Abstract
This study aimed to revise the Chinese version of the Basic Empathy Scale for college students. The cluster random sampling method was used to select 805 college students from two universities to conduct confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, reliability analysis, and an independent samples t-test. The confirmatory factor analysis model illustrated that the two-factor model failed to fit the data, and the two-factor model with methodological effect was finally accepted. Therefore, the questionnaire exhibits a strong methodological effect among Chinese college students which requires further study. Emotional and cognitive empathy had a significant positive correlation with gratitude and Internet altruism behavior, which showed good convergent validity. The gender difference test revealed that the emotional empathy level of girls was significantly higher than that of boys. The revised Basic Empathy Scale showed acceptable reliability and validity.
Highlights
Empathy is a combination of cognitive ability and emotional response, the ability or tendency to perceive other people’s feelings and emotional states (Chen and Shi, 2007). Gladstein (1983) proposed two main types of empathy: cognitive and emotional
The corrected item-total r refers to the correlation coefficient between the score of each item and the total score of each item that remains in the subscale
The total item r refers to the correlation between the item and the total score of the corresponding subscale
Summary
Empathy is a combination of cognitive ability and emotional response, the ability or tendency to perceive other people’s feelings and emotional states (Chen and Shi, 2007). Gladstein (1983) proposed two main types of empathy: cognitive and emotional. Empathy is a combination of cognitive ability and emotional response, the ability or tendency to perceive other people’s feelings and emotional states (Chen and Shi, 2007). College students experience a critical period of transition from adolescence to adulthood. Their low empathy levels could characterize psychological problems, such as autism, alexithymia, and depression. Swart et al (2009) found that college students with high levels of alexithymia scored poorly on firstlevel emotional tasks, which indicates a deficiency in their ability to understand other people’s emotions. It is clear that empathy has an important positive effect
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