Gallego Balson, Ainhoa (2023) Empathy at the Crossroads: Unravelling the Power of Empathy in Assessing Blame. Bachelor thesis, Psychology.
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Abstract
The current study sought to investigate whether empathy—an individual’s relative ability to comprehend others’ thoughts, emotions, and intentions— can act as a personality trait that mitigates the swiftness of blame attributions in the context of the workplace. Davis’ (1980) Interpersonal Reactivity Index was adapted and employed to assess participants on three subcomponents of empathy — Empathic concern, Fantasy, and Perspective-taking — allowing for the appraisal of empathy as an aggregate multidimensional measure. A cross-sectional vignette-based survey was subsequently employed to capture the appraisals of blame in a sample of 264 participants aged 18 to 87 years. Results revealed a significant positive relationship between empathy and individuals’ cognitive effort in assigning blame. Greater scores on the IRI questionnaire corresponded to greater cognitive efforts in the process of attributing blame, suggesting that empathy may indeed act as a buffer against swift blame attributions. Results also provided partial corroboration for the surmise that empathy would be related with a prominent motivation to seek out additional blame-relevant information. However, the analysis suggested no significant relationship between empathy and the lenience of participants’ blame appraisals. The results prompted further interest in other idiosyncratic and societal factors in shaping the process of swift blame attribution.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Bachelor) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Graso, M. |
| Degree programme: | Psychology |
| Differentiation route: | None [Bachelor Psychology] |
| Date Deposited: | 03 Jul 2023 12:55 |
| Last Modified: | 03 Jul 2023 12:55 |
| URI: | http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/2144 |
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