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Empathy present and future
Abstract
The empathy concept has central significance for social and personality psychology and in many other domains, including neuroscience, clinical/abnormal psychology, and the health professions. However, the current diversity in conceptual and operational definitions, and the promiscuous use of the term "empathy," threaten the ability of researchers to advance the field. The present article provides a quantitative review and conceptual analysis of empathy definitions and usages by examining 393 studies published between 2001 and 2013, and 96 studies published in 2017. We document the prevalence and diversity of definitions, as well as inconsistencies between conceptual definitions and measurements employed. We discuss ways to refine the conceptualization and operationalization of the empathy construct, including for many purposes, bypassing the term empathy in favor of lower-level construct labels that more precisely describe what is actually being measured. In many cases we see no added theoretical or empirical value in applying the term empathy.
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“Mixed findings might be due to the jingle-jangle fallacy, whereby different definitional constructs of cognitive (or affective) empathy have been measured and conflated across different studies (38).”
From Empathy at the heart of darkness: empathy deficits that bind the dark triad and those that mediate indirect relational aggression. (2019) · cites this paper as [38]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Hall, J. A., & Schwartz, R.
- Affiliations
- Northeastern University (US)
- VA Palo Alto Health Care System (US)
- Corresponding author
- Hall, Judith A.
- Venue
- The Journal of Social Psychology
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2018-06-18
- Volume
- 159
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 225-243
- ISSN
- 0022-4545 (ISSN-L)
- 1940-1183
- OpenAlex
- W2804479262
- Semantic Scholar
- 5885633e02245aa7d604009189865c194b763ff5
- Cited by
- 370
- References
- 109
- Citations by year
- 2026: 45 · 2025: 55 · 2024: 80 · 2023: 53 · 2022: 61 · 2021: 39 · 2020: 22 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 3
- FWCI
- 2.89
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Journal of Social Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Empathy and Medical Education
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Emotions and Moral Behavior
- Keywords
- empathy, construct validity, measurement discrepancy, conceptual analysis
- MeSH terms
- Empathy, Humans, Terminology as Topic, Psychology, Social
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