Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2012) 43:499510
DOI 10.1007/s10578-011-0278-6
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The Basic Empathy Scale: A Chinese Validation
of a Measure of Empathy in Adolescents
Yaoguo Geng Dan Xia Beibei Qin
Published online: 6 January 2012
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
Abstract The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability and validity of the
Chinese version of the Basic Empathy Scale (BES). The Chinese version of BES was
administered to a sample (n = 1,524) aged 918 and 65 males with conduct disorder aged
1318. The result of confirmatory factor analysis showed a two-factor structure with four
items deleted to be the most adequate model (cognitive empathy, affective empathy).
Empathy was positively correlated with a measure of prosocial behaviour and a measure of
emotional problems. Boys with conduct disorder scored significantly lower than matched
participants on cognitive empathy. Moreover, in line with previous researches, girls were
found to score significantly higher on empathy than boys and the scores on both cognitive
and affective empathy increased with age. The Chinese revision exhibited satisfactory
internal consistency and moderate testretest reliability.
Keywords Empathy Validation Chinese adolescents
Introduction
Empathy is a notoriously elusive psychological construct. This is because empathy is often
very broadly defined [1] and as such is often not clearly separated from overlapping
concepts that are related to, but separate from empathy. A very useful definition of
empathy is that provided by Cohen and Strayer [2] who suggest that empathy is the
understanding and sharing in anothers emotional state or context. This definition has a
number of benefits. First it acknowledges the separation of the cognitive element of
empathy (i.e., the ability to understand anothers emotions) from the affective element of
empathy (i.e., the sharing of anothers emotional state). This is an important recent
development in empathy research which has helped to clarify some counterintuitive
findings noted when comparing empathy to certain behaviours [36]. Second, this defi-
nition helps to separate the psychological construct of empathy from the related processes
Y. Geng (&) D. Xia B. Qin
Department of Education, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, Henan, China
e-mail:
[email protected] 123
500 Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2012) 43:499510
that might result in an empathic response. For the purposes of measuring empathy and
understanding its relationships it is useful to separate empathy from factors that facilitate
empathy (e.g. emotional recognition ability) [7], and also the outcomes of empathy (e.g.
sympathy) [8], which have been combined in other models of empathy [9]. Likely, as a
result, measures of sympathy are much more open to social desirability bias than measures
of empathy [10, 11].
Both psychological and cognitive neuroscience research demonstrated that empathy has
distinct cognitive and affective components [1216] which require measurement, and a
number of devices have been developed for this purpose. These have included evaluating
an individuals responses to videotapes, other visual stimuli or the reports of ones empathy
by others. By far the most common approach to measuring empathy, however, is the self-
reported questionnaire. A great many of these devices exist [4, 17, 18], but the Basic
Empathy Scale (BES) currently appears to have some of the strongest theoretical and
statistical support [5, 10, 11, 19].
The BES is a simple but effective tool for measuring the empathy of adolescents. The
validation of the scale was conducted on a sample of 720 adolescents from England and the
two components of empathy (cognitive and affective) were derived from an exploratory
and subsequent confirmatory factor analysis [5]. This self-report scale has shown good
validity [5, 11], and its psychometric properties appear to translate well to other Western
cultures [10, 19]. However, Unlike Western cultures, China has a collectivist culture, along
with corresponding culture-related behaviour pattern. For example, as an explicit coping
style, somatization is widely adopted by Chinese people to reduce or avoid introspection
and direct affective interaction [20], whereas Western get used to adopting psycholin-
guistic to express their emotional experience directly, namely psychologization [21].
Also, it is necessary to give consideration to this difference in relation to the empathy,
which is thought to be influenced by cultural factors [22]. Thus, verifying the validity of
the BES is the primary work before its using in Chinese cultures.
Research using the BES (and other measures of empathy) has identified a number of
consistent associations. The first of these is that females score higher than males [1, 11, 12]
and this is especially the case with self-report measures of empathy. Furthermore, the
difference between males and females appears greater for affective as opposed to cognitive
empathy [11, 19]. It is not altogether clear why females score higher than males but this is
often attributed to the fact that females are generally socialised to be more aware of, and
respond to, the emotions of other more so than males. Alternatively, females may score
higher than males because they have an increased ability to access and express their
emotional repertoires [1].
