Psychometric properties and validity of the ‘Victim Empathy Response Assessment’ (VERA) in a community adult male sample

Abstract

The Victim Empathy Response Assessment (VERA) was developed to provide an assessment of cognitive and affective empathy in forensic services. Initial validation data using a clinical forensic sample group suggested that it was a potentially useful measure. The aim of this study was to further evaluate the validity of the VERA, with a community sample group. Data analysis supported the factor structure and high reliability identified by the authors of the measure. Some construct validity was found, but unexpectedly the forensic patients had higher empathy scores than the community control sample. The higher empathy scores among the forensic sample have important theoretical and practical implications. Important findings emerged in relation to affective and cognitive empathy and types of scenarios rated, suggesting that global measures of empathy are more related to affective than cognitive empathy and to non-crime-related scenarios.

Measuring victim empathy among mentally disordered offenders: Validating VERA-2

“…Discriminant validity of the VERA-2 empathy scales was supported by the non-significant relationship between the empathy scales and extraversion and impulsivity, and the finding that IVE-Empathy was not significantly correlated with cognitive, which is consistent with the findings of Terry et al (2009) using the VERA-1. However, venturesomness, which is also known as sensation seeking, showed a significant relationship with cognitive empathy.…”

“…The VERA also indicated that different levels of empathy are elicited for different offence conditions, with the rape vignette eliciting the highest score and thus providing further evidence for situation specific as opposed to general levels of empathy. Further validation of the VERA was conducted in a community sample (Terry et al, 2009), which corroborated the findings in the previous study regarding the factor structure and good internal reliability across the vignettes.…”

“…Global affective empathy, as measured by the Impulsivity, Venturesomness, and Empathy (IVE) empathy scale (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1991) was used to validate the VERA-2 6 affective empathy scale. IVE-Empathy correlated significantly with affective but not with cognitive empathy in a general population sample using the VERA-1 (Terry et al 2009). The application of the IVE-Empathy scale to forensic populations has been very limited.…”

Unraveling the complex interplay of affective neuropersonality and empathy

“…Cognitive empathy involves understanding another person's thoughts, feelings, and perspective, while affective empathy involves sharing and resonating with the emotions of others (Zhang et al, 2021). Studies shown that cognitive empathy plays a significant role in understanding the perspective of others and is linked to higher-order brain functions, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, while affective empathy is associated with internalizing problems and the activation of various brain regions including insula (Terry et al, 2009;Chun-hua et al, 2019;Eres et al, 2019;Knight et al, 2019;Rizkyanti et al, 2021).…”