AUTHOR=Olderbak Sally , Sassenrath Claudia , Keller Johannes , Wilhelm Oliver TITLE=An emotion-differentiated perspective on empathy with the emotion specific empathy questionnaire JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology VOLUME=5 YEAR=2014 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00653 DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00653 ISSN=1664-1078 ABSTRACT=

Empathy refers to the thoughts and feelings of one individual in response to the observed (emotional) experiences of another individual. Empathy, however, can occur toward persons experiencing a variety of emotions, raising the question of whether or not empathy can be emotion specific. This paper discusses theoretical and empirical support for the emotion specificity of empathy. We present a new measure, the Emotion Specific Empathy questionnaire, which assesses affective and cognitive empathy for the six basic emotions. This paper presents the measure's psychometric qualities and demonstrates, through a series of models, the discriminant validity between emotion specific empathies suggesting empathy is emotion specific. Results and implications are discussed.