The Social Empathy

Developing the Social Empathy Index: An Exploratory Factor Analysis Elizabeth A. Segal M. Alex Wagaman Karen E. Gerdes
Abstract: Social empathy, the ability to understand people from different socioeconomic classes and racial/ethnic backgrounds, with insight into the context of institutionalized inequalities and disparities, can inspire positive societal change and promote social wellbeing. Thevalue of teaching social empathy and creating interventions that promote social empathy is enhanced by the ability to measure and assess it. This article provides a validation of the Social Empathy Index, a tool that practitioners can easily use to assess individuals’ levels of interpersonal and social empathy. An exploratory factor analysis was used to validate the instrument and confirm theconceptual model for social empathy. Keywords: Social empathy, individual empathy, social change, instrument validation

INTRODUCTION
In a community lecture in 2004, Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor, shared his insights regarding times when empathy and social caring transformed society, such as the civil rights movement in the 1960s. He viewed these points in time as few and far between.Reich called for an enlightened self-interest to create more of these times but he did not define what he meant nor did he explain to the crowd how enlightened selfinterest could be cultivated. Similarly, in The Audacity of Hope (2006) President Obama wrote about the importance of empathy. Referring to his colleague Senator Paul Simon, Obama wrote, “That last aspect of Paul's character—a sense ofempathy—is one that I find myself appreciating more and more as I get older. It is at the heart of my moral code, and it is how I understand the Golden Rule—not simply as a call to sympathy or charity, but as something more demanding, a call to stand in somebody else's shoes and see through their eyes” (p. 66). What would social policies look like if citizens demanded that they be created bypolicymakers who could see the world through the eyes of the people who would be most impacted? Reich and Obama were both describing a compassionate society with an intense, shared insight into the lives of others. The authors refer to the mechanism that enables such a society as social empathy. Social empathy is the ability to genuinely understand people from different socioeconomic classes andracial/ethnic backgrounds within the context of institutionalized inequalities and disparities (Segal, 2011). Social empathy insights can inspire positive societal change and promote social well-being through the use of democratic processes, social tolerance, and civic engagement (Morrell, 2010). More than a decade ago, Hoffman (2000) recognized the broader social dimensions of empathy when he calledfor expanding the teaching of empathy to create a moral and just society
______________  Elizabeth A. Segal, Ph.D., is a Professor, M. Alex Wagaman, MSW, is a Doctoral Candidate, and Karen E. Gerdes, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor, all in the College of Public Programs, School of Social Work, Arizona State University in Phoenix. Copyright © 2012 Advances in Social Work Vol. 13 No. 3 (Fall 2012),541-560

 

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by going beyond individual empathy. He wanted to teach children how to “extend empathy to other groups, so that children will be more aware of the impact of their actions on others who differ from them in obvious ways” (p. 294). Social work, psychology, anthropology, evolutionary biology, social cognitiveneuroscience, as well as many other disciplines, have all acknowledged the value of interpersonal empathy (de Waal, 2009; Decety, 2011; Gibbons, 2011). However, very little has been written about social empathy or how to measure it. This article articulates a conceptualization of social empathy and reports on the development of a social empathy index (SEI). In addition to measuring an individual’s...