The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

Sex-Related Comparisons: Observations 119

when you watch a film of a woman getting

attacked, what does this mean? Is it empathy,

the actual experiencing of another person’s

distress? Is it compassion? Or is it discomfort

at witnessing such a violent act?

A second moderator variable in the

meta-analysis was how empathy was opera-

tionalized. Sex differences were larger when

measures of kindness and consideration were

used rather than measures of instrumen-

tal help. (This will help to clarify the find-

ing in the next section on helping.) Third,

the sex difference was larger in correlational

and naturalistic than experimental studies.

Finally, the sex difference was larger if the

empathy target was an adult rather than

a child, indicating that women and men

respond more similarly to children.

At first glance, it appeared that the sex

difference in empathy increased with age.

However, when the aforementioned moder-

ator variables were taken into consideration,

there was no age effect. Age was confounded

with study design. Studies of older children

and young adults are more likely to be con-

ducted in naturalistic settings where the sex

Each method has its advantages and disadvan-

tages; thus in social domains, we look for con-

sistency in findings across methodologies.

Empathy

Crying at a sad film, sayingI understandto

a friend who has disclosed a problem, and

putting yourself in someone else’s shoes are

all different ways of empathizing.Empathy

is defined in many ways, but at its core, it

seems to involve feeling the same emotion as

another person or feeling sympathy or com-

passion for another person. Sex differences

in empathy, like sex differences in cognition,

depend on how empathy is measured.

The one meta-analysis that has been con-

ducted on empathy was conducted quite some

time ago, and showed across 259 studies a sex

difference in empathy, favoring females (d=-18;

Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998). Despite the fact that

the meta-analysis is dated, there are some les-

sons we can learn from it in regard to modera-

tor variables. First, the sex difference was greater

when empathy was measured by self-report than

by observation. When measures that were less

under the conscious control of the participant

were used, such as facial expressions or parent/

teacher observations, sex differences appeared in

the same direction but of a much smaller mag-

nitude. One concern with self-report measures

is demand characteristics. Undoubtedly, men

and women realize that women are supposed to

be more empathic than men. Thus women and

men may distort their self-reports of behavior in

the direction of gender-role norms. See if you can

find evidence of this problem in Do Gender 4.2.

When physiological measures of em-

pathy are used (e.g., heart rate or skin con-

ductance), there are no clear sex differences.

However, it is not clear whether there is a

unique physiological response associated

with empathy. If your heart starts racing

DO GENDER 4.2

The Effect of Demand

Characteristics on Reports of Empathy

Find a standardized empathy self-report

scale. Develop two forms of the scale.

Name one form “Empathy.” Give the sec-

ond form a title that would be more con-

sistent with the male gender role or at least

neutral with respect to gender, like “Envi-

ronment Accuracy.” Randomly distribute

one of the two forms to 20 women and 20

men. Do women report more empathy

than men on both forms?

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