"Spark and Ruin: a Story of Re-beginning" is a multi-media concert dance work that addresses empathy as a physical and cognitive reactionary state, and utilizes dancing bodies as agents to facilitate this empathic experience. This work developed out of "The Flint Project," which investigates Flint, Michigan, "the most violent city in America," and a community characterized by racial tension and severe distinctions in class and social standing. This post-industrial, urban community serves as a microcosm through which we can examine how racial, social, and cultural politics intersect to establish systematic practices that challenge the possibility of the "American Dream." "The Flint Project" is a vehicle for creative research that investigates these systems and develops the material into a live performed event, "Spark and Ruin: a Story of Re-beginning". This performance includes installations featuring live performers and also various forms of media (including photography, film, and interactive "stations"). All of this material is constructed to contextualize the material for the viewer in a proscenium-style full-length dance performance. The objective of this piece is to establish a space for viewers to empathize with the material--to create an experience that will evolve into inquiry of systematic inequality as well as self-reflection of perception and bias. In facilitating this level of questioning, I aim to move viewers with compassion and heightened awareness of social inequity, as well as opportunities to chge the systems that enforce it.

Psychopathic personality traits have been found to be associated with a variety of emotional deficits, including poor facial expression recognition, and reduced capacity to experience empathy. However, research has yielded conflicting results. This study investigated the relationship between psychopathic personality traits, facial emotion recognition, as well as empathy, in a community sample (n = 127), identified as having either low or elevated levels of psychopathic traits. Facial expression recognition was measured using the Hexagon task, which contains morphed facial expressions with two levels of expressivity. Psychopathic traits were assessed using the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory, and empathy was measured with the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. Individuals with elevated psychopathic traits did not display lower accuracy in facial expression recognition compared to the low psychopathic traits group, rather the reverse was found.  Weak to strong negative correlations were found between psychopathic traits and empathy. Zero to weak correlations was found between psychopathic traits and expression recognition, as well as between empathy and expression recognition. The results are compared with similar studies, and implications for the study of psychopathy and emotion recognition are discussed.

Research on stress and burnout and their influence on empathy, engagement, and retention, in healthcare support staff is scarce in the literature. The theoretical framework for this study was the conservation of resources (COR) theory which claims that when people are stressed, emotionally exhausted, and experiencing burnout, they protect and preserve their physical and mental resources from becoming depleted by reducing their effort and withdrawing from work. The key research question was: Does burnout mediate the relationship between stress and empathy, engagement, and turnover intentions in healthcare support staff working in a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC)? This quantitative, non-experimental, mediation analysis included 83 female and 10 male healthcare support staff working in an FQHC. The variables were assessed using the Job Stress Survey (JSS), Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OBI), Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) – Brief Form, and the Behavioral Intentions to Withdraw Measure (BIWM). A path analysis was performed to estimate the magnitude of the relationships between the variables. The results indicate that burnout does not mediate the relationship between stress and empathy, but it does significantly predict engagement and turnover intentions. FQHCs serve vulnerable and medically complex patients in underserved communities, and when the negative impact of burnout in healthcare support staff is addressed, patients, providers, and staff can enable positive social change by achieving important clinical health outcomes for patients.

Although empathy has been implicated in both academia and pop culture as nearly analogous to morality, some philosophers and psychologists have taken issue with this assessment. It has been argued that from an ethical perspective, empathy is biasing, myopic, and perhaps more trouble than it is worth. In this paper, I first address whether empathy is a necessary baseline trait for having some degree of ethical motivation. Based on the differing moral experiences of sociopaths and autistic individuals, as well as empathy’s unique ability to motivationally bridge the gap between self and other, I conclude that empathy is a required trait for the moral agent. Assuming empathy is present in the moral experience, I then delineate the negative and positive effects empathy has on the ethical outcome of actions. Empathy does appear to cause prejudiced biasing and derogation of self-respect, but it also acts as a powerful motivator for other-oriented action and provides ethically valuable information about mind-states. Ultimately, I conclude that empathy cannot be a standalone ethical trait, but when filtered through reason, it can be invaluably useful.

