Ethics, Empathy, and Attitudes: Exploring the Mediating Role of Empathy in Social Workers’ Perspectives Toward Disability

This study examines the relationships among professional ethical sensitivity, empathy, and attitudes toward individuals with disabilities among active social workers, specifically focusing on the mediating role of empathy as an “emotional bridge.” Employing a cross-sectional correlational survey design, data were collected from 355 social workers. Participants completed validated scales measuring professional ethical sensitivity, empathic tendencies, and attitudes toward disability. A mediation analysis was conducted using Hayes’ PROCESS Macro (Model 4) with 5000 bootstrap samples. The results indicate that professional ethical sensitivity has a significant positive direct effect on both empathy and attitudes toward disability. Furthermore, empathy significantly mediates the relationship between ethical sensitivity and attitudes toward disability. However, the relatively small indirect effect and the low total variance explained suggest that social workers’ professional attitudes are shaped not only by ethical and empathic factors but also by other contextual dynamics not captured in this model. Ultimately, these findings emphasize that theoretical ethics education in the social work curriculum must be integrated with the development of affective capacities, such as empathy, to translate them into tangible, positive professional actions.