Emotional Empathy in Adults By

Aliya Zahoor Roll No.976

Department of Psychology, LEADERSHIP COLLEGES NETWORK MULTAN Session 2009 - 2011

Emotional Empathy in Adults By

Aliya Zahoor
A research Report Submitted to department of Psychology in the partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Science In Psychology

Department of Psychology, LEADERSHIP COLLEGES NETWORK MULTAN Session 2009 - 2011

Emotional Empathy In Adults By Aliya Zahoor

APPROVED BY

________________ Supervisor

________________ Internal

________________ External Examiner

CERTIFICATE

It is the certified that M.Sc. research report entitled as Emotional Empathy in Adults presented by Miss. Aliya has been approved for submission to Leadership College Network.

Nuzhat Rafique Supervisor

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

By the grace of Almighty Allah I have been able to completer this research report. I pay my special gratitude to Miss Nuzhat Rafique for providing guidance and support to complete this research report. I also like to thanks my parents who not only encourage me but also provided finances to undertake this research report.

DEDICATION

I dedicated effort to my teacher, my parents and family for their abundant support and cooperation in completion of this.

ABSTRACT
Present study is aimed to investigate facets of emotional empathy in male and female adults (age20-40) for both samples. In this study it was hypothesized that female show more empathic suffering, more responsive crying and more feeling for others, as compare to the males. Whereas male show more positive sharing, more emotional attention and more emotional contagion, as compare to females. For this purpose a questionnaire by "DAVID R. CARUSO" was used. Sample for this study consisted of 60 people, among them were 30 males and 30 females. The result of T-Test indicates that there is a significant between males and females experience of emotional empathy. So our hypothesis is accepted.

TABLE OF CONTENT
Chapter-1 Chapter-2 Chapter-3 Introduction Literature Review Methodology Research Design Operational Definition Sample Instrument Procedure Chapter-4 Chapter-5 Results Discussion Limitations Suggestion References Questionnaire

CHAPTER NO.1 INTRODUCTION

Chapter No. 1

INTRODUCTION
Statement of the Problem
This statement has been tested through this research is that females show more emotional suffering, more responsive crying, and more feeling for other as compare to males. Whereas males show more positive sharing, more emotional attention, and more emotional contagion as compare to the females.

Definition of Emotional Empathy:Including a feeling for others, sympathetic reactions to their feeling and imaginative involvement in how the other person might be feeling. The empathy is define m various ways and seems to be several traditions to its study on the one hand, empathy can be defined cognitively in relation to perspective taking or understanding or understanding others. "Empathy is the intellectual or imagination apprehension of other's condition or state of mind without actually experiencing that persons feelings" in other sense empathy has been define as "emotional arousal or the sympathy in response to the feeling or experience of others." Empathy is define as the "heightened responsiveness to another emotional experience" so we can say that "empathy is the capacity for experiencing as one's own the feeling of another". Finally there is an integrative approach to the study of empathy. More recently empathy has been conceived of as a multi dimensional construct." Indulging cognitive and emotional component in his view of empathy and he believes that empathy can be best considered as asset of constructs related in that they all concern responsively to others."

Emotional Component of Empathy :In the present study of researcher focus was on the emotional component of empathy. In this study researcher have considered 6 emotional components of empathy, these are listed below. Emotional Suffering:One person emotional feeling about the other person who is in suffer for example, it a little child is treated meanly what other person will feel about child's condition. Positive Sharing:One's tendency to be moved by other's positive emotional experience characteristic of sharing other's joy. Responsive Crying:Characteristics of a person how sooner or later he cry or not in different critical situation. For example watching a sad movie a person cry or not. Emotional Attention :These are the observable acts of the individual to lead to emotional and social attention of interaction with others. Feel for others:How much some one has the characteristic of feel for others. Emotional Contagion:Appreciation of the feeling of the unfamiliar and distant other. For example a crowd is get excited while a person stand there will be get excited too? Or not?

BACKGROUND By the late I980's psychologist's evolutionary biologists, psychiatrists, computer scientists and other had identified a number of human capacities involved in identifying and understand emotion. These human capacities involved in identifying and understand emotion. These human capacities involving emotional information processing had been examine in score of research article. Mayer's 1997 suggested that emotions should study into four main parts and areas. Areas of Emotions:Perceiving Emotions Facilitating Thought Understanding Emotions Managing Emotions ^ Perceiving Emotions:The initial most basic area has to do with the non verbal reception and expression such as happiness sadness anger and fear were universally recognizable in the human beings. Emotions researchers, evolutionary biologists, specialists in non verbal behavior and other have made tremendous in roads into understanding who human being recognize and express emotions. The capacity to accurately perceive emotion in the face or voice of other provides a crucial standing point for more advanced understanding of emotion. Facilitating Thought:The second area appeared every bit as basic as the first. This way the capacity of the emotions enter into and guide the cognitive system and promote thinking. In other words some thing we respond to emotionally is some thing that grabs or attention. Having a good system of emotion input there fore should helped direct thinking

