Measurement of Individual Differences in State Empathy and Examination of a Model in Japanese University Students

Abstract

The typical state empathy research used perspective-taking instructions and examined the effect of instructions on empathy-related variables. Empathy-arousing processes were generally not measured. The effect of perspective-taking instructions has been questioned recently. Observers could imagine targets’ feelings without such instructions. This study evoked empathy in Japanese undergraduates (N = 157) without instructional procedure, and based on participants’ responses to questionnaires, measured individual differences between antecedent, process, and intrapersonal outcome variables of state empathy, referring to the organizational model and theories of empathy-arousing processes. The purpose of this study was to measure these variables, examine the causal relationship between them using path analysis, and clarify how empathy occurs. In this way, we could suggest through which processes and antecedent factors intrapersonal empathic outcomes are produced. It is probably the first attempt to clarify how empathy occurs using a social psychological study framework and questionnaire method. This research was originally conducted in 2011 based on two similar studies not published internationally, when only some of the variables were used in our analyses. Afterwards, we constructed another analysis method, reanalyzed the data in 2019 and further reanalyzed in 2023 to obtain the final version of the results. Limitations and scientific and practical implications were discussed.