Measures of empathy also appear to have relatively consistent associations with certain
behaviours. For example, individuals who report acting in a prosocial manner tend to score
higher on measures of cognitive and affective empathy. This makes theoretical and intuitive
sense as those with a heightened ability to experience or comprehend anothers negative
emotions will be more likely to act to reduce these [8]. For example, Jolliffe and Farrington [5]
found that male and female adolescents who reported intervening in a bullying incident had
significantly higher cognitive and affective empathy than those who did not. Similarly, Albiero
[19] identified significant positive correlations between scores on a measure of prosocial
behaviour and both cognitive and affective empathy for males and females.
Although it is widely accepted that the relationship between empathy and antisocial
behaviour is simply the converse of the empathyprosocial behaviour relationship [13, 14, 23],
some interesting derivations have been noted. For example, some research has noted that,
in line with expectation, empathy is negatively related to aggression and disruptive
123
Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2012) 43:499510 501
behaviour [24], children and adolescents with conduct disorders had significantly lower
empathy than those in the control group [2, 25], while others have not found evidence that
those who act antisocially have lower empathy [6]. The resolution of these apparent
contradictory findings appears to be related to both the seriousness of the antisocial
behaviour and whether cognitive or affective empathy was assessed. In fact, Bjorkqvist and
Osterman [26] have suggested that certain types of antisocial behaviour such as skilful
bullying or recruiting others to take part in antisocial behaviour might even be facilitated
by these individuals adequate or even elevated cognitive empathy. This separation of
cognitive and affective empathy fits well with the current conceptualisation of bullies who
uses their sufficient cognitive empathy to skilfully manipulate and deceive others, while
having no affective constraints on their antisocial actions [27].
Only a small number of studies have examined how empathy levels might change
through life. An early study indicated that empathy increased with age for the normal
controls during adolescent period [28], whereas the cases did not. Recently, Dadds [12]
measured both cognitive and affective empathy of a group of Australian children and
adolescents aged 416. The results suggested that cognitive empathy, as judged by parents
increased with age, but affective empathy did not.
Aims and Hypothesis
In China, three measuring instruments, include Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) [4, 22],
the Questionnaire Measure of Emotional Empathy (QMEE) [18, 29], and the Jefferson
Scale of Empathy [30, 31] were revised or compiled for research work to investigate the
empathy of adults. The IRI and the QMEE have enjoyed widespread use in research [19],
but their limits also become evident. First, both IRI and QMEE are confounded with
sympathy. Second, the IRIs underlying theoretical structure has not been confirmed
completely. Third, the QMEE, which investigates the emotional element of empathy, do
not capture the cognitive element.
Thus, as a concise and effective tool for measuring empathic responsiveness in ado-
lescents, as a new scale which included cognitive element and affective element, the BES
has not been validated in the context of Chinese cultures. With the written approval of
Darrick Jolliffe, the authors are to address this gap in the literature by evaluating the
reliability and validity of the BES in a large sample of Chinese children and adolescents.
The hypotheses guiding this study were as follows. First, authors predicted that the
Chinese version of the BES would demonstrate a two-factor solution (i.e., cognitive
empathy and affective empathy) as reported by Jolliffe and Farrington [5, 11]. Second, a
positive association would be found between empathy and measures of prosocial behav-
iour. Third, patients with conduct disorder (CD) would be found to have lower levels of
empathy than normal controls. Finally, girls would score significantly higher than boys on
the empathy scores.
