Empathy

Mark H. Davis

Eckerd College

What is empathy? Although seemingly simple, this question has proven

surprisingly difficult to answer. For over 200 years, thoughtful people have tried to

understand the general phenomenon in which one individual, through observation of

another, comes to experience some change in his or her thoughts or feelings. These

efforts have typically fallen into one of two broad categories. One approach has been to

consider empathy an essentially emotional phenomenon, with the defining feature of the

empathic experience consisting of observers either coming to share the target’s emotional

state (e.g., Eisenberg and Strayer 1987), or to experience some emotional state in

response to the target’s (e.g., Batson 1991). The other approach has been to consider

empathy an essentially cognitive phenomenon, with the defining feature of the experience

consisting of observers coming to discern accurately the target’s internal state, but

without necessarily experiencing any emotional change themselves (e.g., Wispe 1986).

Recent years have seen growing acceptance of a third approach, which is to

explicitly treat empathy as a multidimensional phenomenon that inevitably includes both

cognitive and emotional components (e.g., Davis 1983; Hoffman 1984). In this vein, I

have previously proposed a model designed to organize all of these approaches into a

comprehensive treatment of the empathy phenomenon (Davis 1994); Figure 1 contains a

somewhat revised and updated version of this model. In contrast to much previous work,

the spirit of this model is deliberately inclusive, designed to emphasize the connections

between these constructs. Thus, empathy is broadly defined here as a set of constructs

having to do with the responses of one individual to the experiences of another. These

constructs specifically include both the processes taking place within the observer and the

affective and non-affective outcomes that result from those processes. Based on this

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definition, the model conceives of the typical empathy "episode" as consisting of an

observer being exposed in some fashion to a target, after which some response on the part

of the observer--cognitive, affective, motivational, and/or behavioral--occurs. Four

related constructs can be identified within this prototypical episode: antecedents, which

refer to characteristics of the observer, target, or situation; processes, which refer to the

particular mechanisms by which empathic outcomes are produced; intrapersonal

outcomes, which refer to cognitive, affective, and motivational responses produced in the

observer that are not necessarily manifested in overt behavior toward the target; and

interpersonal outcomes, which refer to behavioral responses directed toward the target.

One critical feature of this model is that it considers both cognitive and affective

outcomes to be part of empathy.

Because of its breadth and versatility, in this chapter I will use the model as a

framework for selectively presenting and discussing past and current work on the general

topic of empathy. At the conclusion of the chapter I will also offer some suggestions

regarding promising areas for future research. To begin, however, let us consider in more

detail the various elements contained within this model.

Empathy: An Organizational Framework

Antecedents

The first component of this framework encompasses antecedent factors—features

of the observer, target, or the situation that may influence in some way the subsequent

empathy episode.

The observer. All observers possess certain characteristics that have the potential

to influence the empathy episode. One of these is the biological capacity for empathy-

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related processes and outcomes. Almost all members of our species possess these

capabilities, although sometimes serious deficiencies do occur in the ability to imagine

other perspectives (e.g, autism) or to experience compassion for distressed others (e.g.,

sociopathy). Of more importance for the purposes of this chapter are the individual

differences that exist in non-clinical populations in the tendency to engage in empathy-

related processes or to experience empathic outcomes. A variety of individual difference

measures have been developed over the years for the purpose of assessing the

dispositional tendency to engage in empathy-related processes such as perspective taking

(e.g., Hogan 1969) or to experience empathy-related affective responses (e.g., Mehrabian

& Epstein 1972). Of special note here are individual differences in the tendency to

experience two particular affective reactions to the distress of others. Specifically, the

tendency to experience feelings of sympathy for a person in distress, and the tendency to

experience personal unease in such cases, are especially important antecedent

characteristics that have considerable relevance for social interactions.

The situation. All responses to another person, whether cognitive or affective,

emerge from some specific situational context, and these contexts vary along certain

dimensions. One such dimension is the strength of the situation, defined as its power to

evoke an emotional response from observers. For example, a situation that includes a

clear display of negative emotion by a weak or helpless target is particularly able to

engender powerful observer emotions, and would be classified as a “strong” situation. In

contrast, situations lacking such evocative emotional cues would be characterized as

relatively weak. A second situational feature is the degree of similarity between the

observer and target. Although similarity is of course affected by characteristics of the

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observer, it is really a joint function of the target and observer, and is thus considered a

feature of the situation.

Processes

The second major construct within the framework consists of the specific

processes that generate empathic outcomes in the observer. Based on the work of

Hoffman (1984), and Eisenberg (Eisenberg et al. 1991), the model identifies three broad

classes of empathy-related processes, chiefly distinguished from one another by the

degree of cognitive effort and sophistication required for their operation. In a sense, it is

potentially misleading to characterize these processes in terms of dimensions like

“cognitive” and “affective”. It is really the outcomes of these processes that can be more

clearly identified in this way, and each process is capable of producing both cognitive

and affective outcomes. However, given the clear differences in the level of cognitive

sophistication required for their operation, it seems reasonable to use this dimension to

describe these three broad classes.

Noncognitive processes. Some processes that lead to empathic outcomes require

very little cognitive activity. The apparently innate tendency for newborns to cry in

response to hearing others cry, which Hoffman (1984) refers to as the primary circular

reaction, is one example. Another noncognitive process is motor mimicry, the tendency

for observers automatically and unconsciously to imitate the target. Although early

conceptions of mimicry viewed it as a somewhat deliberate strategy for "feeling into" the

other (e.g., Lipps 1903), more recent approaches (e.g., Hoffman 1984; Hatfield,

Cacioppo, and Rapson, 1994) have treated it as a relatively automatic, largely

noncognitive process.

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Simple cognitive processes. In contrast, other processes require at least a

rudimentary cognitive ability on the part of the observer. Classical conditioning is an

example; if an observer has previously perceived affective cues in others while

experiencing that same affect (perhaps because both observer and target are

simultaneously exposed to the same unpleasant stimulus), then the affective cues of

targets may come to evoke that emotional state. Similar processes of comparably modest

sophistication—direct association (Hoffman 1984) and labeling (Eisenberg et al. 1991)

—have also been proposed.

Advanced cognitive processes. Finally, some processes require rather advanced

kinds of cognitive activity. One example is what Hoffman refers to as language-

mediated association, in which the observer's reaction to the target's plight is produced by

activating language-based cognitive networks that trigger associations with the observer's

own feelings or experiences. For example, a target who says "My manuscript has been

rejected" may exhibit no obvious facial or vocal cues indicating distress, but an observer

may respond empathically because her relevant memories (perhaps of an especially

undiplomatic review) are activated by the target's words. Eisenberg et al.’s (1991)

elaborated cognitive networks refer to a very similar process. The most advanced

process, however, and the one that has received the most empirical attention, is role

taking or perspective taking: the attempt by one individual to understand another by

explicitly imagining the other's perspective. It is typically considered an effortful

process, involving both the suppression of one's own egocentric perspective on events

and the active entertaining of someone else's.

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Intrapersonal Outcomes

The model’s third major construct deals with intrapersonal outcomes—the

cognitive, affective and motivational responses of the observer that result from exposure

to the target. These outcomes are thought to result primarily from the various processes

identified at the previous stage in the model.

