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Introduction: The ability of nurses to hold competing emotions is at the heart of a number of recentstudies. Empathy is an emotional resource in nurse-patient interactions and promotes positive experiences at work. On the contrary, emotional dissonance resulting from nurse/patient interactions is usuallyconsidered to lead to negative outcomes, such as job dissatisfaction (Brotherigde & Grandey, 2002). Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which empathy and emotional dissonanceare associated with organizational citizenship behavior among a group of Italian nurses. Method: A questionnaire was distributed to 222 nurses, working in two multidisciplinary hospitals in aNorth region of Italy. Results: Results support the hypothesis that both cognitive and emotional empathy have significanteffects on nurses' organizational citizenship behavior directed at the organization. Cognitive empathyexplained significant variance in organizational citizenship directed only at specific individuals. Conclusion: These findings confirm that cognitive and emotional empathy have different impact onnurses' organizational citizenship behavior. Further studies are required to inform education or forapplication in clinical settings.
Zapf et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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