Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 1975, Vol. 43, No. 1, 89

BRIEF REPORTS Some Personality Correlates of Empathy Hamid Hekmat University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point Amir H. Mehryar Farrokh Khajavi Laboratory of Community Psychiatry, Pahlavi University, Shiraz, Iran Harvard Medical School Since empathy is crucial in the establishment of a facilitative relationship in psychotherapy (Rogers, 1957), it becomes essential to explore personality dimensions that are important in understanding empathic functioning. In this study, Hogan's Empathy Scale (Hogan, 1969) and Lanyon's Psychological Screening Inventory (PSI; Lanyon, 1970) were given to 278 female and 167 male undergraduates attending the University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point. An empathic person as denned operationally by a high score on the Empathy Scale (Hogan, 1969) is one who possesses a keen insight, imaginative perceptiveness, and social acuity about the other person. The recently developed PSI (Lanyon, 1970) provides descriptive personality information in Alienation (Al), measuring similarity between the respondent and hospitalized psychiatric patients; Social Nonnconformity (Sn), measuring antisocial behavioral tendencies; Discomfort (Di), measuring neuroticism (anxiety); Expression (Ex), measuring extraversion; and Defensiveness (De), measuring socially desirable test responses. Both Lanyon's PSI and Hogan's Empathy Scale were demonstrated to have adequate reliability and validity (Hogan, 1969; Lanyon, 1970). Correlations with the empathy scale were as follows. For males: Al, —.26; Sn, .00; Di, —.25; Ex, .36; and De, .19. For females: Al, —.21; Sn, .04; Di, —.30; Ex, .36; and De, .20. To control the possible spurious relationship between empathy and social desirability, partial

correlations between empathy and the first four PSI variables were calculated, with defensiveness held constant. For male subjects there were significant nega-i tive correlations between empathy and alienation (r = —.24, p < .01) and empathy and discomfort (r = —.21, p

Some personality correlated of empathy.

Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 1975, Vol. 43, No. 1, 89 BRIEF REPORTS Some Personality Correlates of Empathy Hamid Hekmat University o...
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