Creatively Increasing Empathy: The Impacts of an Online Empathy Workshop

ABSTRACT Despite empathy’s centrality, there is a paucity of research on empathy development in counselor education. This study extends work which calls for counselor educators to promote the role of empathy in counselor training. The present study recruited a sample of 64 graduate students to participate in an online, short-term empathy development workshop to examine its impact on empathy and other salient variables including attachment, wellbeing, self-esteem, narcissism, emotional intelligence, and mindfulness. The researchers used t-tests to analyze pre-posttest differences in the constructs, and thematic analysis and the consensual qualitative approach to evaluate open-ended survey responses to understand the impact of the short-term online empathy training on participants. Results indicated statistically significant changes in attachment-related avoidance and trait empathy. Implications for counselor educators future researchers are explored, and counselor educators are called to continue to refine and make accessible empathy training for counselors in training.