Cognitive outcomes. One cognitive outcome is interpersonal accuracy, the

successful estimation of other people's thoughts, feelings, and characteristics; typically,

such interpersonal judgments have been viewed as resulting to a considerable degree

from role-taking processes (e.g., Dymond, 1950). Empathy-related processes have also

been implicated in affecting the attributional judgements offered by observers for targets'

behavior (e.g. Regan and Totten, 1975). More recently, perspective taking has been

linked to changes in the cognitive representations that perceivers form of targets—in

particular, the degree to which these representations resemble the cognitive

representations of the self (Davis et al. 1996).

Affective outcomes. This category consists of the emotional reactions experienced

by an observer in response to the observed experiences the target, and is further

subdivided into two forms: parallel and reactive outcomes. A parallel emotion may in a

sense be considered the prototypical affective response: an actual reproduction in an

observer of the target's feelings. This sort of emotional matching has clearly been the

focus of several historical approaches (Spencer 1870; McDougall 1908). Reactive

emotions, on the other hand, are defined as affective reactions to the experiences of others

that differ from the observed affect. They are so named because they are empathic

reactions to another's state rather than a simple reproduction of that state in the observer.

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One response clearly falling into this category is the feeling of compassion for others

referred to variously as sympathy (Wispe 1986), empathy (Batson 1991), and empathic

concern (Davis 1983); another example would be personal distress, the tendency to feel

discomfort and anxiety in response to needy targets.

Motivational outcomes. A third category of intrapersonal outcomes, somewhat

related to the second, are motivational states produced in the observer by empathy-related

processes. For example, forgiveness is often conceptualized as a transformation of

motivation toward a transgressing partner in which desires for revenge are reduced and

desires for reconciliation are increased (McCullough, Worthington, and Rachal 1997).

More generally, empathic processes have also been linked to increased motivation to

value the other’s outcomes (Batson et al. 1995).

Interpersonal Outcomes

The final construct in the model encompasses interpersonal outcomes, defined as

behaviors directed toward a target that result from prior exposure to that target. The

outcome that has attracted the most attention from empathy theorists and researchers is

helping behavior; both cognitive and affective facets of empathy have long been thought

to contribute to the likelihood of observers offering help to needy targets. Aggressive

behavior has also been linked theoretically to empathy-related processes and dispositions,

with the expectation that empathy will be negatively associated with aggressive actions.

The effect of empathy on behaviors that occur within social relationships—a topic that

has only recently begun to attract consistent research interest—also falls into this

category.

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Research Evidence Relevant to the Model

It should be apparent from this brief overview that this model aspires to

incorporate most, if not all, of the social psychological research carried out in the name of

empathy. Thus it is well-suited for use as an organizing device, and in this section I will

selectively discuss past and contemporary research on empathy, using the organizational

model as a framework. The goal will be to provide some sense of the history of research

efforts in each area, but to also highlight some of the most interesting and provocative

lines of research currently underway.

Antecedents

As Figure 1 suggests, there are several ways to think about the antecedents of

empathic processes and outcomes. At one level, explanations may focus on the inherent

human capacity for empathic responding, and therefore grapple with the issue of why

such capacities would evolve in humans at all. At another level, explanations may focus

on our dispositional tendencies to utilize the capacities we possess. Finally, explanations

focusing on empathy as it occurs within specific situations must examine features of both

the particular setting and of the individuals involved. At each level of analysis, of course,

it will be important to carefully distinguish among the various kinds of cognitive and

affective processes and outcomes.

Evolutionary origins of empathy. The idea that an empathic capacity may have its

roots in humans’ evolutionary history has been around for some time. The earliest

impetus for such thinking came from theoretical attempts to reconcile altruistic behavior

with evolutionary theory. Self-sacrificing behavior, which on the surface seems

incompatible with the notion that we are all engaged in a struggle for survival, has been

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found in many species, and has been explained by such additions to evolutionary theory

as inclusive fitness (Hamilton 1964), genetic similarity theory (Rushton, Russell, and

Wells 1984), and reciprocal altruism (Trivers 1971). Each of these approaches accounts

for altruistic behavior by arguing that the genes contained within an individual “benefit”

from behavior that increases their survival chances. This holds true even if we are talking

about identical genes residing in others—especially close relatives. Thus, a genetic

tendency to offer help—even costly help—to those who share our genetic makeup can be

evolutionarily advantageous.

Empathy comes into this discussion because of the need for some proximate

mechanism to produce altruistic behavior. It is one thing to say that genes "for" altruism

produce altruistic behavior, which in turn leads to greater survivability for those genes in

the population. However, the altruistic behavior is still undertaken by the individual

organism and not the gene; some mechanism must exist within that individual—between

the gene level and the behavioral act—to prompt the individual to act against its own

short-term interest. Hoffman (1978) has made the case for empathy’s role by arguing

that any mechanism responsible for producing altruism in humans must be reliable, but

also flexible. That is, it should not be so automatic in operation that behavior could not

be modified as a result of environmental conditions. In particular, the mechanism should

allow the behavior to be affected by judgments regarding costs to the individual and

benefits to the recipient(s). Thus, Hoffman argues that what must have been selected for

during evolution was a biologically-based predisposition to act altruistically, but one that

was still subject to control by cognitive processes. In his view, empathy, defined as a

vicarious affective response to the experiences of others, meets these criteria. This

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analysis therefore suggests that the empathic response selected for by eons of

evolutionary pressure is the sharing of negative affect.

Individual differences in empathy. Another way to think about the antecedents of

empathy is to focus on individual differences in empathy-related constructs—that is, the

degree to which individuals possess the ability and/or the motivation to think, feel, or act

in an empathic fashion. Several approaches have been taken in attempts to measure these

differences. One early and influential technique was that of Dymond (1950), who

defined empathy in terms of the accurate transposition of the self into the thinking,

feeling, and acting of others. Thus, her method consisted of assessing the accuracy with

which observers could estimate how targets describe themselves on trait rating scales.

Unfortunately, high levels of accuracy in this technique can result from several different

factors, most of which have nothing to do with empathy (Cronbach 1955; Gage and

Cronbach 1955). Once this was recognized, this method rapidly fell from favor.

The most widely used contemporary measure based on a cognitive definition of

empathy is no doubt Hogan's (1969) empathy scale, which was developed based on a

definition of empathy that emphasized the intellectual attempt to imagine another’s point

of view without experiencing any affective response. The 64-item scale is made up of

items drawn from other psychological instruments (e.g., the MMPI, and the CPI). Just as

Hogan’s scale is the most widely used measure employing a purely cognitive definition

of empathy, the Questionnaire Measure of Emotional Empathy (QMEE; Mehrabian and

Epstein 1972) has been the most widely utilized instrument adopting an affective

definition. The QMEE was designed explicitly to assess the chronic tendency to react

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emotionally to the observed experiences of others. Its 33 items assess the likelihood of

experiencing such affective responses in a variety of contexts.

In addition to those instruments based on cognitive or affective definitions of

empathy, one measure based explicitly on a multidimensional view of empathy has also

been developed. The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis 1980, 1983) takes as its

starting point the notion that empathy consists of a set of separate but related constructs,

and seeks to provide measures of dispositional tendencies in several areas. The

instrument contains four seven-item subscales, each tapping a separate facet of empathy.

