Measurement of Empathy in the General Population

Abstract

Some of the instruments that have been developed to measure empathy in children and adults, and used by researchers other than their own authors, are briefly described. The three that have been used most often in medical education and health care research are Hogan’s Empathy Scale, Mehrabian and Epstein’s Emotional Empathy Scale, and Davis’s Interpersonal Reactivity Index. These instruments were developed for administration to the general population; therefore their relevance to the context of health professions education and patient care is limited for two reasons. First, as the content of the items in the three instruments implies, none is framed in the context of physician-patient (clinician-client) relationships. Thus, the validity of their use in that context is questionable. Second, the three instruments were not developed specifically to address the cognitively defined concept of empathy, a conceptualization that is more relevant and desirable in the context of patient care. The biotechnological advancements in functional brain imaging and the recent discovery of the mirror neuron system have opened up a new window for assessing empathy that is extremely promising. Given the findings that empathy tends to erode during medical and other health professions education, and in an era of changes in the health care system that hamper the clinician-patient relationship, a psychometrically sound instrument for measuring empathy in the context of health professions education and patient care is in high demand.