3.1 Does everyone agree what empathy is?
Empathy is something which is studied by a wide range of different academic disciplines, including philosophy, psychology and areas of the arts too, so it is perhaps unsurprising that there are quite a range of definitions, although all tend to share a common focus.
A book written by a philosophy academic referred to empathy as ‘using our imaginations as a tool so as to adopt a different perspective in order to grasp how things appear (or feel) from there’ (Matravers, 2017, p. 1). A different philosophy scholar states: ‘I propose that empathy be conceptualized as a complex, imaginative process through which an observer simulates another person’s situated psychological states while maintaining clear self–other differentiation’ (Coplan, 2011, p. 40). Suzanne Keen, a professor of English, refers to it as ‘a vicarious, spontaneous sharing of affect’, also suggesting that in empathy ‘we feel what we believe to be the emotions of others’ (Keen, 2006, p. 208).
Psychologists tend to separate out empathy as having elements that are cognitive (i.e. to do with thinking) and elements that are emotional, and tend to view both aspects as being skills or abilities. Bal and Veltkamp (2013) define empathy as ‘a cognitive and intellectual ability to recognise the emotions of other persons and to emotionally respond to other persons’ (Bal and Veltkamp, 2013, p. 2). Psychologists such as Davis (1983) have designed ways in which the cognitive and emotional aspects of empathy can be measured separately using a scale such as the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. This way of measuring empathy breaks it down into four different qualities of empathy:
- the first is the personal distress scale which ‘measures “self-oriented” feelings of personal anxiety and unease in tense interpersonal settings’
- the second is the empathic concern scale which ‘assesses “other oriented” feelings of sympathy and concern for unfortunate others’
- the third is the perspective taking scale (the most clearly cognitive element of empathy) and considers ‘the tendency to spontaneously adopt the psychological point of view of others’
- the final one is the fantasy scale which ‘taps respondents’ tendencies to transpose themselves imaginatively into the feelings and actions of fictitious characters in books movies and plays’.
You might have a feeling that you vary on the different aspects of empathy that Davis outlines.
NOTE: If you want to complete the Interpersonal Reactivity Index you can do so in the next activity.
Activity 2 Empathy and me
The following statements enquire about your thoughts and feelings in a variety of situations. For each item, indicate how well it describes you on a scale from A, does not describe me well, to E, describes me very well, by choosing the appropriate letter on the scale. When you have decided on your answer, click on the appropriate letter.
For example, you may find that you are not that high on the fantasy scale (i.e. you don’t get so immersed in a book that you almost feel like you are one of the characters) but that you take the perspectives of other people, in meetings with colleagues for example, really quickly and easily.
In the text box below, reflect on your empathy scores and which of the scales you were higher or lower on. Do the results surprise you?
In the following sections you will find out what some of our crime writers think about empathy with characters.