The perspective taking (PT) scale measures the reported tendency to spontaneously adopt

the psychological point of view of others in everyday life. The empathic concern (EC)

scale assesses the tendency to experience feelings of sympathy and compassion for

unfortunate others. The personal distress (PD) scale taps the tendency to experience

distress and discomfort in response to extreme distress in others. The fantasy (FS) scale

measures the tendency to imaginatively transpose oneself into fictional situations. In

recent years the IRI has become increasingly popular, and in the sections that follow

some of the research using this instrument will be mentioned.

Characteristics of the situation. A third approach to the question of antecedents

has been to focus not on the empathizer but on characteristics of the situation—in

particular the target, or the relationship between the target and observer. Much less

systematic study has been devoted to this approach, and the issue that has received the

most study is probably the degree of similarity between observer and target.

Early investigations of this question tended to support the link between similarity

and empathic responding (Krebs 1975; Stotland 1969; Stotland and Dunn 1963). For

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example, Krebs (1975) manipulated observer-target similarity and found that observers

who believed they were similar to the target displayed heightened skin conductance and

vasoconstriction when the target appeared to receive shocks; they also reported feeling

worse during the procedure. However, not all investigations have supported the notion

that similarity produces affective reactions in observers (Gruen and Mendelsohn 1986;

Marks, Penner, and Stone 1982). Most recently, Batson et al. (2005) found in two studies

that observer-target similarity produced no reliable increase in reported sympathy for a

distressed target. Given the somewhat inconsistent prior evidence for the role of

similarity in producing affective responses, Batson et al. interpret the results of their

investigations as consistent with the view that similarity does not have the impact on

empathic processes and outcomes that is often supposed.

Processes

The second major component of the organizational framework is concerned with

the processes that take place within an observer during an empathy episode—in short, the

actual mechanisms that bring about changes in thoughts, emotions, or behavior. It is

possible to identify a number of such processes that vary in terms of the cognitive

complexity required for their operation (see Figure 1). To date, however, there has been

considerable variation in the degree to which these processes have been studied, and

some have received almost no systematic investigation at all. Two of these processes,

though, have generated a considerable literature.

Motor mimicry. Motor mimicry refers to the fact that observers often imitate

(usually unconsciously) a wide variety of behaviors observed in others. This tendency

appears early in life—infants will imitate the facial expressions of adults (Meltzoff and

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Moore 1977)—and does not seem to abate over the life span. Indeed, adults have been

shown to mimic not only the facial expressions of their interaction partners, but also body

posture, gestures, and vocal characteristics (see Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson 1992 for

a fuller description).

What implication does such mimicry have for empathy-related outcomes? One

possibility is that it allows observers to more accurately infer targets’ internal states, and

in fact Lipps (1903) and Titchener (1909) both argued that such imitation was at the heart

of our ability to “feel into” another person. In recent years, however, research has

focused less on the issue of accuracy, and more on delineating how mimicry can lead

observers to experience emotional responses similar or identical to those of the target.

One approach has been taken by Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson (1992, 1994),

who have termed this general phenomenon emotional contagion. In order for such

emotional contagion to occur, two separate processes must unfold. First, it is necessary

that observers mimic the behavior of targets, and second, that this mimicry produce in the

observers an emotional state that parallels that of the targets. Evidence for the first

process (mimicry) is plentiful, as noted above. In addition, considerable research

supports the conclusion that this mimicry of others produces in observers emotional states

consistent with the observed affect (e.g., Adelmann and Zajonc 1989).

Recent work by neuropsychologists has begun to identify the neural mechanisms

that may underlie these processes. Evidence suggests that humans, along with other

primate species, possess specialized neurons that are activated both when we engage in a

certain action (for example, grasping a tool) and when we simply observer that action

carried out by someone else (Gallese 2003). Because these “mirror neurons” respond in

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the same way whether an action is carried out by the self or other, the implication is that

we are in a sense primed for behavioral mimicry. Preston and DeWaal (2000) have

argued that the fundamental mechanism underlying empathy is this Perception Action

Mechanism (PAM)—a biological tendency, when observing the state of another, to

automatically activate one’s internal representations of that state, which in turn generates

autonomic and somatic responses in the observer.

Given the considerable evidence that mimicry can produce parallel emotional

states in observers, what is the effect of this emotional synchrony between observer and

target? The most socially important outcome seems to be greater feelings of rapport

between the target and observer—variously operationalized as feeling “in step”, involved,

or compatible with the other person. LaFrance (1979), for example, found that when

participants in an interaction had greater liking for one another they also displayed

greater posture similarity. Chartrand and Bargh (1999) manipulated mimicry by having

confederates mimic (or not) the physical actions of their partner during a 15-minute

interaction; those in the mimicking condition reported greater liking for the confederate

and a stronger perception that the interaction had gone smoothly. Most recently, van

Baaren et al. (2004) found that people who have been mimicked during a brief interaction

are more willing later to help not only the mimicker, but unrelated individuals as well.

Thus, growing evidence supports the view that the net effect of emotional synchrony is to

increase feelings of closeness with, and goodwill toward, other people.

Although the ubiquity and automaticity of mimicry suggests that it is part of our

biological heritage, it also appears that mimicry is more likely for some people and in

some situations. Chartrand and her colleagues have found that mimicry is at least

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sometimes more likely among individuals who are high in self-monitoring (Cheng and

Chartrand 2003), who have a field-dependent cognitive style (Van Baaren et al. 2004), or

who come from a culture with a more interdependent construal of self (van Baaren et al.

2003). In addition, Bavelas et al. (1987) have found that mimicry is more frequent and

pronounced when observers are aware that the targets will perceive the mimicked

expressions, a pattern consistent with the view that one purpose of mimicry is to direct an

affective message to the target. Thus, although mimicry appears to frequently occur

outside of conscious awareness, it may also be sensitive to more strategic concerns.

Perspective taking. At the other end of the continuum of cognitive sophistication

is perspective taking: the deliberate attempt to imagine the internal state of another

person. Historically, the concept of perspective taking may be traced back at least to

Smith (1759), and somewhat more recently to Mead (1934), who argued specifically for

the importance that role-taking ability has in allowing humans to effectively perform in

society. According to Mead, perspective taking allows us to overcome our usual

egocentrism, tailor our behaviors to others' expectations, and thus make satisfying

interpersonal relations possible. The capacity to engage in role taking has also been

theoretically linked to the development of moral reasoning (Kohlberg 1976), altruism

(Batson 1991; Eisenberg and Miller 1987), and a decreased likelihood of interpersonal

aggression (Feshbach 1978; Richardson et al. 1994). In each of these cases the ability to

entertain the psychological point of view of other people is said to result in some

outcome that elevates—relative to one's own self-interest—the interests of the other

person.

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The empirical evidence gathered by social psychologists over the past 35 years

has been broadly consistent with this theoretical view. In particular, research has

convincingly documented two fundamental phenomena that result when an observer

actively attempts to entertain the perspective of another person. First, perspective taking

makes the observer more likely to offer causal attributions for the target's behavior that

resemble the target's own—that is, attributions that emphasize situational factors relative

to dispositional ones (e.g., Regan and Totten 1975). In essence, active role taking has the

effect of reducing or eliminating the usual actor-observer difference (Jones and Nisbett

1971). Second, when observers engage in perspective taking while exposed to a needy

target, their affective reactions also change. In general, role-taking observers become

more likely to experience two affective states: feelings of sympathy and compassion for

the target (e.g., Batson et al. 1989), and feelings of personal unease and distress (e.g.,

Betancourt 1990). Thus, consistent with theory, empirical investigations also support the

view that perspective taking provides a kind of "favored" status to the person whose

perspective is being taken; observers explain the target's behavior in a way that resembles

explanations for the observers’ own behavior, and observers are more likely to experience

emotions congruent with the target's own.