Method
Participants and Procedure
The participants were recruited from two primary schools, two junior middle schools and
one senior middle school in Zhengzhou, China. Of the initial 1,929 students, 405 (21%)
were excluded because of incomplete data. The final sample consisted of 1,524 Chinese
123
502 Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2012) 43:499510
children and adolescents aged 918 years (M = 13.54, SD = 2.51) enrolled in fourth
grade to twelfth grade, including 783 boys (51.4%; M = 13.51, SD = 2.47) and 741girls
(48.6%; M = 13.58, SD = 2.55). There was no significant difference between the boys
and girls in age (t = .60, p = .55). Among these participants, 31.2% were from primary
schools (fourth grade to sixth grade), 35.2% were from junior middle schools (seventh
grade to ninth grade) and 33.6% were from senior middle school (tenth grade to twelfth
grade). Also, there was no significant difference in the demographics between the students
who were included in the study and those who were excluded.
After appropriate permissions from the school boards and after participants consents
were obtained, the students completed the scales during regular class hours. Students were
allowed to clarify the meaning of some questions, but their responses to the items were not
influenced by the two skilled researchers. They were also assured that their answers were
completely confidential. The investigation was carried out in accordance with the latest
version of Declaration of Helsinki.
In addition, the data set was composed 65 consecutive male outpatients with conduct
disorder diagnosis according to DSM-IV criteria. Diagnosis was performed or identified on
department of psychiatry, 9th peoples hospital of Zhengzhou through a non-structured
interview and extensive psychiatric assessment conducted by two qualified psychiatrists
from 2009 to 2010. The patients had no other major psychiatric co-morbidity with ages
ranging from13 to 18 (M = 16.11, SD = 1.20).
This project was reviewed and approved by the ethics committee of the hospital. After
thorough description of the project to the patients and after the assurance that their decision
to take part in the study would not interfere with their access to treatment, all participants
gave their informed consents and filled out the BES in the hospital.
To further test the scales discriminant validity, according to the proportion of 1 (case):
3 (controls), a subsample of normal boys (n = 195) who ranged in age from 13 to 18 years
old (M = 15.94, SD = 1.10) were selected randomly from the general participants to
examine the latent differences between boys diagnosed as conduct disorder and compa-
rable participants. Independent t tests showed that age did not differ between the two
groups (t = -1.03, p = .31).
In order to examine the testretest reliability of the BES, from the sample population,
101 junior middle school students 1215 years old (61 boys, 40 girls; M = 13.7,
SD = 1.13) were retested a period of 4 weeks after the initial screening.
Measures
Basic Empathy Scale (BES)
The original BES is a 20-item, self-rating measure with two factors: cognitive empathy (9
items; e.g., I find it hard to know when my friends are frightened) and affective empathy
(11 items; e.g., I dont become sad when I see other people crying) [11]. Agreement
with the statements was indicated on a 5-point Likert-type anchored by 1: Strongly
disagree and 5: Strongly agree. The sum of the cognitive empathy items ratings was the
cognitive factor score (range 945), and the sum of the affective empathy items ratings
was the affective factor score (range 1155); the sum of two factors scores was the total
score (range 20100).
The Chinese version of BES was done using the back-translation method. First the scale
was translated into Chinese by a bilingual psychologist from the education department of
Zhengzhou University. Subsequently, another bilingual psychologist translated the Chinese
123
Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2012) 43:499510 503
version back into English. The original and the back-translated items were compared for
non-equivalence of meaning, and discrepancies were revised. The process continued until
no semantic differences were noticed between English version and Chinese version. Then
the Chinese version was administered to a pilot sample of 12 students (916 years old) to
assess the clarity of the items. Based on item by item assessment two-way discussion the
Chinese version of BES was found to be understandable by students of this age group.
The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ for Students)
SDQ is a 25-item, self-rating scale with five factors [32]: 5 items for hyperactivity (HS), 5
items for emotional symptoms (ESS), 5 items for conduct problems (CPS), 5 items for peer
problems (PPS) and 5 items for prosocial behaviour (PBS). Each item has three possible
responses, 0, 1 or 2. The score for each scale is generated by adding up the scores on the 5
items within that scale (range 010). The psychometric properties of the Chinese version of
the SDQ have been described as satisfactory elsewhere [33]. In this study, the prosocial
behaviour subscale was used to evaluate the correlation between empathy and prosocial
behaviour, Cronbachs a was .83, and Cronbachs a was .85 for entire scale.