This study utilized an action research design with qualitative methods to explore the transformative potential of a multicultural literature curriculum within a general education setting. Providing young students with opportunities to develop perspective taking and empathetic responses to others who are different, offers the critical potential for reducing prejudice. Based on Allport’s (1979) contact theory, originally written in 1954, multicultural literature served as indirect contact, providing access to characters who were different from the students. The design included the researcher’s classroom and a teacher cohort of five third grade teachers interacting with a total of 103 students in a public charter elementary school in South Florida. The selection of third graders was purposeful by the developmental window of social perspective taking identified by Selman (1980). Each teacher utilized the multicultural book set to conduct interactive read-alouds along with critical questions to support the students in understanding the settings and problems and therefore the perspective of the diverse characters. We gathered data from student work samples, audio tapes, cohort meetings, teacher journals, researcher journals, and critical friend meetings. Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis aided in the organization and handling of the quantity of data as Glasser’s (2008) constant comparative method was applied to coding through the action research recursive cycles. Emergent themes and patterns from the data demonstrated positive development in the depth of discussion through improved emotional vocabulary and new understanding of mixed emotions. The variety of storylines offered new knowledge of social justice issues such as immigration, refugees, religious tolerance, slavery, and poverty while developing vocabulary to engage in reading and discussion. The indirect contact experiences with diverse characters and the lessons provided practice in perspective taking and emotional empathy skills. This study contributes to the body of literature using multicultural literature for empathy and perspective taking development and adds to indirect contact studies for prejudice reduction by focusing on younger students and being conducted within an authentic school context. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Empathy, the ability to feel and/or understand another’s emotional state, plays a significant role in interpersonal interactions, mitigating hostility and enhancing affiliation and helping. However, empathy also biases interpersonal reactions. For example, at the group level empathy can become amplified towards members of their ingroup and blunted towards individuals in outgroups, a term called parochial empathy. Currently, no validated measures of parochial empathy at the dispositional level exist, and development of such a scale would be important to understanding the role of group-based emotions in prejudice and discrimination against outgroups. I conducted five studies to develop and validate a self-report Trait Parochial Empathy Scale (TPES) that could measure tendencies to respond with parochial empathy across any set of group membership categories. Study 1 assessed the factor structure of the TPES through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses while Study 2 attempted to replicate the Study 1 factor structure and assess concurrent and divergent validity of the TPES using attitudinal measures. Study 3 assessed the temporal consistency of the TPES. Study 4 examined whether the TPES could be flexibly used across a variety of groups by assessing its relation to various outcomes across different ingroup and outgroup combinations. Finally, Study 5 assessed the ability of the TPES to predict in vivo behavior.

Children's popularity is of concern in this study and the effect on the child's sociometric status after a series on empathy teaching has been presented. An objective of the study was to see if children in the isolated or rejected sociometric status would change to popular and amiable status after being taught empathy skills. Another objective was to find an intervention program which would teach children empathy skills. in order to measure children's abilities in sociometric choice, a sociometric technique devised by Dr. Craig Peery at Utah State University was used. The empathy tool used to measure children's empathy skills was the Interpersonal Awareness Test from Carnegie-Mellon University by Helen Borke. A modified version of the Feshback and Roe slides was the empathy teaching tool. The children were given pretest and post-test on both the sociometric measurement and the empathy skill measurement. Kindergarten children from three schools in the Weber County School District were tested. They were all 5 to 6 years of age and were divided into control and experimental groups, 66 in the control and 81 in the experimental. The results of the study indicated little evidence that an intervention program of two months made a significant difference. It was found, however, that children of both control and experimental groups do increase scoring in an empathy test which measures pre and post testing. It was also found that children do change sociometric status to a greater extent in the experimental group than in the control and that popular children do score higher on the empathy test with isolate children scoring lowest. All children did increase in empathy scoring but not at a significant difference of .05.

This qualitative focus groups analysis examines the harmful effects of violent video games on emotions and behavior by comparing violent video game player's responses to that of non-violent video game players of the same age group. Research on the effects of video games has been done since the 70s, yet more research is needed to better understand the potentially harmful emotional and behavioral effects of playing violent games, especially from the gamers' perspectives. This thesis presents a qualitative analysis of data obtained from focus group sessions among undergraduate college students. Results of the analysis supports the presence as well as absence of violent video game effects, according to violent and non-violent video gamers' personal experiences and in their own words.

The ability to attract and retain customers through providing excellent service quality is a necessity for any business in every field. However, before a firm can expect to consistently provide high quality service, it must first know how to measure and identify areas of needed improvement. While service quality research has been conducted in most of the major sectors of the economy, the residential real estate brokerage industry is only beginning to incorporate existing knowledge of service quality management. This is especially disconcerting given that real estate is such a large part of local and national economies around the world. The purpose of this thesis is to identify the best instrument that can be used to measure service quality in the residential real estate brokerage industry. The findings reveal that the reliability, responsiveness and empathy dimensions significantly lead to increases in the overall evaluation of service the firm provides. The empathy dimension also significantly causes homebuyers to recommend the firm to others. Additionally, empathy significantly causes the client to use the firm again. Finally, as hypothesized, overall satisfaction leads to both repeat uses of the firm and recommending the firm to a friend. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Unravelling the Mystery is a qualitative case study that examines the teacher researcher's reflection-in-action as she teaches using process drama. The teacher-researcher taught a class of Year Seven students for a school year. She worked with the students using process drama from 2-5 hours per week. All sessions were recorded and transcribed as part of the reflective practice research. They were then examined to study how the teacher might use reflection-in-action. The data is written as a series of vignettes. The vignettes are used to illustrate reflection-in-action and as a basis for discussion and analysis. In the thesis the data from five of these sessions is presented as vignettes-these vignettes illustrating the teacher's reflection-in-action process. The analysis focuses on the reflection-in-action for the teacher. The vignettes and accompanying analysis for the basis for an illustrative model of the scope of the teacher' reflection-in-action as she works using process drama. The study addresses the following questions: · How might reflective practice inform my teaching? · How can I as a researcher describe and document my reflection-in-action when working as a teacher in process drama? · What is the scope of my reflection-in-action when working as the teacher in process drama? · How might an increased understanding of reflection-in-action be useful to teachers of process drama? These questions are considered in light of the analysis and literature review. The study concludes that reflective practice is valuable to enable teachers to develop their practice. It recommends that this type of research is beneficial to both develop models of practice and to improve the practice of individual practitioners.