In addition to the large number of studies that have examined the consequences of

perspective taking, in recent years modest but increasing attention has been given to the

actual mechanisms underlying perspective taking. In short, what do people do when they

attempt to imagine another’s perspective? One approach to this question can be seen in

Karniol’s (1986) model that describes perspective taking as a process by which people

choose and employ “transformation rules” in order to move from observable behaviors

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and reactions by a target to an inference about the target’s internal states. These rules

reflect different ways that observers access and use existing knowledge to make such

predictions. Karniol and Shomroni (1999) predicted and found that high school students

high in dispositional perspective taking made use of a greater variety of transformation

rules when attempting to imagine the perspective of a dissimilar target.

It also appears that not all forms of perspective taking are alike. For example,

Batson, Early, and Salvarani (1997) have demonstrated that what may appear to be

relatively small differences in perspective-taking instructions can produce significantly

different outcomes in observers. They instructed some observers to “imagine how the

target feels” before exposing them to a distressed target, and instructed others to “imagine

how you would feel” in the target’s situation. Compared to a control condition, both

instructional sets produced increased levels of sympathy for the target. However, the

“imagine self” instructions also produced an increase in personal discomfort that the

“imagine target” instructions did not. Clearly, something was different about the

cognitive processes engendered by these two instructional sets. Davis et al. (2004)

further demonstrated that these two sets also produce different kinds of thoughts in

observers: those receiving imagine-self instructions report more self-related thoughts

than target-related thoughts, while those receiving imagine-target instructions display the

reverse pattern.

As with the research on mirror neurons, recent work by neuropsychologists has

also begun to identify specific structures associated with perspective taking. Evidence

suggests that the brain activity that occurs when imagining another person’s point of view

is different from the activity that accompanies imagining one’s own perspective:

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imagining another’s perspective is associated with increased activity in the right inferior

parietal lobe and the frontopolar cortex, while taking one’s own perspective increases

activity in the somatosensory cortex (Ruby and Decety 2003, 2004). Thus, it appears that

both mimicry and perspective taking—empathic processes that vary considerably in their

cognitive complexity—are reliably associated with specific neural structures.

Intrapersonal Outcomes

The next component in the organizational framework consists of intrapersonal

outcomes, defined as changes within the observer that result from exposure to the target.

These outcomes may in turn contribute to overt behavior toward the target, but they do

not necessarily have this effect. There are at least three distinguishable categories of such

outcomes: cognitive, emotional, and motivational.

Cognitive outcomes. A variety of cognitive outcomes have been linked to

empathic processes. Taking the perspective of a target, for example, has been found to

alter the type of causal attributions that observers make for the target’s behavior,

generally leading observers to make attributions for the target that mirror the kind of

attributions observers usually make for their own behavior (e.g., Regan and Totten 1975).

In recent years, perspective taking has also been found to influence the cognitive

representations that observers form of targets, and again, the effect of perspective taking

is to lead observers to construct representations of the target that more closely resemble

their own self-representations (Davis et al. 1996; Galinsky and Moskowitz 2000).

However, the cognitive outcome that has received the most attention is

undoubtedly interpersonal accuracy, the degree to which the observer comes to have an

accurate knowledge of the target. This is certainly an important outcome, and a desire for

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such accuracy is probably the primary reason that observers attempt to imagine the

target’s perspective in the first place. Early research in this tradition often attempted to

identify the characteristics of “good judges”—that is, highly accurate observers. It

typically assessed accuracy by having observers estimate how targets would evaluate

themselves on a series of trait rating scales. Unfortunately, this method for assessing

accuracy had some significant problems, and with the publication of several critiques of

this method, especially that of Cronbach (1955), things came to a rather abrupt halt. The

problem was that accuracy in the rating scale method is made up of several different

constructs, some of which seem to be the result of judge and/or target response sets (for

example, a tendency to use the midpoint of the rating scale) rather than any kind of

empathic transposition. As a result, accuracy scores based on this method contain an

unknown amount of statistical confounding.

With increases in methodological sophistication, however, there has been a

growing realization that accuracy can be studied in ways that avoid the problems

described by Cronbach (e.g., Funder 1987; Kenny and Albright 1987). As long as the

undesirable components of accuracy can be removed from the total accuracy score, or

eliminated through the use of other techniques, it is possible to assess accuracy in a

meaningful way. The result of this realization has been a growing number of studies that

address interpersonal accuracy in a methodologically sound fashion.

Perhaps the most intriguing research in this modern tradition is Ickes’ empathic

accuracy (EA) paradigm (Ickes 1997, 2003). Ickes et al. (1990) reported the first use of

this interesting and relatively naturalistic procedure. Mixed-sex dyads made up of

unacquainted undergraduates were secretly videotaped during a six-minute period as they

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sat waiting for an experiment to "begin". Later each participant separately viewed the

tape and systematically indicated the specific thoughts and feelings that s/he recalled

having at specific points throughout the six-minute period. Finally, the participants

individually viewed the tapes a second time, with the experimenter stopping the tape at

every point where their dyad partners had reported having a specific thought or feeling;

the subjects then estimated their partners' thoughts/feelings at each point. Accuracy was

indexed by the frequency with which subjects were able to successfully estimate the

dyad-partner's thoughts and feelings. This basic technique has now been used in

numerous investigations, both by Ickes and his colleagues, and by independent

researchers (see Ickes 2003 for a review). Observers in these investigations consistently

exceed chance accuracy levels, and there appear to be reliable individual differences in

performance.

Where does this accuracy come from? The evidence from a number of

investigations suggests two possible answers. The first is that accuracy results from the

observer and target having some shared knowledge and experience. For example, EA

studies often find evidence for an “acquaintance effect” such that dyads made up of

friends or romantic partners display greater accuracy than dyads made up of strangers

(e.g., Stinson and Ickes 1992). Although accuracy is certainly possible when predicting a

stranger’s responses, greater levels of EA are more likely when predicting someone with

whom you have shared prior experiences.

The second answer is that EA is to a considerable degree the result of a strong

motivation to be accurate. For example, Klein and Hodges (2001) found that the EA of

observers can be enhanced by offering monetary incentives for better performance.

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Graham and Ickes (1997) have also found that men and women typically display

equivalent accuracy levels—unless attention is called to the nature of the task so that

women see it as relevant to the female sex role (e.g., more socially sensitive). In these

cases women outperform men, suggesting that the improved performance is due to

increased motivation to do well. On the other side of the coin, Simpson, Ickes, and

Blackstone (1995) found that in certain circumstances (e.g., when one’s dating partner is

interacting with an attractive member of the opposite sex), the motivation to be accurate

is diminished, and as a result accuracy declines.

Affective outcomes. Although the study of cognitive outcomes—especially

accuracy—has a long history, recent years have seen a greater emphasis on the affective

changes that exposure to a target can produce in an observer. One type of emotional

response to a target is to experience parallel affect, and a substantial number of

investigations have examined potential influences on such responses. As it turns out, we

have already considered one important mechanism by which parallel responses are

generated—motor mimicry. As noted earlier, considerable evidence supports the notion

that mimicry produces a convergence of affect between observers and targets.

