Can Empathy Help Individuals and Society? Through the Lens of Volunteering and Mental Health.

Yang Woon Chung,Jung Eun Kim,Seunghee Im

doi:10.3390/healthcare9111406

Abstract

(1) Background: Empathy affects an individual’s decision to participate in volunteering, and volunteering, in turn, influences mental health. Intriguingly, studies have been limited in exploring underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions for the relationship between empathy and mental health. Furthermore, volunteering studies have overlooked the multi-dimensionality of empathy. Therefore, this study seeks to contribute to extant literature by investigating the mediating effect of volunteering for the relationships between cognitive and affective empathy and mental health and the moderating effect of gender for the relationship between empathy and volunteering. (2) Methods; Data were collected using a survey in South Korea and consisted of 301 full-time employees who voluntarily engaged in their corporate volunteer programs. Furthermore, they voluntarily participated in the study. The hypotheses were tested with path analysis and a group comparison was also conducted. (3) Results: Volunteering was found to mediate the relationships between cognitive empathy and affective empathy with mental health. In addition, gender moderated the relationship between empathy and volunteering. (4) Conclusions: As the study found empathy to increase individuals’ engaging in volunteering activities which then improved mental health, the study supports extant theoretical frameworks on empathy and volunteering. Moreover, the study found gender differences on empathy and volunteering; thereby supporting and contributing to extant literature.

Highlights

Volunteering has become an important aspect in our lives in that it provides benefits to individuals, organizations, communities, and societies [1]
According to the conceptual framework on employee volunteering of Rodell et al [6], individual factors such as personality traits can influence an individual’s decision to participate in volunteering. They argued that personality traits can affect mental health through employee volunteering and that underlying mechanisms have been overlooked within literature
This study seeks to contribute to extant literature by investigating the mediating effect of volunteering for the relationships between cognitive and affective empathy and mental health and the moderating effect of gender for the relationship between empathy and volunteering

Summary

Introduction

Volunteering has become an important aspect in our lives in that it provides benefits to individuals, organizations, communities, and societies [1]. The most frequently investigated outcome of volunteering is mental health [3,4] as studies have found volunteering to increase psychological well-being, life satisfaction, and happiness while reducing depression, psychological distress, stress, and burnout e.g., [5]. According to the conceptual framework on employee volunteering of Rodell et al [6], individual factors such as personality traits can influence an individual’s decision to participate in volunteering. They argued that personality traits can affect mental health through employee volunteering and that underlying mechanisms have been overlooked within literature. Many of the prior studies have considered empathy as a single dimension [17], or have focused on only one particular dimension of empathy e.g., [18]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion