The Cognitive, Affective, and Somatic Empathy Scales (CASES) for Children

Abstract

Although the assessment of empathy has moved from general empathy to differentiating between cognitive and affective empathy, no instruments have assessed somatic (motor) empathy, and none have separated positive from negative affect empathy. The main objective of this study was to develop a 30-item self-report cognitive, affective, and somatic empathy scale (CASES) with positive and negative affect components for use with children and adolescents. A community sample of 428 male and female 11-year-olds completed the CASES together with validity questionnaires and were assessed on IQ. Caregivers reported on callous-unemotional traits, behavior problems, social adversity, and paternal criminality. Confirmatory factor analysis provided support for a 3-factor cognitive-affective-somatic structure of CASES and support for a broader 6-factor model of empathy. Configural and metric factor invariance across genders was established. Good internal consistency was obtained for the main scales. Criterion validity was established by lower empathy in callous-unemotional children. Incremental and predictive validity was documented by empathy at baseline predicting 12 months later to callous-unemotional traits after controlling for baseline callous-unemotional traits. Discriminant validity was documented by empathy being unrelated to internalizing behavior problems and differentially related to proactive and reactive forms of aggression. Construct validity was documented by lower empathy being associated with lower IQ, being male, more externalizing behavior problems, and criminality in the biological parent. Results provide initial support for a brief but multidimensional empathy scale with good sampling and face validity that can be used with children and adolescents.

The cognitive, affective, and somatic empathy scales (CASES): Cross-cultural replication and specificity to different forms of aggression and victimization

“…Consistent with the prior study , we found sex differences in empathy with moderate to strong effect sizes. Of note, the means of the empathy scores in the current study were very similar to those in Raine and Chen (2018), with cross-study correlations revealing similar associative patterns between empathy scores and related constructs (e.g., CU scores, sex differences). The current study provides support for the multifaceted nature of empathy which can be captured in a brief self-report instrument, and the cross-culture generalizability of this instrument to an Asian culture.…”

“…We established cross-cultural generalizability by replicating the findings of the confirmatory factor analyses of the CASES from Raine and Chen (2018). Attention is warranted that the CFIs of all the nested models are generally lower than the set criteria of .90, which suggested that the proposed model did not fit the data as well as we hope.…”

“…In sum, the current study aimed to replicate the findings in Raine and Chen (2018) in a Hong Kong youth sample to test the cross-culture generalizability of CASES. Raine and Chen (2018) tested CASES in a youth sample with only a moderate size (n = 428) and with a narrow age span (11-12 years old), whereas the current study, with a much large sample size (n = 4676), extends the use of CASES for a wider age range from late childhood to adolescence.…”

“…Last, to examine the cross-culture replication of the association between CASES and other constructs, we correlated the coefficients from this study with the corresponding ones reported in Raine and Chen (2018). For example, when testing how similar the 12 correlation coefficients between empathy scores (total scores and the subscale scores from CASES) and selfreport CU in the current study and in the Raine and Chen (2018), we ran a zero-order correlation analysis on the 12 pairs of correlation coefficients to get one correlation coefficient to reveal how similar the associated patterns were between CASES scores and CU traits across the two studies.…”

Humor styles and empathy in junior-school children

“…It appeared that employing a measure that incorporated both affective and cognitive components of empathy and examining them in parallel was the most appropriate, particularly as the relationship between these components and their development in childhood remained a complex issue (Raine & Chen, 2018). The use of the Thinking and Feeling Questionnaire allowed for the examination of the possible interactive effects of affective and cognitive empathy.…”