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Category: Project

Description: Empathy plays a pivotal role in people’s socio-emotional well-being. In light of its significance, research on empathy has experienced considerable growth in the last two decades. Yet, the existing literature lacks clear construct definitions and agreed-upon measures that capture the multifaceted nature of empathy. There is a growing consensus suggesting that empathy can be viewed as a broad, overarching term encompassing at least three distinct sub-constructs that represent critical dimensions of empathy: an affective component involving emotions, a cognitive component related to understanding, and the act of sharing experiences. Additionally, a certain degree of self-other differentiation and a motivational component – the desire to promote others’ well-being or alleviate their suffering is often integral to the empathic experience. Despite this conceptual framework, the extent to which empirical studies align with this view of empathy and its constituent elements remains unclear. We are planning to conduct a large-scale scoping review to evaluate how empirical research approaches the measurement and manipulation of empathy and its components. Our review aims to address questions regarding which components of empathy receive significant attention and which remain underexplored, as well as how these components are operationalized and measured. Furthermore, this scoping review will culminate in the creation of a publicly accessible database containing machine-readable data, which can serve as a valuable resource for future systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Subsequent research could utilize our new database to explore questions like how different components of empathy affect various outcome measures differentially. Similarly, investigating the factors that either facilitate or impede these empathy components and their impact on empathy itself could be a promising future direction stemming from this project.