Results
Construct Validity of Chinese Version of Basic Empathy Scale
To examine the fit of the two-factor model obtained in a British sample [11], Confirmatory
factor analysis (CFA) was performed with LISREL 8.51 using the Chinese sample
(n = 1,524). In the current study, the model fit was evaluated with the following indica-
tors: X2/df \ 5; NFI, NNFI, CFI, GFI and AGFI [ .90; RMSEA \ .08. The results of the
CFA revealed the model obtained in a British sample [11] did not fit this Chinese sample
well (X2 = 1,049.31, df = 169, X2/df = 6.21, RMSEA = .063, NFI = .79, NNFI = .79,
CFI = .81, GFI = .93, AGFI = .91), indicating some adjustment was necessary.
To explore the factor structure of BES in this Chinese sample, about half the students
data (n = 792) were sampled randomly to be used in an exploratory factor analysis. A
principal components analysis with varimax rotation was performed to explore the cor-
relation matrix of the BES. Bartletts test of spherecity indicated that the data was suitable
for factor analysis (KMO = .82). The fit of the factor structure was evaluated using
multiple criteria: Factors with eigenvalues[1.0 were chosen; Items were considered if they
loaded above .30 on a factor and had the highest loading on a factor by .15 or more when
compared across factor; more than three items must load on each retained factors.
A Scree plot suggested that only two factors be retained, accounting for 31.85% of the
total variance, with item 3 (I can understand my friends happiness when she/he does well
at something) discarded. Factor 1 (accounting for 16.28% of the variance) comprised 11
items (1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 15, 17, 18), was identical to original version and therefore was
labeled affective empathy; Factor 2 (accounting for 15.57% of the variance) comprised 8
items (6, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 19, 20), was similar to original version and therefore was labeled
cognitive empathy. This 19-item, two-factor model supported the original solution of BES
[11] (Table 1).
The other part of the sample (n = 732) was used for confirmatory factor analysis to
re-examine the fit of the model obtained using exploratory factor analysis in the Chinese
sample. The results suggested that the 19-items, two factor model did not fit the data very
123
504 Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2012) 43:499510
Table 1 Factor analyses of the Basic Empathy Scale in Chinese children and adolescents (n = 792)
No Item Factor1 Factor2
5 I get caught up in other peoples feelings easily .64 .04
17 I often get swept up in my friends feelings .63 .01
8 Other peoples feelings dont bother me at all .62 .13
18 My friends unhappiness doesnt make me feel anything .59 .22
7 I dont become sad when I see other people crying .55 .21
2 After being with a friend who is sad about something, I usually feel sad .52 -.03
1 My friends emotions dont affect me much .48 .08
15 I tend to feel scared when I am with friends who are afraid .46 -.13
13 Seeing a person who has been angered has no effect on my feelings .46 .14
11 I often become sad when watching sad things on TV or in films .39 .24
4 I get frightened when I watch characters in a good scary movie .33 .07
10 I can usually work out when my friends are scared .05 .70
19 I am not usually aware of my friends feelings .08 .63
9 When someone is feeling down I can usually understand how they feel .03 .62
20 I have trouble figuring out when my friends are happy .07 .60
6 I find it hard to know when my friends are frightened .04 .57
14 I can usually work out when people are cheerful .06 .55
16 I can usually realise quickly when a friend is angry .05 .52
12 I can often understand how people are feeling even before they tell me .16 .47
3 I can understand my friends happiness when she/he does well at something .12 .28
well (X2 = 285.08, df = 136, X2/df = 2.09, RMSEA = .045, NFI = .81, NNFI = .88,
CFI = .89, GFI = .93, AGFI = .94). According to modification indices [34], three more
items (item 2: After being with a friend who is sad about something, I usually feel sad; item
4: I get frightened when I watch characters in a good scary movie; and item 15: I tend to
feel scared when I am with friends who are afraid) were also deleted. Confirmatory factor
analysis revealed that this revised 16-item, two-factor model was acceptable for Chinese
sample (X2 = 186.03, df = 89, X2/df = 2.09, RMSEA = .038, NFI = .91, NNFI = .93,
CFI = .95, GFI = .97, AGFI = .95) (Fig. 1).