Another empathic process described earlier—perspective taking—has also been

linked with parallel affective responding. In this research role taking has typically been

manipulated by providing observers with instructional sets explicitly directing them to

adopt the psychological perspective of the target. Two variants of these instructions, both

initially developed by Stotland (1969), have been commonly employed: imagine-self and

imagine-the-other instructions. Most investigations employing either of these

instructional sets also include a "control" set that directs the observer to simply observe

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the target carefully, noting and remembering audio or visual details with as much clarity

as possible.

Both types of perspective taking instruction seem to increase parallel responding.

Stotland (1969), for example, exposed observers to a target undergoing a diathermy

(heat) treatment described as either painful or pleasurable. Observers receiving either

instructional set exhibited more arousal than control subjects—albeit on different

physiological measures—when the treatment was thought to be painful. Aderman and

colleagues (Aderman 1972; Aderman, Brehm, and Katz 1974) found that imagine-self

observers were more likely to experience affect consistent with a distressed target.

Batson et al. (1989; Study 3) provided observers with imagine-the-other or control

instructions and then exposed them to an audiotaped depiction of a female college student

trying to support her family following the death of her parents; those attempting to

imagine the other's feelings reported more sadness than did the control subjects.

There is another kind of affective reaction as well. In contrast to parallel

emotions, reactive emotional responses do not match those of the target, but are in some

sense a reaction to the target’s situation. While this in theory could encompass a wide

variety of emotions, practically speaking only two reactive responses have received much

sustained research attention. The first of these is empathic concern—the other-oriented

emotional response of compassion for the target; the second is personal distress—the

self-oriented response of discomfort and anxiety to another’s misfortune (Davis 1994).

Most of the investigations examining empathic concern's antecedents have

focused on role taking, and have used instructions to induce a role-taking set toward the

target. Moreover, virtually all of the studies have employed one type of instruction: the

23

imagine-the-other instructional set. Following delivery of the instructional set, subjects

in these studies were typically exposed to a target in some distress. One frequently used

target is "Katie Banks", originally introduced by Coke et al. (1978). In this paradigm

subjects listen to an audiotape in which the plight of a young college student—Katie—is

described. Following the recent death of her parents, Katie is struggling to support her

younger brother and sister while finishing school. After listening to this tape, participants

typically complete a questionnaire containing the empathic concern items. Other

commonly used paradigms have exposed observers to targets who were injured in an auto

accident, who were experiencing college-related stress, who needed volunteers for a

research project, or who were receiving painful electric shocks (see Batson 1991). The

vast majority of these investigations, whether using "Katie Banks" or some other target,

have found imagine-the-other instructions to produce significantly greater feelings of

sympathy for the target than control instructions.

The other reactive emotional response to have received substantial research

attention is personal distress. Because contemporary theorizing has so frequently focused

on the contrasting motivational properties of empathic concern and personal distress,

almost every study explicitly addressing the antecedents of personal distress has

simultaneously examined empathic concern as well; thus, many investigations mentioned

in the previous paragraph on empathic concern also address the issue of personal distress.

One consequence of this is that virtually the same experimental procedures and targets

have been employed in investigations of both affective states. In contrast to the pattern

found for empathic concern, however, the effect of these instructions on feelings of

personal distress is not quite as reliable. As Davis (1994) noted at the time that he

24

reviewed this literature, imagine-the-other instructions produced heightened empathic

concern in over 80% of the investigations, but had such an effect on personal distress

only 50% of the time.

Motivational states. A third intrapersonal outcome of empathy-related processes

is some change in the motivational state of observers—that is, in their internal desires,

needs, and concerns. In some ways, of course, this outcome resembles the previous one

—affective states—because of the link that often exists between emotion and motivation.

How are the two to be distinguished? One important difference between them, at least

insofar as this chapter is concerned, is that motives and emotions frequently operate at

somewhat different levels of specificity, with motivations typically being more general

and emotions more specific. For example, the presence of a given motive (e.g., a general

need for achievement) might give rise to a variety of specific emotional states (e.g.,

satisfaction following success; shame following failure).

One example of an empathy-mediated effect on motivation comes from the

burgeoning literature on forgiveness. The past decade has seen an increasing amount of

attention paid to this important interpersonal phenomenon (e.g., Enright, Gassin, and Wu

1992; McCullough, Pargament, and Thoresen 2000). Although a variety of definitions

have been advanced, one influential approach is that of McCullough et al. (1997), who

define forgiveness as a set of motivational changes characterized by lowered desires to

retaliate against and maintain estrangement from an offending relationship partner, and a

heightened desire for conciliation. Thus, forgiveness at its heart is a set of changes in the

motivations of the offended party.

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What is empathy’s role? McCullough et al. (1997) have proposed a model that

identifies empathic concern for the transgressor (which they simply term “empathy”) as

the most important cause of forgiveness following a transgression. Only to the extent

that wronged parties feel empathic concern (perhaps as a result of an apology by the

transgressor) do they experience a motivational change that replaces desire for revenge or

estrangement with a wish for reconciliation. Considerable recent evidence supports this

model. In a pair of investigations, McCullough et al. (1997) found that feelings of

empathy, as hypothesized, were associated with greater forgiveness for a transgressor;

moreover, forgiveness was then associated with less avoidance and greater conciliation.

McCullough et al. (1998; Study 4) reported similar findings in an investigation that

examined two distinct behavioral responses to being wronged by another: avoidance and

revenge. Feelings of empathy for the transgressor were associated with decreased

motivation for both behaviors. In a sample of Italian married couples, Fincham, Paleari,

and Regalia (2002) found the same pattern: more tolerant attributions for a partner’s

misbehavior led to feelings of empathy, which in turn led to increased forgiveness.

Finally, in a pair of longitudinal studies, McCullough, Fincham, and Tsang (2003)

repeatedly queried individuals for weeks after they suffered an interpersonal

transgression. In both studies, empathy at the time of the transgression was significantly

related to immediate forgiveness but was much less likely to predict additional

forgiveness over time. Thus, it may be that empathic concern has its greatest effect on

the motivation to forgive in the immediate aftermath of another’s misbehavior.

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Interpersonal Outcomes

The endpoint in the organizational model is an overt behavioral act by the

empathizing individual. Unsurprisingly, much of the past research on empathy has

consisted of attempts to discover which empathy-related antecedents or processes are

reliably associated with specific behavioral outcomes. A number of such outcomes

have been studied over the years, but these can largely be subsumed by three categories:

helping behavior, aggression, and a more general category of social behavior. By far the

most-studied of these areas is the first.

Empathy and helping. The evidence is convincing that a dispositional tendency to

engage in perspective taking—the relatively non-emotional facet of empathy—is

associated with greater helpfulness (Eisenberg and Miller 1987). However, most recent

attempts to examine the empathy/helping connection have focused on the more clearly

affective elements in the organizational framework.

One way that empathically-created affect can lead to helping is straightforward.

If seeing another in distress leads observers to experience parallel affect, and if that

affect is experienced as unpleasant, then helping may result simply to reduce this

undesirable state. Because the ultimate goal in such a sequence is to improve the well-

being of the observer, such helping seems clearly egoistic. This logic underlies a variety

of social psychological theories of helping; one good example is the negative state relief

(NSR) model (Cialdini, Darby, and Vincent 1973; Cialdini and Kenrick 1976).

