Empathy : it’s neuropsychological correlates, relation to neuroticism, emotional recognition accuracy, intensity rating and gender
Authors
Briody, Conor
Issue Date
2014
Degree
BA (Hons) in Psychology
Publisher
Dublin Business School
Rights holder
Rights
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Abstract
The current study investigated relationships between empathy, neurological activity, and ability to identify facial expressions, subjective intensity rating of expressions and neuroticism, plus gender differences in neurological activity. The study was conducted with 19 participants, 11 male and 8 female. Participants completed two questionnaires, The IRI (Davis 1980; 1983), looking at empathy levels and another looking at levels of neuroticism - the Eysenck & Eysenck (1992) PQ and then viewed a number of emotional expressions. Participants were asked to rate these expressions on intensity plus identify the emotion being displayed while cortical activity was measured. Analyses showed that no significant correlations existed between empathy and any of the suggested variables, and that no significant differences exist between the genders in cortical activity.