Empathy-Prosocial Behaviour Correlations
Similar to Albiero [19], as depicted in Table 2, there were significant positive correlations
between two of the factors of the BES and the prosocial behaviour subscale of the
Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Interestingly, the correlations between empathy
and prosocial behaviour were unequal for boys and girls, while the correlations did not
differ significantly (p [ .05). Moreover, affective empathy was also found to be positively
and significantly correlated with the emotional symptoms (ESS) scores for both genders.
Discriminant Validity
The results indicated that boys with conduct disorder reported significantly lower cognitive
empathy (t = 3.18, p \ .01, d = .45) than comparable boys (Table 3).
123
Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2012) 43:499510 505
CE 6
CE 9 0.60
AE 1
0.65
CE 10
0.64
Cognitive AE 5
Empathy 0.45
0.36
CE 12
0.32 AE 7
0.43
CE 14 0.46 0.41
0.55 AE 8
0.53
CE 16 0.70
AE 11
Affective 0.37
-0.45
0.34 Empathy
CE 19
0.50
AE 13
0.46
CE 20
AE 17
0.64
AE 18
Fig. 1 Two-factor confirmatory analysis model of the BES (16 items)
Gender and Age Differences
Table 4 shows the means and standard deviations for the Chinese version of BES by the
age and gender of the sample. The sample was divided into three age groups (912, 1315,
and 1618) for ease of analysis.
As expected, there were main effects for gender evident on cognitive empathy (F [1,
1518] = 22.75, p \ .01, f = .12), affective empathy (F [1, 1518] = 55.15, p \ .01,
f = .19), and total score of scale (F [1, 1518] = 58.87, p \ .01, f = .20), with girls
reporting higher levels of empathy on the two factors than boys, especially for affective
empathy. But the effect sizes of gender differences in this sample were smaller than that of
previous study [11].
As for age differences, in contrast to Dadds [12], the present study found that both
cognitive empathy (F [2, 1518] = 3.70, p \ .05, f = .05) and affective empathy (F [2,
1518] = 15.73, p \ .01, f = .10) increased with age, while the effect sizes were quite
small.
123
506 Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2012) 43:499510
Table 2 Correlations between empathy and SDQ for boys and girls
Total (n = 1,524) Boys (n = 783) Girls (n = 741)
BTS CE AE BTS CE AE BTS CE AE
HS .01 -.03 .05 .04 .00 .06 .07 -.01 .11
ESS .21* .05 .30** .28* .14 .34** .21 -.03 .34*
CPS -.16 -.12 -.16 -.14 -.11 -.15 -.15 -.12 -.12
PPS -.05 -.07 -.02 .06 -.02 .12 -.20 -.15 -.18
PBS .47** .45** .38** .47** .49** .37** .41* .34* .34*
HS Hyperactivity, ESS emotional symptoms, CPS conduct problems, PPS peer problems, PBS prosocial
behaviour, BTS total score of the Basic Empathy Scale, CE cognitive empathy, AE affective empathy
* p \ .05; ** p \ .01 (two-tailed test for all)
Table 3 Comparison of empathy between normal group and CD group
CD group (n = 65) Normal group (n = 195) t p
BTS 58.17 7.65 60.94 6.82 -2.18* .03
CE 29.86 4.72 32.09 4.94 -3.18** .00
AE 28.31 4.74 28.43 4.54 -.15 .88
BTS total score of the Basic Empathy Scale, CE cognitive empathy, AE affective empathy
* p \ .05; ** p \ .01 (two-tailed test for all)
Table 4 Means and SD for empathy split by age group and gender
Age (year) Boys Girls Total
Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD
912 BTS 57.79 9.57 61.52 8.89 59.65 9.42
CE 31.70 5.45 33.16 5.00 32.39 5.29
AE 26.26 6.12 28.35 5.80 27.25 6.05
1315 BTS 59.94 8.29 63.40 7.31 61.63 8.01
CE 32.45 4.85 33.87 4.24 33.14 4.61
AE 27.49 5.46 29.53 5.23 28.49 5.44
1618 BTS 59.30 8.69 62.64 7.84 61.76 7.36
CE 32.24 4.31 32.82 3.81 32.53 4.07
AE 28.12 5.31 30.32 4.65 29.22 5.10
BTS total score of Basic Empathy Scale, CE cognitive empathy, AE affective empathy
No interaction was found between gender and age on cognitive empathy (F [2,
1518] = 1.32, p = .27), affective empathy (F [2, 1518] = .03, p = .97), and total
empathy (F [2, 1518] = .31, p = .73).
