Skip to main content Skip to search
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1
Factor analysis of Hogan's Empathy Scale, scored in Likert format, yielded four factors: Social Self-Confidence, Even Temperedness, Sensitivity, and Nonconformity. Correlations with 16 different personality measures and a set of 12 adjective rating scales confirmed the factors' unique psychological meanings. Empathy subscales, created from items loading primarily on one factor, accounted for roughly equal amounts of variance in Hogan's original Q-set empathy criterion, although the Sensitivity and Nonconformity factors appeared to be slightly more important. Implications discussed include ways to improve the scoring of the Empathy Scale for future research and several broader measurement issues: the costs and benefits of using sophisticated statistics, the importance of manifest item content, and the importance of scale homogeneity.