Sex Differences in Empathy as a Function of Age : a study with Chinese adolescents

Abstract

Sex differences in emotional empathy, the tendency to have vicarious emotional arousal , were examined in the context of sex differences in emotional development. According to Brody`s (1985) proposition, with development males tend to inhibit expression of all emotions. whereas females tend to inhibit expression only of socially undesirable emotions. The present study hypothesized emotional empathy was derivable for females, but not for males, because it was part of the feminine role. Consequently, with development, males might increasingly inhibit emotional empathy, while females might not, so that interaction effects between sex and age on emotional empathy were expected. These hypotheses were tested with a Chinese sample (in Taiwan) of senior high school adolescents and college students. It was found that emotional empathy were indeed part of femininity roles. In addition, the expected interaction effects were also supported with indexes of emotional empathy. However, these interactions seemed due to females` increasing display rather than males` inhibition of emotional empathy. Some possible components of the variable, age, were discussed.

根據 Brody(1985) 的理論，男性隨著發展而抑制情緒的表達，但女性只抑制社會上所不接受的情緒之表達。本研究認為情緒性同理心對女性而言是受社會所認可的，對男性而言卻不是受社會所認可的，因為情緒同理心一直被視為女性角色的一部份。因此，本研究假設同理心的性別差異將隨年齡而增加。519 個高中生及大學生參加本研究，結果顯示，同理心的性別差異的確隨年齡而增加，然而這種趨勢似乎是由於女性隨著年齡而更願意表達同理心，而非由於男性隨著年齡的增加而抑制同理心的表達。