Is there a Significant Gender Difference for Empathy?
Abstract
Women are found to be more empathic. However, little is known if there are significant differences of empathy if genders and the different factors such as social relationships and behavior, as well as the concepts of forgiveness and pain are concerned. 20 males and females were subjected to online interview using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). Results have shown that women have higher levels of empathy than male. This difference is rooted on the basis of the answers of the participants and using the concepts of neurobiology. However, there is no too little significance that can be established between empathy and the different factors.
Introduction
When it comes to gender, study shows that women are more emphatic than men in general (Toussaint & Webb. 2005). However, the significance of this difference is not yet determined considering the other factors that are directly related to empathy. As such, it is important to know if the view of genders towards empathy has something to do with the personality, behavior, and mental condition of opposite genders.
Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) is a test of empathy, which involves seven factors in evaluating the empathy of an individual (Davis, 1980). These seven factors are also called as subscales, which consist of the “perspective-taking, fantasy, chronic emotion, negative experience, empathic concern, personal distress scale, ” and an another one that is not mentioned by Davis (1980). Within these scales, the difference between the male and the female can be determined and based from the theories concerning empathy, the evaluation of empathy in different perspectives will be made accurate (Davis, 1980). The paper will use online survey as the method for determining the significance of gender differences. 20 males and 20 females, with the mean of 21.5 and Standard Deviation of 2.68 participated in the online survey. In the survey, the participants were asked about social relationships, behavior, and the concept of forgiveness and pain. Based from the results of IRI, the answers of the participants can be related to brain functions
Results
Based from the results of an online survey, it has been determined that empathy can be traced on the biological aspects of an individual, particularly neurobiology. However, though there is a distinct difference of levels of empathy between male and female (females have higher levels of empathy), there is still little to no significant relationship between empathy and the other variables discussed in this paper. This can be said that the trend of variables are independent to empathy, and that the gender difference in empathy has nothing to do with the behaviors of opposite sex as a whole.
Discussion
It has been found out that there is a direct relationship between the social behavior and empathy. Also, it has been determined that girls are more likely be associated with higher empathy due to their higher level of reasoning in different social situations (Eisenberg et al., 1991). This means that the thinking of girls develops earlier than the boys; thus they have a better understanding of the social environment at an earlier age. This also means that empathy towards a certain situation will most likely develop in girls. However, it is not that significant because the study found out that there was no difference in social interaction skills between genders (Nanda, 2008). It only means that even though there is a difference in empathy between boys and girls, there was no significant relationship with social behavior. However, the difference might arise on the nature between genders, because according to the study, girls interact more than the boys do in social situations.
Empathy can also be related to the act forgiving. Again, same result is obtained regarding the empathy. However, it is unclear whether the difference is significant in terms of forgiveness, because it was found out that both genders have equal treatment in terms of forgiving (Toussaint & Webb, 2005). This only means that the importance of difference in terms of behavior of opposite genders, such as the act of forgiveness is not significant because of some other reasons. However, the study clearly proved that people have different ways to cope with forgiveness, and that men are more likely to be swayed by empathy more than women.
Another important variable that can be related to empathy is pain. For most people, pain is one of the most influential factors in order for a person to feel empathetic towards the others. Based from the interview, it has been shown that both genders have equal short responses of empathy towards a certain degree of pain, but as the level of pain goes higher, females succumb to empathy earlier than males. This only means that females do not want to be exposed longer on higher degrees of pain, and they tend to express the feeling of disgust towards continuous pain (Han, Fan, & Mao, 2008).
Based from the answers, empathy is more likely associated with the right side of the brain. This means that empathy is more of an emotional nature than being logical, which means that it does not need critical thinking to be empathetic towards others. Based from this, it can be proven that more women have dominant right brain than those who have a dominant left brain. It also means that women are more inclined in emotional tendencies, which is why women feel empathetic when the emotional side of others have been revealed (Shock, 2010). Discussing further, gender differences on empathy can be proven in biological perspectives. Using neurobiological concepts, traces of empathy can be found in the difference of biological structures between males and females, which is the most probable cause of the difference of levels of empathy between genders (Moore et al., 2014). This only means that the difference is not only based on pure observations of the behavior of the genders in the outside environment. Instead, the biological factors also provided a greater insight in explaining the perceived differences in empathy.
References
Davis, M.H. (1980). A multidimensional approach to individual differences in empathy. JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 10, 85.
Dr. Shock. (2010). Gender Differences in Empathy | Dr Shock MD PhD. Retrieved February 29, 2016, from http://www.shockmd.com/2010/05/03/gender-differences-in-empathy/
Eisenberg, N., Miler, P., Shell, R., McNalley, S., & Shea, C. (1991). Prosocial development in adolescence: A longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 27(5), 849-857.
Han, S., Fan, Y., & Mao, L. (2008). Gender difference in empathy for pain: An electrophysiological investigation. Brain Research, 1196(85-93).
Moore, L., Simpson, E., Coude, G., Grigaityte, K., Iacoboni, M., & Ferrari, P. (2014). Empathy: Gender effects in brain and behavior. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 46, 604- 627.
Nanda, S. (2008). Are there Gender Differences in Empathy? Undergraduate Journal of Psychology at Berkeley, 7.
Toussaint, L., & Webb, J. (2005). Gender Differences in the Relationship Between Empathy and Forgiveness. Journal of Social Psychology, 145(6), 673-685.
