Conceptualizing and measuring empathy: An exploratory factor analysis of empathy self-rating subscales

Empathy is widely considered one of the most fundamental components of prosocial and cooperative human behavior. However, contemporary research still struggles to reach a unified conceptualization of empathy. This lack of conceptual unity on the nature of empathy is mirrored by the existence of a plethora of psychometrically validated self-rating scales for its measurement.Here, in an attempt to contribute to a more unified conceptualization and measurement of empathy, we assessed the correlative structure of the subscale sum scores on German versions of five popular empathy self-rating scales using an exploratory factor analysis on data collected from an online sample comprising n = 236 participants. Our findings suggest that empathy can be conceptualized as a two-dimensional construct, consisting of “Grand Cognitive” and “Grand Affective” components. We discuss how our findings refine and extend previous conceptualizations of similar components and examine their relationship to other empathy-related constructs.