Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine whether gender differences in empathy reflect differences in self- rated emotion, and whether they are influenced by the nature of the target of the empathy (friend or enemy). 24 men and 36 women were asked to rate how much happiness, sadness, and anger they would feel if each of ten scenarios happened to themselves, and how they would feel if it happened to a friend or enemy. Overall, women rated themselves as feeling more happiness and sadness than men, whether the event happened to themselves, or to a friend or enemy. This suggests gender differences in self-reported empathy may be due to differences in general emotional responsiveness. An empathy score was computed by subtracting, for each scenario, the rating for the other person from the rating for self. Women showed a greater difference between friend and enemy than men.
Highlights
In recent years there has been a dramatic increase in studies addressing empathy, the ability to feel and understand the thoughts and emotions of others
An empathy scale developed by Davis (1983) yields separate scores for emotional empathy and cognitive empathy, and some studies have suggested that the gender difference may be limited to the emotional concern scale (Derntl et al, 2010)
Detailed statistics for each of the ten scenarios can be found online at http://www.neiu.edu/~lruecker/empathy.htm. These results provide some limited support for gender differences in empathy but suggest that these differences are not ubiquitous, but, rather tend to occur under specific conditions
Summary
In recent years there has been a dramatic increase in studies addressing empathy, the ability to feel and understand the thoughts and emotions of others. Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004; Davis, 1983; Eisenberg & Lennon, 1983; Mehrabian, Young, & Sato, 1988; Rueckert & Naybar, 2008) This female superiority has not been found as often using other measures of empathy that are presumably more objective, leading Eisenberg and Lennon (1983) to suggest that the differences found using self-report may be due, at least in part, to demand characteristics. Results reported by Cheng, Chen, Lin, Chou, and Decety (2010) support the idea that empathic responses may differ based on the target of the empathy They found greater activation in the insula and anterior cingulate when participants saw hands and feet in painful positions and were asked to imagine that the picture depicted a loved one, compared to when they were asked to imagine that it depicted a stranger. They found this sex difference in the brain despite equal performance by
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