Measuring Empathy in the 21st Century: Development of an Empathy Index Rooted in Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Social Justice

Abstract

Instruments currently being used to measure empathy do not reflect the recent neuroscientific scholarship on mirror neurons and the importance of self-awareness and emotion regulation in experiencing the fullest extent of empathy. The authors describe a theoretical framework for the initial development and pilot application of an empathy self-report instrument, the Empathy Assessment Index (EAI). The EAI is based on a comprehensive definition of empathy that is rooted in social cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, and social work's commitment to social justice. The authors present reliability, concurrent validity, and data reduction and refinement results from the first administration of the index. Four of the five EAI subscales had excellent internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Three subscales were tested for concurrent validity. The exploratory factor analysis identified six factors that explained over 43% of the variance. KEY WORDS: affective response; emotion regulation; empathic attitudes; empathy; self-awareness ********** Recent breakthroughs in neuroscience, particularly social cognitive neuroscience, have given social scientists unprecedented opportunities to observe and attempt to measure various aspects of human thought, feeling, and behavior (Doidge, 2007). Among these psychological phenomena is empathy. The importance of empathy for effective social work practice is commonly accepted within the profession (Hepworth, Rooney, Rooney, Strom-Gottfried, & Larsen, 2006; Shulman, 2009) .Twenty-first century technology has allowed neuroscientists to demonstrate that empathy can be empirically observed and quantified (Jackson, Brunet, Meltzoff, & Decety, 2006; Lamm, Batson, & Decety, 2007; Schulte-Ruther, Markowitsch, Shah, Fink, & Piefke, 2008). Zaki, Weber, Bolger, and Ochsner (2009) conducted one of the first studies to cross-check and validate the correlation between three different empathy-related phenomena: (1) the subjective experience of people telling an emotional autobiographical story, (2) the empathic response of people watching the storytellers, and (3) the brain activity of the story viewers. This study suggests that brain activity can be used as an empirical measure of affective sharing and cognitive processing and that accurate empathy may be physically differentiated from projection or other emotional reactions. Such research can enrich our ability to cultivate greater empathy in social workers and their clients. As all the social sciences reorient themselves to accommodate the mounting empirical evidence of the brain's neuroplasticity (Rakio, 2002) and the interpersonal neurobiology of empathy, we would like to help open social work research to a richer, more multifaceted examination of empathy. Most social workers do not have access to technologies like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machines, nor do they have sufficient funds for expensive and labor-intensive neurological workups of themselves or their clients. In an ideal world, social workers would have a reasonably accurate, affordable, and user-friendly way of quantifying empathy that incorporates new findings from social cognitive neuroscience. We believe the best initial approach is the development of a self-report index that can be tested and validated by ongoing correlation of phenomenological observation, self-report responses, and specific brain activity. The findings reported in this article represent a first step toward that end. We describe a theoretical framework for the initial development and pilot application of an empathy self-report instrument, the Empathy Assessment Index (EAI). The EAI is based on a comprehensive definition of empathy that is rooted in social cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, and social work's commitment to social justice. Finally, we present reliability, concurrent validity, and data reduction and refinement results from the first administration of the index. …