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This study examined the relationships between selected context variables and empathic ability. The specific purpose was to determine the relative strengths of association between intimacy, status difference, trust, and empathic ability. A correlational analysis was applied to the data collected from 29 pairs of supervisors and subordinates in a Denver financial organization. Results indicated that trust was the context variable most strongly associated with empathic ability. Intimacy and status difference were only slightly related to empathic ability. Discussion centered on the implications of the inverse relationship between trust and empathic ability.Empathic ability has been studied systematically since the late 1940s by researchers in psychology, social psychology, counseling psychology, and sociology (Dymond, 1948;Cronbach, 1955;Hobart & Fahlberg, 1965). These early studies explored empathy in terms of its empirical components. More recently, empathic ability has become the concern of practitioners in rehabilitation centers, half-way houses, crisis control programs, and other community projects where the empathizing process is an integral part of constructive communication.Speech communication scholars (Berlo, 1960;Dance, 1967;Barnlund, 1970; Miller, 1972) have stressed the importance of investigating the process nature of human communication. The emphasis placed on process by these scholars suggests that the study of interpersonal communication through empathic ability should focus on context variables that measure characteristics of the interaction situation and should not be limited to investigations relating empathic ability to organismic variables which measure characteristics or traits of individuals in the interaction situation. Therefore, the present research sought to determine how empathic ability operates within a freely occurring communication situation by investigating the relationship between selected context variables and empathic ability. The specific purpose was to determine the relative strengths of association of intimacy, status difference, and trust with empathic ability. METHOD