Abstract
Social empathy, the ability to understand people from different socioeconomic classes and racial/ethnic backgrounds, with insight into the context of institutionalized inequalities and disparities, can inspire positive societal change and promote social well-being. The value of teaching social empathy and creating interventions that promote social empathy is enhanced by the ability to measure and assess it. This article provides a validation of the Social Empathy Index, a tool that practitioners can easily use to assess individuals’ levels of interpersonal and social empathy. An exploratory factor analysis was used to validate the instrument and confirm the conceptual model for social empathy.
Highlights
In a community lecture in 2004, Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor, shared his insights regarding times when empathy and social caring transformed society, such as the civil rights movement in the 1960s
Item reduction activities based on a priori theory about social empathy began with subscale reliability analysis
Further analysis that included examination of zero-order correlations between items, and correlations between items and their intended subscale mean scores provided further evidence supporting deletion of the four items identified in the reliability analysis, as well as others that appeared to be problematic
Summary
In a community lecture in 2004, Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor, shared his insights regarding times when empathy and social caring transformed society, such as the civil rights movement in the 1960s. He viewed these points in time as few and far between. In The Audacity of Hope (2006) President Obama wrote about the importance of empathy Referring to his colleague Senator Paul Simon, Obama wrote, “That last aspect of Paul's character—a sense of empathy—is one that I find myself appreciating more and more as I get older. The authors refer to the mechanism that enables such a society as social empathy
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