Is it really empathy? The potentially confounding role of mental imagery in self-reports of empathy

Abstract

Empathy refers to an individual’s responses to the experiences of others. We hypothesised that mental imagery is related to self-reported empathy if assessed with verbal empathy questionnaires or vignettes and that this association disappears when visual tests are used. In study 1, we examined the association between imagery vividness and empathy in a large-scale sample (N = 2,232) using the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. In study 2, we used an experimental extreme group approach, contrasting the responses of participants with aphantasia (=imagery-absence) (N = 112) and controls (N = 120) to pictorial and parallelised verbal scenarios. Both studies confirmed that mental imagery ability is positively associated with empathy when verbal material is used but not when visual material is used.