Another mechanism by which empathy-related affect can lead to helping is not

through parallel emotions but through some form of reactive affective response. In

particular, considerable research has investigated the role of empathic concern in

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promoting helping behavior. Batson (1991) has been the primary advocate of this

approach, and has made the argument that helping motivated by feelings of empathic

concern (simply termed “empathy” in his approach) may be considered truly altruistic—

that is, not motivated by any desire to reduce one’s own distress, or to enhance one’s own

well-being. In a set of studies, Batson and colleagues attempted to demonstrate the

existence of altruistic helping by constructing an experimental design that contrasts the

effects of a truly altruistic motivation with those of an egoistic arousal reduction

motivation. To do so, they made use of the hypothesized difference in importance to

these motivations of the ease or difficulty of escape.

Consider for a moment an observer who is experiencing a high degree of personal

distress while in the presence of a needy target. The observer’s high level of aversive

arousal creates in her a motivation to reduce it. If physically escaping from the situation

is difficult for some reason, then this high level of arousal will probably lead her to help

as a means of eliminating the source of the arousal; on the other hand, if escape from the

situation is easy, then she may well choose that option instead. The behavior resulting

from this egoistic motivation depends, therefore, on the ease or difficulty of escape. In

contrast, consider a situation in which the observer is predominantly experiencing

empathic concern for the target. In this case the ease or difficulty of escape is irrelevant

to her goal of reducing target distress; as a result, she is likely to help whether escape is

easy or difficult. If this logic is correct, and feelings of personal distress and empathic

concern really do produce, respectively, egoistic and altruistic motivational states, then an

experiment producing the four conditions displayed in Table 1 should produce levels of

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helping that conform to the 1 vs. 3 (personal distress/easy escape vs. all other

combinations) pattern depicted there.

Insert Table 1 here

This is precisely the pattern that has emerged in number of studies (Batson et al.

1981; Batson et al. 1983; Toi and Batson 1982). In each of these investigations a

comparison was made between subjects predominantly experiencing empathic concern

and those predominantly experiencing personal distress. In some cases these emotional

reactions were produced through experimental manipulations and in others the

predominant emotional response was simply assessed via questionnaire. In every

instance the observers who were experiencing empathic concern provided relatively high

levels of help, regardless of ease of escape. Observers who were primarily experiencing

personal distress displayed the predicted sensitivity to the ease of escape manipulation;

when escape was difficult they helped at the same level as those experiencing empathic

concern, but when escape was easy the level of helping dropped dramatically.

Importantly, this pattern held up over a variety of different need situations. Based on

these investigations, a convincing case can be made that empathic concern and personal

distress are two distinctly different affective reactions, that the motivation associated with

personal distress is clearly egoistic in nature, and that the motivation associated with

empathic concern is not.

This conclusion is not universally accepted. Cialdini and colleagues in particular

have argued that the helping associated with empathic concern is in fact egoistic and thus

does not constitute evidence for “true’ altruism (Cialdini et al.1997; Maner et al. 2002).

The crux of their argument is that the same factors that cause feelings of empathic

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concern in observers (e.g., perspective-taking instructions; relationship closeness) will

often engender self-oriented states as well. In particular, they argue that one such state is

a feeling of shared identity or “oneness” with the target. This sense of oneness in a way

constitutes a merging of self and other, and this “confusion” of self and other means that

actions carried out to help the target are in a sense carried out to help the self, and are

therefore egoistic in nature. Maner et al. (2002) conducted a study explicitly designed to

evaluate this possibility, and reported results supporting their arguments—feelings of

empathic concern were associated with greater helping for a needy target, but this

association disappeared once the effects of more egoistic states, including oneness, were

controlled.

One other recent approach to the question of empathy and helping merits

discussion. The kind of helping that often occurs in the laboratory research cited thus far

is spontaneous and unplanned, with the opportunity to help typically coming without

warning. In such research the focus is usually on single acts that take place in response to

the presence of a clear and present victim. However, a tremendous amount of helping

does not occur in this fashion. Community volunteering, for example, often represents a

long-term commitment rather than a single act, and the decision to volunteer is not

typically made spontaneously, but as a result of careful and deliberate thought.

Consequently, the initiation and maintenance of volunteer activity may be governed by

different variables than those that control spontaneous single acts of helping.

To examine this issue, Omoto and Snyder (1995) studied volunteerism using an

approach they termed the “volunteer process model”—a framework that conceives of

antecedent factors (characteristics of the volunteer or the volunteer setting), volunteer

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experiences such as satisfaction or integration into the volunteer organization, and

consequences of volunteering such as persistence, or attitude change. Using a sample of

AIDS volunteers, Omoto and Snyder found that personality measures of a “helping

disposition” (nurturance; empathic concern) were not directly related to greater

persistence, but were related to higher satisfaction with one’s volunteer work and to

greater integration into the volunteer organization. Greater satisfaction, but not

integration, was in turn positively associated with longer persistence as a volunteer.

Penner and Finkelstein (1998) also evaluated the volunteer process model, again making

use of a sample of AIDS volunteers. Like Omoto and Snyder, Penner and Finkelstein

found that at least one measure of the helping personality (other-oriented empathy)

displayed positive associations with volunteer satisfaction, although these associations

were not consistently significant. As in the earlier study, volunteer satisfaction was

positively, albeit modestly, related to greater persistence.

Using a slightly revised version of the volunteer process model, Davis Hall, and

Meyer (2003) studied community volunteers during their first year of service. Volunteers

were contacted at four times during their this year and queried regarding their emotional

reactions (sympathy; distress) and satisfaction. Consistent with the revised model,

feelings of sympathy and distress were substantially predicted by antecedent factors,

especially dispositional empathic concern and the emotional intensity of the work itself.

Also consistent with the revised model, volunteer involvement (number of hours per

week volunteered) was predicted by satisfaction, although volunteer persistence over

time was not. These findings, as well as others (Bekkers 2004; Stolinski et al. 2004)

strongly and consistently implicate one empathy-related construct in particular: the

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dispositional tendency to experience empathic concern for needy targets. This

disposition was associated in each investigation with at least one important aspect of the

volunteer experience.

Empathy and aggression. The role of empathy in reducing aggressive behavior

has not received the same degree of research attention as the empathy-helping link, but

has nonetheless prompted some investigation. There are at least two primary

mechanisms by which empathy can regulate hostile and/or aggressive behaviors. The

first possibility is that observers’ emotional responses to the distress of others may lessen

their likelihood of aggressing against those others. This might happen, for example, if

observing the victim’s distress cues leads to a sharing of the victim’s distress. To escape

this vicarious distress, the aggressor stops or reduces the aggression (e.g., Feshbach

1964). Victim distress cues can also produce the reactive emotion of empathic concern in

perpetrator-observers, and these feelings of sympathy may then lead the observer to stop

or reduce the aggression (Miller and Eisenberg 1988). In both cases, however, it is the

observers’ affective response that is responsible for inhibiting aggression. Evidence

reviewed by Miller and Eisenberg (1988) suggests that for adults there is in fact a reliable

association between dispositional emotional empathy and aggressive behavior. Across

the nine studies using adult samples included in that review, greater dispositional

empathy was for the most part reliably associated with less aggressive behavior. Studies

conducted since that time (Davis 1994; Richardson et al. 1994) have found a similar

pattern.

