Interpersonal valence of ethnocultural empathy

Abstract

Understanding and accepting others who are racially and ethnically different from oneself (i.e. ethnocultural empathy) facilitates connectedness. Although levels of ethnocultural empathy differ across racial and ethnic groups, whether the interpersonal meaning of ethnocultural empathy also differs is less clear. One way of examining this is by using the interpersonal circumplex (IPC), which locates the interpersonal valence of psychological constructs across interpersonal space defined in terms of warmth and dominance. In this study we examined how ethnocultural empathy projected across the IPC both in general and for different racial and ethnic groups in a sample of U.S. residents (N = 443) using a bootstrapped structural summary method. Results suggest that ethnocultural empathy generally represents interpersonal warmth across people of all racial groups; however, for the Native American group, ethnocultural empathy also includes an element of interpersonal dominance. Further, ethnocultural empathy has a comparatively less warm project for people who identify as Latiné. These findings clarify the interpersonal nature of ethnocultural empathy and have implications for how people connect respectfully despite their differences.