growing cadre of influential scholars has converged on a circumscribed definition of empathy as restricted only to feeling the same emotion that one perceives another is feeling. We argue that this restrictive isomorphic matching (RIM) definition is deeply problematic because (1) it deviates dramatically from traditional conceptualizations of empathy and unmoors the construct from generations of scientific research and clinical practice; (2) insistence on an isomorphic form undercuts much of the functional value of empathy from multiple perspectives of analysis; and (3) combining the opposing concepts of isomorphic matching and self-other awareness implicitly requires motivational content, causing the RIM definition to implicitly require the kind of non-matching emotional content that it explicitly seeks to exclude.

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How do laypeople define empathy?

Cited by 35 publications

References 48 publications

The Experience of Empathy in Everyday Life

The Experience of Empathy in Everyday Life

The Experience of Empathy in Everyday Life

Why We Should Reject the Restrictive Isomorphic Matching Definition of Empathy

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