The second mechanism by which empathy might reduce the occurrence of

aggressive actions is through the process of perspective taking. That is, adopting the

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point of view of a person who acts in a potentially provoking way may lead to a more

tolerant perception of that person’s actions, which can consequently reduce the likelihood

that retaliation will occur. A number of studies have examined this possibility and found

evidence consistent with it.

Davis and Kraus (1991) reported, in two samples of adolescent and pre-adolescent

boys, a significant negative correlation between dispositional perspective taking and their

self-reported number of fights and arguments over the previous two years. Two

investigations (Richardson et al. 1994; Richardson, Green, & Lago 1998) examined the

link between dispositional perspective taking and actual verbal aggression in a laboratory

setting and found evidence that high perspective takers were less likely to retaliate

against opponents who had mildly provoked them; this held true even if the opponents

increased the magnitude of their provocation across trials. Finally, in some interesting

recent work, Giancola (2003) examined the effect of provocation, alcohol consumption,

and dispositional empathy (both perspective taking and empathic concern) on actual

aggression (administering electric shocks). Using a sample of “healthy social drinkers”,

he found that alcohol increased aggressive responding, but that this was especially true

for those who were lowest in dispositional empathy. Thus, not only does perspective

taking seem to make hostile responding less likely in general, it may also serve a

buffering function by diminishing the harmful effects of other variables such as alcohol

consumption. It should also be noted here that some of the effects of perspective taking

on aggression may be due to emotional responses produced by taking the perspective of

the provoker. Given the well-documented links between perspective taking and

emotional reactions, it is likely that affective states such as empathic concern and

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personal distress often accompany perspective taking, and that they mediate—at least to

some degree—the apparent influence of perspective taking on hostility.

Empathy and social behavior. The idea that social intercourse is significantly

influenced by the capacity for empathy is certainly not new. Smith (1759/1976) and

Spencer (1870) both argued that important social consequences flow from our tendency

to "sympathize" with others' experiences--that is, to share a "fellow-feeling" with them.

Theorists with a decidedly more cognitive view of empathy (Mead 1934; Piaget 1932)

also hold that possessing such a capacity will improve the social climate. What both

approaches have in common, though perhaps more clearly with regard to the role-taking

argument, is the recognition that empathy in some guise is necessary to help us deal with

the fundamental obstacle in social life: namely, other people. Because other people

commonly have needs, desires, and goals that differ from our own, and because the

attainment of their goals is frequently incompatible with ours, a powerful tendency

toward conflict is inherent in all social life, resulting in high levels of conflict and

disagreement. Or, more accurately, the result can be such a conflict-filled existence if no

mechanism—such as empathy—is available to interrupt this sequence. Over the past two

decades, the possible role of empathy within social relationships has been examined in a

variety of ways.

One approach has been to examine the association between dispositional empathy

and overall relationship satisfaction, and several studies have adopted this strategy

(Fincham and Bradbury 1989; Franzoi, Davis, and Young 1985; Long and Andrews

1990; Rusbult et al. 1991). Although the precise pattern of results varied somewhat from

study to study, each investigation found at least some significant positive association

34

between perspective taking and satisfaction for at least one member of the romantic

relationship, and often for both. Thus, taking your partner’s perspective—or having a

partner who takes yours—is associated with greater personal satisfaction with the

relationship.

Another approach to the question of empathy’s role in social relationships has

been to consider its influence on specific behavioral patterns that occur within

relationships. One such pattern is the use of a considerate social style, defined here as

displaying tolerance, cooperation, active support for others, and a general lack of

egocentrism in thought and deed—characteristics that all reflect sensitivity to the other

person’s needs and desires. Four studies using college populations have examined

associations between dispositional empathy and measures of a considerate style. Davis

and Oathout (1987; 1982) had college students report the frequency with which they

engaged in a number of considerate behaviors toward their romantic partners, including

“warmth” (acting in affectionate and supportive ways), and “positive outlook” (being

friendly, positive, and dependable). In both studies dispositional empathic concern was

significantly and positively related to both kinds of behavior; although the pattern was

not as consistent, dispositional personal distress was generally related to considerate

behavior significantly but negatively. Trobst, Collins, and Embree (1994) measured

college students’ dispositional empathy and also assessed their willingness to offer social

support to both friends and strangers; in both cases dispositional empathic concern was

related to offering more support. Thus, the evidence suggests that empathic concern is

positively and substantially related to a considerate style, and that personal distress is

more weakly and generally negatively associated with such a style.

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The Rusbult et al. (1991) investigation cited earlier approached this question from

a slightly different angle, through their focus on accommodation in close relationships.

Rusbult et al. assume that when one partner in a close relationship behaves badly, the

initial impulse of the other partner is typically to retaliate. In many instances, however,

such retaliation never takes place; instead, the wronged party inhibits the immediate

impulse and instead acts in a constructive fashion, perhaps ignoring the transgression or

treating it as only a minor annoyance. Rusbult et al. (1991) term this constructive

reaction accommodation, and it seems reasonable to consider it part of the considerate

social style. Rusbult et al. presented subjects with a series of hypothetical destructive

acts that could be committed by one's partner (e.g., criticizing you), and asked them to

report their most likely response to such acts. The tendency to make accommodating

responses was most powerfully influenced by the subjects' commitment to the relationship

—those more committed to the relationship were more likely to accommodate. Above

and beyond the effect of commitment, however, a greater self-reported tendency to take

the partner’s perspective was also associated with greater accommodation.

Another positive behavioral pattern is good communication, and several studies

indicate that dispositional empathic concern has a constructive effect on social

relationships. One set of studies (Davis and Franzoi 1986; Franzoi and Davis 1985)

examined the link between high school students’ dispositional empathy and self-

disclosure to peers; personal distress was not related, but empathic concern for both male

and female students was significantly and positively related to disclosure to females. In

two investigations mentioned previously, Davis and Oathout (1987; 1992) asked college

students about the degree to which they “opened up” and “readily listened” to their

36

romantic partner. For both men and women, empathic concern scores were significantly

and positively associated with higher scores on this communication index; for women

only, personal distress scores were negatively associated.

What Next?

This somewhat selective presentation of past and contemporary empathy research

provides an overview of the current state of the field, at least as it is typically studied by

social psychologists. Based on the picture that has emerged, I would like to conclude this

chapter by offering some suggestions regarding two interesting and potentially important

directions for future empathy research.

Studying Perspective Taking For Its Own Sake

Perspective taking occupies a central place within the empathy framework. It has

long been recognized as a uniquely important cognitive skill—and in fact, some

approaches have essentially equated perspective taking with empathy. Even those who

have favored an affective definition of empathy have seen perspective taking as one of

the most important methods for inducing such emotional responses. However, one fact

that becomes apparent when examining previous research is that the focus has almost

exclusively been on perspective taking as a means to an end. That is, most research by

contemporary social psychologists has been interested in perspective taking, either

measured as a disposition or situationally induced, because of its ability to influence

some other phenomenon in which they were more interested: causal attributions,

affective states, helping, accuracy in person perception, forgiveness, and so on. There is

nothing wrong with such a strategy, but as a consequence, surprisingly little attention has

been devoted to the study of perspective taking per se.

