Gender & Empathy

Gender & Empathy: Does Gender really affect an Individual’s empathy level?

Kanageswari D/O Ravi

Murdoch University

Abstract
Gender & Empathy
A questionnaire was conducted among University students from Singapore and Dubai to find out

which of the two genders are more emotionally empathetic. The 104 participants each completed

the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ) online. Previous studies have shown that females get a

higher score in the test but there is no correlation between gender and the empathy level. Further re-

search is required to study more on the impact of empathy on the genders. This research will need

to identify research methods and measures to identify the potential response bias, validity and relia-

bility of the results.

Gender & Empathy: Does Gender really affect an Individual’s empathy level?
Gender & Empathy
Empathy is the ability to understand and share one’s feelings with another. It is believed to

be important for developing prosocial behavior and for appropriate moral development (Baez,

2017). There have been stereotypes about males and females like, “Boys will be boys”, “girls are

emotional and sensitive”and “men don’t cry, women do” (Baez, 2017). These and other gender

stereotypes have eternized the idea that women are more empathetic, more nurturing and caring

while men are less emotional and more cognitive. There have been researches suggesting that there

could be a correlation between an individual’s gender and the level of empathy they carry. Re-

search went on to propose that females are more prone to experience emotional empathy than

males. There have been researches in identifying few types of empathy but the most significant

types will be the emotional and cognitive empathy (Davis, 1980, 1983; Decety & Jackson, 2004;

Mehrabian & Epstein, 1972).

The cognitive empathy is the ability to know what another person is thinking or feeling

which is similar to the concept of ‘‘theory of mind” (Bora et al., 2009) and emotional empathy is

the ability to actually experience similar emotion of another individual. In an average empathy test,

usually the females score higher than males. These score differences in these tests might be the

cause of the social norms, influence of the society and or the culture. Are these gender differences

are associated with gender specific neural mechanisms of emotional social cognition is yet to be

clarified (Schulte-Ruther, 2008). Gender differences somehow influences one’s moral judgements.

A literature review and meta analysis by Eisenberg and Lennon (1983) discovered that gender dif-

ferences which favours women were highly reliable in a large number of studies employing self-re-

port measures, but less reliable in studies using alternative measures of empathy. For example, fa-

cial expression or physiological arousal. They proposed that the reason for these gender differences

may be due to the demanded characteristics, such as women are expected to be more caring towards

other people which is what drives them to have the certain qualities they attain.
Gender & Empathy
On the contrary, recent studies that have found evidence of a biological basis for gender dif-

ferences in empathy. Knickmeyer, Baron-Cohen, Raggatt, Taylor, and Hackett (2006) found a cor-

relation between prenatal testosterone levels and empathy-related behaviors at age four in normal

children. report will be aiming to examine if females experience greater empathy level using the

quasi-experimental measure approach. This report is carried out to examine if the gender difference

affects the level of empathy and see if a particular gender is related then the other.

Method

Participants

The 104 participants in this study consisted of Murdoch University students from Singapore

and Dubai. Out of the participants, 32 (30.80%) of them were male, 70 (67.30%) were females and

2 (1.90%) of them chose to be identified as “others” . The youngest being 18 and the oldest being

44 with the mean being 23.72 (SD = 4.55). The majority of students were citizens of Singapore

making up to 95 (91.30%) of the total while the other 9 (8.70%) of them were from other nationali-

ties. All the participants were convenience sampled for this study to take up the questionnaire.

Materials

The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ) represents empathy as a primarily emotional

process. It was formed on 2009 by R Nathan Spreng, Margaret C McKinnon, Raymond A Mar,

Brian Levine. It is a quick, reliable, and rational instrument for the assessment of empathy. a tool to

measure self concept.

The TEQ also proved firm concurrent validity which correlated positively with behavioral

measures of social decoding, self-report measures of empathy. It also modelled a good internal con-

sistency and high test–retest reliability. (Spreng, 2009). The test consists of 16 questions which

compiles of freshly collected articles and also results from other empathy measures. The scores are

added up for the questionnaire which ranges from 0 to 64 (lowest to highest).

