ABSTRACT
Empathy has long been thought to contribute to individuals’ abilities to understand, predict, experience, and relate to others’ behaviors, feelings, attitudes, and intentions. Moreover, there are theoretical and empirical reasons to believe that empathy is a major contributor to moral development (Hoffman, 1990), altruistic and prosocial behavior (Batson, 1991, 1998; Eisenberg & Strayer, trayer, er, 1987; Eisenberg & Fabes, 1991, 1998; Roberts & Strayer, 1996), emotional intelligence (Davies, Stankov, & Roberts, 1998; Salovey & Mayer, 1990), social competence (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1992; Eisenberg, Fabes, Murphy, et al., 1996; Eisenberg & Miller, 1987; Saarni, 1990), interpersonal forgiving (McCullough, Worthington, & Rachal, 1997), and low levels of aggression toward others (Feshbach, 1978; Miller & Eisenberg, 1988). Thus, empathy, broadly defined, is a construct (and competency) that contributes to, or can be seen as an aspect of, interpersonal sensitivity and social competence.
