This study was conducted to research any increase in empathic discrimination resulting from an empathy training program for paraprofessional Christian counsellors entitled, The Skilled Helper for Christians. There were 13 male and 23 female subjects with a mean age of 38.9 years in the Experimental Group. The two control groups used were similar to the Experimental Group in mean age, gender and Christian faith. The first Control Group, those students enrolled in a course entitled Building Strong Marriages in the Local Church, was made up of 8 male and 8 female students, with a mean age of 38.9 years. The second Control Group consisted of graduate theological students who attended Introduction to Christian Counselling. There were 22 male and 11 female subjects with a mean age of 33.4 years. A pretest-posttest design was used, adapting two instruments based on the Truax Accurate Empathy Scale. The dependent variable was the empathy score attained on each measure. Four null hyotheses were advanced. Both instruments, the Questionnaire in Helpful Responding and the Exercises in Caring and Understanding, were initially analyzed using dependent t-tests. An analysis of covariance and a Tukey multiple comparison were also used. The findings indicated that a significant increase in empathic discrimination resulted from the Skilled Helper for Christians, as measured by the Questionnaire in Helpful Responding. Each Control Group also indicated an increase as measured by the Questionnaire in Helpful Responding, however at a less significant level. The second measure, the Exercises in Caring and Understanding, resulted in no significant increase for any of the groups. Thus, the Skilled Helper for Christians produced a significant gain in empathic discrimination. Other findings suggested that modeling empathy may have had a positive effect on all of the groups. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

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Three studies tested the integrated threat theory by examining the causal role that threats play in attitudes toward immigrants. In Study I, students were presented with information about an immigrant group indicating that it posed realistic threats, symbolic threats, both types of threat or no threats to the ingroup. Attitudes toward the immigrant group were most negative when it posed both realistic and symbolic threats to the ingroup. In Study II, information was presented indicating that an immigrant group possessed negative traits, positive traits, or a combination of positive and negative traits. The results indicated that the negative stereotypes led to significantly more negative attitudes toward the immigrant group than the other types of stereotypes. In the third study, group descriptions leading to high levels of intergroup anxiety led to negative attitudes toward foreign exchange students. Empathizing with the foreign exchange students reduced these negative attitudes. The implications of the results of these studies for theory and practice are discussed.

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Previous research indicates that significant environmental factors, parenting styles in particular, have an influence on a child's likelihood to develop disruptive behavior. Higher reported levels of affective empathy are associated with lower rates of disruptive behavior. Further, authoritative parenting style and parental involvement has been associated with lower disruptive behavior rates. Fathers who are involved equally as much or more than the mother are described as egalitarian. The current study examined the effects of parenting, particularly egalitarian parenting, on empathy and disruptive behavior. Results indicated affective and cognitive empathy correlated negatively with disruptive behavior, egalitarian characteristics in fathers were correlated positively with cognitive and affective empathy and negatively with disruptive behavior, and empathy did not mediate or moderate the relationship between fathers' egalitarian parenting and disruptive behavior. Lastly, results indicated emerging adults from families with a biological mother and stepfather had higher empathy ratings compared to other household structures.

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No / This paper examines what the originally psychoanalytic concept of reverie can add to non-psychoanalytic practitioners’ understandings of empathy. It uses case material from a study into UK therapists’ experiences of reverie, which centres on a single moment in a session, when an image of her own living room flashed suddenly through a therapist’s mind. Reverie – a capacity to contain the other’s unprocessed emotional experiencing - can offer a magnifying lens through which to view some forms of empathy, revealing the relational, embodied and imaginative materials from which they are constructed. The paper links shared experiencing like that found in reverie with simulative accounts of empathy, but does not claim this enables us to experience exactly what the other feels; rather, when approached sensitively, tentatively and with clients’ needs foremost, it can foster deep connection, enabling us, as it were, to enter others’ inner worlds – perhaps even their living rooms - and make ourselves at home there. Finally, practical ways to work empathically with reverie are suggested, which may interest therapists from a range of modalities, including humanistic approaches.