Correlation Between Cognitive Empathy and Affective Empathy
Pearson correlation coefficients between the cognitive and affective subscales were .32
(p \ .01) for entire sample, .32 (p \ .01) for boys and .28 (p \ .01) for girls.
123
Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2012) 43:499510 507
Testretest Reliability
A subsample of 101 students were selected from the general participants and were re-tested
4 weeks later to evaluate the stability of the 16-item, two-factor scale. No significant
differences were found between test scores and retest scores on cognitive empathy
(t = .02, p [ .05) and affective empathy (t = .94, p [ .05), indicating that the scores
themselves are stable. The testretest correlations were .60 for cognitive empathy, .71 for
affective empathy, .70 for total score of scale, respectively.
Internal Consistency Reliability
The Chinese version of BES and its subscales demonstrated sufficient internal consistency.
Cronbachs alpha coefficients were .72 for cognitive empathy, .73 for affective empathy,
and .77 for total score of scale, respectively.
Discussion
In the current study, researchers reported a variation in construct in Chinese version of
BES. The results confirmed the two dimensional structure of the original version [11], with
most items corresponding to the items included in the factors the original scale measured.
In Jolliffe and Farringtons study [11], cognitive empathy consisted of 9 items, affective
empathy consisted of 11 items. Similar to their model, the two factors identified in present
study were also cognitive empathy (comprising 6, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 19, 20) and affective
empathy (comprising 1, 5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 17, 18), with one item (item 3) of cognitive
empathy and 3 items (items 2, 4, 15) of affective empathy discarded. The Chinese version
of BES showed satisfactory goodness-of-fit (X2 = 186.03, df = 89, X2/df = 2.09,
RMSEA = .038, NFI = .91, NNFI = .93, CFI = .95, GFI = .97, AGFI = .95).
The alteration of the scale may be accounted by cross-cultural diversity between British
and Chinese people. In China, people take interpersonal relationships as their central
resource. For the sake of interpersonal harmony, Chinese people usually adopt the way of
act, poker face, to mask their real attitudes (especially for strong or negative emotions,
such as sadness, fright and scare, mentioned above in items 2, 4 and 15) and keep peace.
Sometimes, Chinese people trend to rely on covert and more complex methods of com-
munication (e.g., vague comments) while Western trend to use direct and simple methods
[35]. Therefore, the usage of body signals (e.g., headache) becomes an important mani-
festation mode of emotions in Chinese culture, so much so that the deficiencies in the
expression or understanding of ones own emotions, namely alexithymia, are more com-
mon in Chinese people than Western [21]. For example, Su [35] reported that somatic
symptom may differ in presentation from Chinese youths and Western, with somatic
symptom representing physical symptoms of the underlying anxiety including generalized
anxiety, social phobia and school phobia in Chinese children. Thus, it is possible that
empathy statements are sensitive to cultural issues and may have different meaning among
Chinese children and adolescents.
Concurring with previous studies [11, 12], this study mirrors the findings of positive
connections between empathy and prosocial behaviour. These results supported the cri-
terion-related validity of the Chinese version of BES.