toward mattes that are truly important. As a second example for certain kinds of creativity to emerge, for example both mood swing and positive mood have been implicated in the capacity to carry out creative thought. Understanding Emotions:Emotions convey information happiness usually indicated are desire to join with other people anger indicates a desire to attack or harm others. Fear indicates a desire to escape and so forth. Each emotion conveys its own pattern of possible message and actions associated with those messages. A message of anger for example "The individual feels treated unfairly." The anger in turn might be associated with specific sets of possible actions. Peace making attacking retribution and revenge seeking or with drawl to seek calmness. Fully understanding emotions in other words in involving the comprehension of the mean of emotions with the capacity reason about those meanings. Managing Emotions:Finally emotions of fun can be managed. AS person needs to understand convey information. To the extent that is under voluntary control, a person may want to remain open emotional signal, so long as they are not too painful and block out those that are overwhelming. In between, with in the persons emotional comfort zone, it becomes possible to regulate and mange one's own and other emotion, so as to promote one's own and other personal and social goal. The mean and methods for emotional self regulation has become a topic of increasing research in this decade. Objective of study:The main objective of our study to investigation multiple facts of emotional empathy in male and female adults.

Chapter No.2 Literature Review Tn the years of 1970's different researches studied different components of emotional empathy. Important researchers are listed below. Mehrabian Research (1996) Davis Research (1993) Epstein Research (1972) Hogan Research (1969) Mehrabian updated his previous research and create a new balanced emotional empathies scale which contain 15 positively worded and 15 negatively worded items and related to a 4 (very strong disagreement to +4 (very strong agreement). Through this Mehrabian investigation Aggression and risk of violence optimism pessimism in people. Research on empathy divided conceptually at least in two major groups measuring emotional responsiveness. Hogan work also included traits such as social ascendancy even tempered disposition and humanistic socialistically attitudes. The emotional realm of empathy seems same what different frame the cognitive and its emotional domain with which are centrally concerned in this research. These are advantage that emotion based measured of empathy have in relation to other measured. These included the appropriateness of self report methodology to understand the person's subjective response and the directness of the emotional approach. Davis made a research to examine emotional empathy in adolescents and adults. He took a sample of 793 (503 were adults and 290 were adolescents)

His scale was based on 30 items. An attempt was made to include positive as well as negative emotional situation. A 5 points response scale was used, where one was "strongly disagree" and 5 was "strongly agreed." This research Davis found significant sees difference. Empathy was also found to increase same what in adolescence but not significant impact of age on empathy was noted for the adult subject Epstein made researches to investigate the tendency of emotional empathy in people, for this purpose the developed "emotional empathetic tendency scales" (EETS) to measure emotional empathy. It is consisted of 33 items which are related on 9 points (-4 to +4) scale. Hogan took a vey different approach for developing and empathy measure. Hogan research is based upon a definition of empathy which he drives from a model of moral development and defines as "the intellectual or imaginative apprehension of another's condition or state of mind without actually experiencing that person feeling". Hypothesis :Female show more empathic suffering, more responsive crying and more feeling for others as compare to males. While males show more positive sharing, more emotional attention, more emotional contagion as compare to females.

Chapter No.3 METHODOLOGY Present study was conducted to examine multiple facets of emotional empathy in male and female adults. Research Design:The present research follows the EX-POST FACTO research design. Operational Definition of Variables:Emotional empathy in adults is defined as a total score of the individual on the emotional empathy assessment instrument. Emotional empathy is refers to a cognitive awareness and understanding of emotion and feelings of another person. Sampling Strategy:Researcher had used non probability convenient sampling. Sample:Two different samples were utilized for this study, with the total of 60 subjects participathing in this research. Male Sampler-Subject were 30 adults with in range of 20-40 years of age subjects were asked to report their age, sex, qualification, name and profession from which they are belong. Subject were recruited from several sources. Following people are included in this sample such as students, doctors, bankers, lawyers and teachers. Female Sample:Female subject were 30 adults within range of 20-40 years of age. Female subjects were asked to report their name, age, sex, qualification and profession. Student, teachers, doctors, working women, house wife is also included in this sample.

