What being empathic means: applying the transformation rule approach to individual differences in predicting the thoughts and feelings of prototypic and nonprototypic others

Abstract

To assess the influence of individual differences in empathy on predictions about the likely thoughts and feelings of prototypic and nonprototypic others, high school students completed Davis's (1983) IRI empathy scale and made predictions about young and old, male and female targets' likely thoughts and feelings. Predictions were categorized using Karniol's (1986) transformation rules and the variety of rules served as the dependent measure. A greater variety of rules was used for making predictions about old targets than young ones. Subject gender did not influence the variety of rules used for making predictions. As for individual differences in empathy, individuals high versus low in overall empathy, on the Perspective Taking subscale and on the Empathic Concern subscale, used a greater variety of transformation rules for making predictions about others' likely thoughts and feelings and differentiated more between targets in different social categories. The findings provide support for the view of empathy as a method of information gathering and illustrate the heuristic value of the transformation rule model for making predictions about others' thoughts and feelings. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Egocentrism versus protocentrism: The status of self in social prediction.

“…Tversky's model, then, is fully consistent with my model of self as represented in terms of its distinctiveness. children and adults (e.g., Karniol, 2002;Karniol et al, 1997;Karniol & Koren, 1987;Karniol & Shomroni, 1998), erroneous predictions were rare and the majority of predictions about self, prototypic others, and well-known or nonprototypic others were found to be consistent with the SAD model. First, predictions about self and about others tend to be largely differentiated from each other across a wide variety of stimulus contexts and types of psychological experience (i.e., thoughts vs. feelings).…”

Associations Between Violent Video Gaming, Empathic Concern, and Prosocial Behavior Toward Strangers, Friends, and Family Members

“…Violence can then be seen as mundane and commonplace, leading to a heightened likelihood of violent thoughts and actions as well as decreases in prosocial attitudes, including empathic concern (Anderson et al 2003;Huesmann et al 2003;Sparks and Sparks 2002). As empathic concern allows an emerging adult to identify with another and commiserate with them on an emotional level (Howard and Walsh 2010), it is often seen as a precursor to helping behavior (Karniol and Shomroni 1999). Thus, the current study used the framework of desensitization theory and the GAM to suggest that violent video gaming would be associated with lower levels of empathic concern, which would be related, in turn, to lower levels of prosocial behavior.…”

“…In order for an individual to act prosocially, he or she must first notice that another is in need, recognize an event as urgent, and then feel a personal responsibility to help (Bushman and Anderson 2009). Accordingly, high levels of empathic concern allow an individual to gather information about another, predict what that person is feeling, share in those feelings, and then assist him or her (Karniol and Shomroni 1999). Indeed, empathic concern has been shown to be a consistent mediator between parental socialization and prosocial behavior Gehlbach 2004;Reimer 2001; Padilla-Walker and Christensen 2011), but we are not aware of any studies that have examined empathic concern as a mediator between media socialization and prosocial behavior.…”

An Exploratory Investigation of the Process of Perspective Taking in Interpersonal Situations

“…Lesser reference to this type of general information could also occur because such general information is not always useful in taking a specific person's perspective (Karniol & Shomroni, 1999).…”