The current study found boys with conduct disorders have lower cognitive empathy than
matched boys, indicating the important role of cognitive empathy in regulating behaviours,
123
508 Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2012) 43:499510
but not affective empathy. These findings are consistent with Jolliffe and Farrington that
have reviewed these issues [14]. That is, cognitive empathy has a stronger negative rela-
tionship with antisocial behaviour than has affective empathy. However, these results were
not in line with Lovett and Sheffield [23], who offered the findings that the aggressive
adolescents reported significantly lower affective empathy, yet not in line with Bjorkqvist
and Osterman [26], who revealed certain types of antisocial behaviour might even be
facilitated by these individuals adequate or even elevated cognitive empathy. The reso-
lution of these apparent contradictory findings appears to be related to the tools that were
used for empathy measuring, the seriousness of the antisocial behaviour, the diverse
samples (community-based or clinic-referred), and the heterogeneity of conduct disorder.
The block of conduct disorder comprises a range of dissocial, aggressive, or defiant
behaviours due to biological and psycho-social influencing factors, and different behav-
iours may relate to different dimensions of empathy [6]. So the subtypes of conduct
disorder would differ in empathy levels. Alternatively, some variables, such as intelli-
gence, socio-economic status may affect the results.
Consistent with previous researches [1, 10, 11, 19, 36] and hypothesis four, gender
differences were found in this study, which showed that girls were more empathic than
boys, especially for affective empathy. Additionally, as depicted in Table 2, the correla-
tions between empathy and prosocial behaviour were also different for boys and girls
(although the correlations did not differ significantly), and specifically, the coefficients
were higher for boys than girls. These findings suggested that empathy was a stronger
predictor of prosocial behaviour among boys than among girls, and that gender might be a
moderating variable on the relationship between empathy and prosocial behaviour. Simi-
larly, McMahon et al. [37] identified an interaction between empathy and gender in pre-
dicting prosocial behaviour, with the contributions was more pronounced for males than
females. Reasons for gender differences are likely attributed to evolution, social desir-
ability, communication and presentation skill [1], peer group dynamics [37] and gender
specific neural mechanisms [36, 38, 39]. For example, Schulte-Ruther et al. [36] demon-
strated that males and females rely on different neural strategies when assessing their own
emotions in response to others.
This study also found affective empathy was positively associated with emotional
problems for both genders, whereas Dadds [12] revealed cognitive empathy was associated
with emotional problems for boys, and affective empathy was positively associated with
emotional problems for girls only. So, future research should examine whether gender may
account for the relations between empathy and various behaviours.
Generally, the results of age differences were in line with an early study [28]. In present
study, both cognitive empathy and affective empathy increased with age, especially for the
latter. Interestingly, the age differences for cognitive empathy is not only small in size,
they are also curvilinear in growth. It demonstrated that the speed of development for
cognitive empathy was unstable during different age periods. However, in view of the
results of Dadds [12], more work is needed to be done to examine how empathy levels
might change through life.
The significant but not strong relation between cognitive empathy and affective
empathy of the Chinese version of BES (r = .32, p \ .01) show that cognitive empathy
and affective empathy are inter-correlated concepts included in empathy, but also high-
lights the unlikeness which might exist in the underlying components of cognitive empathy
and affective empathy [1216]. For example, an fMRI study [15] revealed that emotional
empathy still engaged the mirror neuron system (MNS), thalamus, primary somatosensory
and motor cortices when brain activation resulting from cognitive empathy was controlled.
123
Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2012) 43:499510 509
This study supported previous findings of the BES moderate reliability [10, 11, 19]. In
the current study, Cronbachs a of the scale were .72 for cognitive empathy, .73 for
affective empathy. The 4 weeks testretest correlations were .60 for cognitive, .71 for
affective. The split-half reliability was .77. In British sample [11], internal consistency
coefficients were .79 for cognitive and .85 for affective empathy; In Italian sample [19],
internal consistency coefficients were .74 for cognitive empathy, and .86 for affective
empathy; And in French sample [10], internal consistency coefficients were .66 for cog-
nitive empathy, .77 for affective empathy, and that testretest reliability were .54 for
cognitive empathy, .70 for affective empathy. These results confirmed the stability of the
BES between different cultures.
Summary
With fewer items, the Chinese version of BES is a simple and available self-rating scale
with adequate reliability and validity. Further examination would be done to test its
applicability in more fields, such as criminology, clinical and social psychology.
