Abstract
The Victim Empathy Response Assessment (VERA) was developed to provide an assessment of cognitive and affective empathy in forensic services. Initial validation data using a clinical forensic sample group suggested that it was a potentially useful measure. The aim of this study was to further evaluate the validity of the VERA, with a community sample group. Data analysis supported the factor structure and high reliability identified by the authors of the measure. Some construct validity was found, but unexpectedly the forensic patients had higher empathy scores than the community control sample. The higher empathy scores among the forensic sample have important theoretical and practical implications. Important findings emerged in relation to affective and cognitive empathy and types of scenarios rated, suggesting that global measures of empathy are more related to affective than cognitive empathy and to non-crime-related scenarios.
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