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As mentioned previously, however, there has recently been an increased interest

in such questions. Batson et al.’s (1997) work comparing the effects of imagine-self and

imagine-target instructional sets on observers’ affective responses, and Davis et al.’s

(2004) work examining the effect of such sets on self-reported thoughts, both place more

focus on perspective taking as a process of interest for its own sake. Davis (2005),

moreover, has argued for an even more systematic approach to the study of perspective

taking based on identifying its essential constituents. In particular, he has argued that

perspective-taking attempts all have some aim (what the observer is trying to achieve),

information used (the particular kind of information used in the perspective-taking

attempt), process employed (the particular process or processes used in the attempt), and

outcome (the end result of the perspective-taking attempt). Thinking about perspective

taking in such a systematic way leads to some interesting questions. Here are three.

First, is taking the perspective of others in everyday life “natural”? In other

words, is our usual response to adopt the point of view of other people (to empathize with

them, in the broadest terms), or does this kind of response usually require some kind of

additional prompt from the environment? Very preliminary evidence suggests that at

least when faced with someone not too dissimilar, the kinds of thoughts that naturally

occur are very similar to those that result when explicitly instructed to imagine the

target’s point of view (Davis et al. 2004). In fact, the results of that investigation

suggested that it may take the presence of empathy-inhibiting instructions to disrupt the

“default” thought pattern. The finding that neural structures predispose us to respond to

the activities of others as though we had performed the activities ourselves is also

tantalizingly consistent with the notion that we are in a sense “primed” to empathize.

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However, given the near-total absence in empathy research of the truly “neutral”

instruction condition employed by Davis et al, there is little research yet that allows an

evaluation of this question. Thus, it is far too early to conclude that empathizing is our

default orientation.

Second, and relatedly, is perspective taking as effortful a process as is typically

assumed? Virtually all theoretical accounts of perspective taking conceive of it as a

controlled, effortful process (Hoffman 1984; Eisenberg et al. 1991), especially as

compared to other empathy-related processes like mimicry. Although this assumption is

plausible, it is also possible that the matter may not be so simple. In the one investigation

to date that has explicitly addressed this question, Davis et al. (1996) found evidence that

while some effects of perspective-taking instructions were reduced or eliminated by the

presence of a competing task, not all were. (Finding that some mental process is

diminished by the presence of a competing task suggests that the process in question is

effortful, requiring some mental resources.) Specifically, evidence from that

investigation indicated that the general tendency to ascribe a greater number of traits to a

novel target was increased by perspective-taking instructions, and that the presence of a

competing task eliminated this effect. The specific tendency to ascribe self-related traits

to the target was also increased by perspective taking, but it is not clear that this tendency

was reduced by the presence of a competing task. Thus, one interesting possibility is that

perspective taking may involve a family of different responses to the target—some

intentional and some not, some effortful and some not—and that these responses may

have different effects on later outcomes.

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Finally, a third potentially useful avenue for future research is to distinguish

between the intended and unintended effects of perspective taking. This refers to the fact

that when considering the history of social psychological research on perspective taking,

it turns out that to a considerable degree what social psychologists have studied for the

past three decades are really the unintended effects of perspective taking. That is, when

we explicitly consider the aim of most perspective-taking efforts, it is clear that what is

being sought by the observer is usually some kind of accuracy. What observers desire is

some better insight into the internal state of targets—their thoughts, or motives, or goals.

However, when social psychologists have studied the consequences of perspective

taking, a huge proportion of this work has had nothing to do with this kind of accuracy.

Dozens of investigations have been carried out to determine the effect of perspective

taking on observers’ emotional reactions, attributions, helping behavior, aggression,

stereotype use, and so forth. As interesting and important as all of these phenomena are,

they are also not typically the aim of real-world observers. Although it is not impossible

that such observers sometimes have aims such as “behaving less aggressively” or

“reducing stereotype use” when they engage in perspective taking, it seems more likely

that their usual goal is to gain some accurate insight into the target.

This somewhat surprising realization leads to some interesting questions. To take

just one example, how frequently do people engage in perspective taking for their own

accuracy-oriented reasons but end up with some unintended consequence instead? For

example, can an observer take the target’s perspective in order to defeat him in a

negotiation, and instead begin to experience sympathy, or an increased sense of oneness

with that target? For those with a taste for the ironic, this is a very interesting possibility;

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in fact, hints of it may be seen in some research by Batson and his colleagues (Batson et

al. 1997), in which observers who were led to take the perspective of an unsavory target

(e.g., a convicted murderer) came to hold more favorable attitudes—not only toward that

particular target, but toward the entire stigmatized class to which he belongs! It seems

likely in this case that these more tolerant attitudes toward murderers as a class were an

unintended outcome of perspective taking; whether this also happens in more natural

settings remains to be seen, but the possibility seems worthy of examination.

The Practical Uses of Empathy

A second promising avenue for future research is in some ways the opposite of

the first. In addition to studying empathy-related processes like perspective taking for

their own sakes, there is a value in also making a more careful study of what might called

the practical uses of empathy. An example of this kind of approach can be seen in the

work described earlier on empathy and volunteering. This research has typically

examined community volunteers within their organizational settings, and has sought to

answer such practical questions as why people volunteer in the first place, what they seek

and what they obtain from their work, what determines their satisfaction with the

volunteer experience, and what affects volunteer persistence over time. All of these are

questions of considerable practical importance for organizations that make heavy use of

volunteers, and continued efforts in this area hold much value.

Another practical issue that seems ripe for serious attention is the question of

empathy training. Given the widely recognized importance of empathy in many walks of

life, one long-standing assumption has been that it is possible to develop methods for

increasing empathic responding—however this may be defined. Thus, programs have

41

been designed to increase the empathy of widely varying populations—psychiatric

patients (Lomis and Baker 1985), delinquents (Pecukonis 1990), bullies (Eslea and Smith

1998), parents (Gordon, 2003), along with many others.

What has not yet been done is to subject such programs to a systematic and

rigorous examination in an effort to determine what works and what doesn’t. This task

will not be easy. Training attempts have been carried out in so many different ways,

using so many different definitions of empathy, with so many different goals, and with so

many different populations, that simply organizing them in a meaningful way will be a

considerable undertaking. However, the benefits of such an effort could also be

considerable. It seems likely, for instance, that a systematic review will reveal some

forms of empathy training, or some components of such training, to be relatively

ineffective; it is to be hoped, however, that others will turn out to be generally effective,

at least under some circumstances. Such an identification of successful empathy

training’s “active ingredients” will be of tremendous importance for those designing,

implementing, or funding such programs.

Conclusion

Empathy occupies a strategically crucial location in modern social psychology; it

lies at the border that separates the individual from the other, ego from alter. The

capacity to set aside egocentric concerns and entertain the point of view of other people

provides a kind of bridge that links otherwise isolated persons; it allows those separate

entities, at least for a time, to share thoughts, feelings, and goals. This sharing makes

possible some of the most admirable human activities, those that raise our motivations

from the purely selfish to the selfless, and that give us the occasional opportunity to

42

display a true nobility of purpose. The possession of such empathic capacities does not,

of course, ensure such nobility--evidence of that is all too obvious. Our capacity for

other-oriented thinking and acting, however, makes it possible, and this makes the study

of empathy and related phenomena a most worthy one for sociologists and psychologists

alike.

43

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Table 1. Batson's experimental design: The effect of empathic emotion and ease of

escape on helping behavior

Predominant

Emotional Response

Personal Empathic

Distress Concern

Easy Escape Help

Ease of

Escape

Difficult Help Help

58

Figure Caption

Figure 1. Organizational model of empathy-related constructs

59