Procedure
Gender & Empathy
Students were told to take up the questionnaire by logging in to their school portal and were

also informed that it is a component of the unit they were taking. They were informed that the an-

swers would be kept as anonymous. Students were told to answer the questions genuinely and not to

think too much about the questions. Upon completing the test, students received their results along

with the information about the empathy.

Results

The initial evaluation of the data found that females are more empathetic than males. This

study was done to to learn if there was a difference between the scores of the males and females,

thus the independent t-test was conducted. According to the independent sample t test, t (100) =

1.98, p > 0.5, 2-tailed which revealed that it is non significant. These results go on to show that the

hypothesis covered above in where the empathy level of male and females differ has no difference

thus making it an alternate hypothesis.

Discussion

These findings go on to show that the previous studies and this present study does not match

as the previous studies by Ruekert and Naybar (2008) and Shulte-Ruther, Markowitsch, Shah, Fink,

Piefke (2008) and several others . These previous studies concluded the females scored higher in the

empathy test as to men. But this study concludes that the results does not support the hypothesis that

females are more empathetic than males.

The result of this current study might have differed due to the age of the participants the ma-

jority of the participants of this study were around the age of 20 which means they might have been

exposed to the concept of gender equality and have a broader thinking mindset. The timeline could

also be a possible reason as this study was done recently, in 2020, where everyone is exposed to all

the various ideas and theories about empathy and the gender equality through the help of social me-

dia as compared to the older studies which were done more than 10 years ago. At that time, not ev-

eryone had the opportunity to be exposed to all these.

the empathy related fields (Spreng et. al, 2009), the gender differences will not be always achiev-

able as it changes with the time due to the exposure an individual gets because of the rapidly grow-

ing society and media. The sample size could also be another factor as it was smaller size which

could have affected the potential of the study. There were more females, close to half as to the num-

ber of males who participated in the questionnaire which could have contributed to the results dif-

ference.

Other limitations are also found such as the students used in this study, could have applied

their knowledge of empathy into this test which resulted in the difference. Another defect could be

that each participant interpreting the questions due to the linguistic difference across their cultures.

In conclusion, the results of this study proposes that not all females are vitally empathetic then

males . Additional research could add in more research methods, including measures to establish the

ideal sample size, socially acceptable response bias and assure the number of male and female par-

ticipants are equal to avoid any unbiased results.

References:
Gender & Empathy
Baez S, Flichtentrei D, Prats M, Mastandueno R, García AM, et al. (2017) Men, women…who

cares? A population-based study on sex differences and gender roles in empathy and moral cogni-

tion.

Bora, E., Bartholomeusz, C., & Pantelis, C. (2016). Meta-analysis of Theory of Mind (ToM) im-

pairment in bipolar disorder. Psychological Medicine, 46(2), 253-264. doi:10.1017/

S0033291715001993

Knickmeyer, Rebecca & Baron-Cohen, Simon & Raggatt, Peter & Taylor, Kevin & Hackett, Ger-

ald. (2006). Fetal Testosterone and Empathy. Hormones and behavior. 49. 282-92. 10.1016/j.yh-

beh.2005.08.010.

Rueckert, L., & Naybar, N. (2008). Gender differences in empathy: The role of the right hemi-

sphere. Brain and Cognition, 67, 162-167.

R. Nathan Spreng, Margaret C. McKinnon, Raymond A. Mar & Brian Levine (2009) The Toronto

Empathy Questionnaire: Scale Development and Initial Validation of a Factor-Analytic Solution to

Multiple Empathy Measures, Journal of Personality Assessment, 91:1, 62-71

Schulte-Rüther M, Markowitsch HJ, Shah NJ, Fink GR, Piefke M. Gender differences in brain net-

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