Research Instrument:For this research an already constructed questionnaire by David R Caruso was use. These were 30 suitable statements "such as questions denote person who responds emotionally to others, who cries when they are sad, laugh when they are happy and feels for animals, children and so forth". There were 6 negative worded questions in the questionnaire in the order to reduce response bias, a five point response scale was used, where one was "strongly disagree" and fived was "strongly agree" statements belongs to "Empathy Serving" Five belongs to "positive sharing" three belongs crying, 4 belong to emotional. Attention and feeling for others and three belongs to "Emotional Contagion" Scoring:-There were five categories of responses against each item of the questionnaire. 1) Strongly Disagree 2) Disagree 3) Cannot make decision 4) Agree 5) Strongly Agree Procedure:People completed the 30 statements based questionnaire. They fill out questionnaire in small group or individually. Each person received answer booklet which contains all necessary instructions questions and responses. The instrument stated "Mark the responses which indicate how much u agree or disagree with each statement."

CHAPTER-4 RESULTS This chapter presents the results of the study in accordance with research hypothesis. T-Test was compute in order to check the hypothesis. Sr. No. Types of Group N X S.D T-Values Scale 1 Empathic Suffering Positive sharing Crying Males Females 2 Males Females 3 Males Females 4 Emotional Attention Feelings for Others Emotional Contagion Males Females 5 Males Female 6 Males 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 41.20 42.63 18.70 18.50 8.30 10.13 8.91 7.13 12.90 13.43 18.13 5.45 9.27 4.14 3.33 2.73 3.48 3.94 3.78 3.44 2.76 2.56 0.47 -0.58 1.22 0,80 0.22 1.18

Females

30

8.60

1.90

The calculated value falls in the acceptance region therefore the null hypothesis is accepted.

CHAPTER-5 DISCUSSION The actual aim of this study was to examine multiple facets of emotional empathy in male and female adult. It was hypothesized that females show more empathic suffering more responsive cry and more feeling for others as compare to males. While males show more positive sharing more emotional attention and more emotional contagion as compare to females. For this purpose a questionnaire by David R Caruso was used questionnaire had 30 statement. In which 6 were R question. We reversed there score sample of study was consisted of 60 people (30 males, 30 females). Result oft-test (1.18, 0.22, 0.8, 1.22, -0.58, 0.47) show that our hypothesis is accepted. We use convenient sample. In the present study we measured six different component of empathy even through research was based upon emotional view of empathy rather than on a multi dimensional view of empathy. By the result it is proved that women shows more empathic suffering more responsive crying and more feelings for others as compare to males. Whereas male show more positive sharing more emotional attention and more emotional contagion as compare to females.

11 LIMITATION 1) The sample size is short for this issue. 2) This research study is only for educate people we cannot collect data from illiterate people. 3) Specific age group is included so we cannot apply it on all age group. 4) Data is collected from specific areas of Multan. 5) The sample size was small in size and was insufficient to represent the whole population. SUGGESTIONS 1) It is noted to collect data from other areas. 2) These sample size must be increase.

REFERENCES w_ww^unh.gdu/_emQtiQanl-iteUigence/rl8k Www.unh._e_du/emotiQnal-it_e tl i gencer glossary -htm 1 wvyw .aparesearch ;co_m www.americanresearch.com httn://www.edu/emnathv-adults-dossarv.hlml www.develoDmentofemDathv.co.uk Davis (1983) journal of personality and social psychology. Mehrabian (1998) emotional empathy associated individual difference current psychology; research and review.

QUESTIONNAIRE For example if u think for the statement No.l i.e. I cry easily when watching a sad movie "strongly agree" than score it as "5" and if u "cannot make decision" than score it as "3". Plz score all the given statement in the same manner. Bio-Data Name Sex Qualification Age Profession

Sr.# 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Question I cry easily when I watch as sad movie. Certain pieces of time music can really move me. Seeing a hurt animal by the side of the road is very upsetting. I don't give other feeling much thought. It makes me happy when I see people being nice to each other. The suffering of other deeply disturb me. I get very upset when I see a young child who is being treated meanly. I always try to tune into the feeling of those around me. When I am with other people who are laughing I join them. Too much is made of the suffering of pets of animals. If some one is upset I get upset too.

Score

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 HH 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

It makes me mad to see some one treaded unjustly. 1 rarely take notice when people treat each other warmly. 1 feel happy when I see people to laugh and enjoy themselves. It is easy for me to get carries away by others people emotions. My feeling are my own and do not reflect how other feelings. If a crowd get excite about some one so I do. I feel good when I help other. I feel good when I help other. I do not cry easily. I feel others people pain. See other people smile make me smile. Being around happy people makes me smile TV or news stories about injured or sick children greatly upset me. I cry at sad of the book I read. Being around people who are depressed bring my mood down. I find it annoying when people cry in public. It hurt me see another in pain. I get a warm feeling for some one it I see them helping another person.

30

I feel other joy.