Aims: Subjective empathetic response to a set of photorealistic stimuli was tested in a group of healthy responders with an aim to create simple unidimensional tool for assessment of affective empathy intended to complement other, composite measures. Method: Twenty photos of people in distress (target scale) and 20 of people in neutral states (non-target) were selected from Wikimedia Commons (all under free-to-use license). B/W stimuli showed clearly visible facial expressions and situational context and were balanced by age, gender and ethnicity. An online, photo-based instrument was administered to convenient sample of adults (N=118; 50% female; 19-69 years old), with the instruction to answer ‘How touching is this photo to you?’ using five-point Likert scale. Results: High internal consistency of the target (α=.89) and non-target scale (α=.94) was observed. In order to obtain reliable measure with fewer items, the scale was shortened using principal component analyses. Both 10-item target scale (α=.85) and 5-item non-target scale (α=.90) showed good reliability. The factor analyses of the short-form scale yielded two-factor solution. In comparison to males (M=3.70, SD=0.69), female participants (M=4.23, SD=0.59) had higher scores on the short-form target scale (t(116)=4.45, p<.001, d=0.83). Discussion: A simple measure of empathy can be a useful complement to compound measures that often carry additional/unwanted load (i.e., by relying on high-level verbal skills). Besides the fact that plain non-verbal empathy measures are scarce in the literature, even the power of the photograph to generate strong affective response has been challenged due to its overuse in contemporary media (1). Our results suggest the opposite, while the data agree with another similar endeavor recently shared (2,3). Conclusions: Using photographic stimuli that represent people in vulnerable states seems to be reliable supplement to commonly used measures of affective empathy.
Lalatović et al. (Sun,) studied this question.