Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students Over Time: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

The current study examines changes over time in a commonly used measure of dispositional empathy. A cross-temporal meta-analysis was conducted on 72 samples of American college students who completed at least one of the four subscales (Empathic Concern, Perspective Taking, Fantasy, and Personal Distress) of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) between 1979 and 2009 (total N = 13,737). Overall, the authors found changes in the most prototypically empathic subscales of the IRI: Empathic Concern was most sharply dropping, followed by Perspective Taking. The IRI Fantasy and Personal Distress subscales exhibited no changes over time. Additional analyses found that the declines in Perspective Taking and Empathic Concern are relatively recent phenomena and are most pronounced in samples from after 2000.

Is utilitarian sacrifice becoming more morally permissible?

“…At the outset, we suspected that processes of secularization (Norris & Inglehart, 2011) and declining empathic concern (Konrath, O'Brien, & Hsing, 2011) might be driving change, since the opposition to welfare trade-offs has been resoundingly attributed to religious and affective prohibitions on intentional harm. Although we replicated declines in self-reported empathy and religiosity, these effects were smaller than changes in moral judgment.…”

“…Meanwhile, a meta-analysis of seventy-two administrations of the same measure among United States college students (Konrath, O'Brien & Hsing, 2011) revealed a general decline in empathic concern between 1979 and 2009. These changes may be expected to correspond to increasing support for utilitarian sacrifice because dispositional empathy predicts opposition toward personal harm (Gleichgerrcht & Young, 2013;Patil & Silani, 2014).…”

(Re)Counting Meaningful Learning Experiences: Using Student-Created Reflective Videos to Make Invisible Learning Visible During PjBL Experiences

“…The opportunity to inquire into the impact that dead zones have had on their own communities allowed student participants to personally empathize with the situation. According to a meta-analysis that includes 14,000 college student participants over the course of 30 years, Konrath, O'Brien, and Hsing (2011) asserted that the need for developing an empathetic lens is even more crucial today because the technology-driven society appears to have contributed to an increase in narcissistic perspectives of our youth. As Greene (1995) has stated from a social change perspective, it is important for individuals to be among the crowd and then be able to look inside one's self to develop personally relevant meaning.…”

Can Text Messages Make People Kinder?

“…When people are more motivated because there is a chance to gain a financial reward, they can more accurately infer others' emotional states (Ickes & Simpson, 2008;Klein & Hodges, 2001). Moreover, temporal trends in dispositional empathy over the past 30 years suggest that it can be shaped by broad sociocultural factors (Konrath, O'Brien, & Hsing, 2011).…”