Not Good Enough? Exploring Relationships Between Students’ Empathy, Their Attitudes Towards Sustainability, and the Self-Perceived Sustainability of Their Solutions

Empathy plays an important role in designers’ ability to relate to problems faced by others. Several researchers have studied empathy development in engineering design education; however, a majority of this work has focused on teaching designers to empathize with primary users. Little attention in empathy development research is given to empathizing with those affected in a secondary and tertiary capacity. Moreover, little research has investigated the role of students’ empathy in influencing their emphasis on sustainability, especially in the concept evaluation stage. Our aim in this paper is to explore this research gap through an experimental study with engineering students. Specifically, we introduced first-year engineering students at a large public university in the northeastern United States to a short workshop on sustainable design. We compared changes in their trait empathy and attitudes towards sustainability from before to after participating in the workshop. We also compared the relationship between students’ trait empathy, attitudes towards sustainability, and the self-perceived sustainability of their solutions in a design task. From our results, we see that students reported an increase in their beliefs and intentions towards sustainability and a decrease in their personal distress from before to after participating in the workshop. Furthermore, students’ trait empathy correlated negatively with the self-perceived sustainability of their solutions. These findings highlight the need for future work studying the role of empathy in encouraging a sustainable design mindset among designers.

Reconsidering Empathy: An Interpersonal Approach and Participatory Arts in the Medical Humanities

The decline of empathy among health professional students, highlighted in the literature on health education, is a concern for medical educators. The evidence suggests that empathy decline is likely to stem more from structural problems in the healthcare system rather than from individual deficits of empathy. In this paper, we argue that a focus on direct empathy development is not effective and possibly detrimental to justice-oriented aims. Drawing on critical and narrative theory, we propose an interpersonal approach to enhance empathic capacities that is centered on constructive and transformative interactions which integrates the participatory arts and involves both patients and health professional students. We describe and evaluate a program where patients and students create collaborative, original songs. Interviews and a focus group revealed interactional processes summarized in four themes: reciprocal relationships, interactions in the community, joint goal, and varied collaboration. There was a significant enhancement of positive attitudes about care post-program amongst health professional students. The interpersonal approach may be a preliminary framework for the medical humanities to shift away from a focus on direct empathy development and further towards participatory, co-creative, and justice-oriented approaches to enhance health and thereby empathic capabilities.

Studying the personality traits of students within the framework of the poles splitting of the cognitive style analyticity/synthetic

This article examines the problem of studying anxiety and empathy within the framework of the splitting of the poles of the cognitive style of analyticity/synthetics in subjects aged 17-18. The study was carried out using the following methods – “Free sortingˮ by Riley W. Gardner modified by Voldemar Kolga, “Diagnostics of the level of empathyˮ by Il’dar Yusupov, “State-Trait Anxiety Inventoryˮ by Charles Donald Spielberger and Juri Hanin. The study involved 80 students. Using the methodology “Free sortingˮ by R.W. Gardner, modified by V.A. Kolga, the following groups were identified in the sample of subjects: synthetics/categorisers, synthetics/globalists, analysts/differentiators and analysts/detailisers. Diagnostics according to the methodology “State-Trait Anxiety Inventory” by Ch.D. Spielberger and J. Hanin made it possible to identify high, medium, and low levels of anxiety. Analysis of the research results using the methodology “Diagnostics of the level of empathyˮ by I.M. Yusupov determined the presence in the sample of students of very high, high, medium and low levels of development of empathy. The group of synthetics/categorisers and analysts/differentiators were distinguished by low and medium levels of anxiety, high and medium levels of empathy development. The group of synthetics/globalists and analysts/detailisers was characterised by a high level of anxiety, low and medium levels of development of empathy.

Conduct Disorders and Empathy Development

Childhood conduct disorders, a serious mental health concern, put children at risk for significant mental health problems throughout development. Elevations on callous-unemotional (CU) traits designate a subgroup of youth with conduct disorders who have unique causal processes underlying their problem behavior and are at a particularly high risk for serious impairment relative to others with these disorders. As a result, these traits have recently been integrated into major diagnostic classification systems for conduct disorders. Given that CU traits are partly defined by deficits in empathy, we review research on empathy development in typically developing children and use this research to ( a) advance theories on the specific emotional deficits that may be associated with CU traits, ( b) explain the severe pattern of aggressive behavior displayed by children with elevated CU traits, and ( c) suggest possible ways to enhance prevention and treatment for children with conduct disorders and elevated CU traits. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, Volume 17 is May 7, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.