Effects of teaching empathy online: A randomized controlled trial.

Abstract

which involves understanding another individual's emotions, is often a subject of psychology courses and is a characteristic that counseling and other health professions programs aim to instill in students (e.g., Bell, 2017;Gerdes & Segal, 2011). The purpose of this study was to test whether brief, online training could increase empathy. The training focused on how to identify emotions in others, how to feel the emotions of others, and how to express empathy. The training included written instruction, models, video and auditory materials, quizzes to test comprehension, practice online, feedback, and assigned practice in natural settings. One hundred eighteen adults, mostly university students, entered the study. The participants completed measures of empathic responses and perspective taking at baseline and at the end of training. An analysis of covariance showed significantly higher empathic responses in the experimental group after training, compared with the waiting list group, F(1, 78) ϭ 9.33, p ϭ .03, Hedges' g ϭ 0.66. A 2-month follow-up assessment with members of the training group showed that they maintained a significant improvement in empathic responses from baseline. We interpret the results to mean that brief online training can increase scores on a measure of empathy.

Teaching empathy to mental health practitioners and trainees: Pairwise and network meta-analyses.

“…A meta-analysis of online instruction in higher education has reported comparable effect sizes to traditional/in-person learning, suggesting that the method of delivery may not matter for effective instruction; Hattie, 2015). Little research has examined online empathy training, but preliminary findings for empathy and related constructs are promising (Rodrigues et al, 2021; Sentas et al, 2018; Sokolovic et al, 2022). Therefore, if the online setting becomes increasingly utilized, it will be important to examine the best format for training empathy (e.g., face-to-face, hybrid, synchronous vs. asynchronous).…”

“…This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. TEACHING EMPATHY TO MENTAL HEALTH PRACTITIONERS Sentas et al, 2018;Sokolovic et al, 2022). Therefore, if the online setting becomes increasingly utilized, it will be important to examine the best format for training empathy (e.g., face-to-face, hybrid, synchronous vs. asynchronous).…”

The optimal application of empathy interventions to reduce antisocial behaviour and crime: a review of the literature

“…Mindfulness interventions find positive empathy outcomes for six and eight-week courses (Gur & Yilmaz, 2020;Leppma & Young, 2016), and elsewhere, brief 15-minute mindfulness courses are found to increase empathy (specifically for students and adults with low conscientiousness and extraversion personality traits) (Winning & Boag, 2015) . Further evidence exists for short courses; a 15-30-minute online empathy intervention (combined with homework exercises) with adults significantly improved empathic responses with a medium effect size, and furthermore, improvements remained stable at a two-month follow up (Sentas et al, 2018). Of key importance, in the context of mindfulness interventions, effect sizes between intervention and empathy outcome are moderated by the extent of post-intervention application and home-based practice and rehearsal of learnt mindfulness techniques (MacLean et al, 2020).…”

Towards Enhancing Empathy Through Emotion Augmented Remote Communication

“…Traditional approaches include didactic training (e.g., a facilitatorled class focused on concepts and best practices) [33] [22] and online tutorials (e.g., multimedia resources illustrating hypothetical situations and advice on how to handle them) [37] [21]. The effectiveness of such approaches has nonetheless proven limited, especially due to their disconnect from learner's real life context.…”