Acknowledgments We would like to thank all the participants for their support, especially thank Darrick
Jolliffe, who gave permission to revise his scale and offered assistance in modifying article. This work was
supported by a grant from Humanities and Social Sciences Project of Ministry of Education of China
(Project No: 11YJA190005).
References
1. Lennon R, Eisenberg N (1987) Emotional displays associated with preschoolers prosocial behavior.
Child Dev 58(4):9921000
2. Cohen D, Strayer J (1996) Empathy in conduct-disordered and comparison youth. Dev Psychol
32:988998
3. Davis MH (1980) A multidimensional approach to individual differences in empathy. JSAS Catalog of
Select Documents in psychology 10:85
4. Davis MH (1983) Measuring individual differences in empathy: evidence for a multidimensional
approach. J Pers Soc Psychol 44:113126
5. Jollife D, Farrington DP (2006) Examining the relationship between low empathy and bullying. Aggress
Behav 32:540550
6. McPhedran S (2009) A review of the evidence for associations between empathy, violence, and animal
cruelty. Aggress Violent Behav 14:14
7. Lisak D, Ivan C (1995) Deficits in intimacy and empathy in sexually aggressive men. J Interpers
Violence 10(3):296308
8. Eisenberg N, Strayer J (eds) (1987) Empathy and its development. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, New York
9. Feshbach ND, Feshbach S (1987) Affective processes and academic achievement. Child Dev
58(5):13351347
10. DAmbrosio F, Olivier M, Didon D, Besche C (2009) The Basic Empathy Scale: a French validation of
a measure of empathy in youth. Pers Individ Differ 46:160165
11. Jollife D, Farrington DP (2006) Development and validation of the Basic Empathy Scale. J Adolesc
29:589611
12. Dadds MR, Hunter K, Hawes DJ, Frost ADJ, Vassallo S, Bunn P et al (2008) A measure of cognitive
and affective empathy in children using parent ratings. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev 39:111122
13. Gery I, Miljkovitch R, Berthoz S, Soussignan R (2009) Empathy and recognition of facial expressions
of emotion in sex offenders, non-sex offenders and normal controls. Psychiatry Res 165:252262
14. Jollife D, Farrington DP (2004) Empathy and offending: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Aggress Violent Behav 9:441476
123
510 Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2012) 43:499510
15. Nummenmaa L, Hirvonen J, Parkkola R, Hietanen JK (2008) Is emotional contagion special? an fMRI
study on neural systems for affective and cognitive empathy. NeuroImage 43:571580
16. Jabbi M, Swart M, Keysers C (2007) Empathy for positive and negative emotions in the gustatory
cortex. Neuroimage 34:17441753
17. Hogan R (1969) Development of an empathy scale. J Consult Clin Psychol 33:307316
18. Mehrabian A, Epstein N (1972) A measure of emotional empathy. J Pers 40:525543
19. Albiero P, Matricardi G, Speltri D, Toso D (2009) The assessment of empathy in adolescence:
a contribution to the Italian validation of the Basic Empathy Scale. J Adolesc 32:393408
20. Kleinman A (1980) Patients and healers in the context of culture. University of California press,
Berkeley
21. Yang DS (2000) Foundation of psychiatry, 3rd edn. Hunan science & technology press, Changsha
22. Zhang FF, Dong Y, Wang K, Zhan ZY, Xie LF (2010) Reliability and validity of the Chinese version of
the interpersonal reactivity index-C. Chin J Clin Psychol 18(2):155157
23. Lovett BJ, Sheffield RA (2007) Affective empathy deficits in aggressive children and adolescents:
a critical review. Clin Psychol Rev 27:113
24. Miller PA, Eisenberg N (1988) The relation of empathy to aggressive and externalizing/antisocial
behavior. Psychol Bull 103:324344
25. de Wied M, Goudena PP, Matthys W (2005) Empathy in boys with disruptive behaviour disorders.
J Child Psychol Psychiatry 46:867880
26. Bjorkqvist K, Osterman K (2000) Social intelligenceempathy = Aggression? Aggress Violent Behav
5(2):191200
27. Ding F, Guo Y (2010) The relationship of theory og mind and empathy with prosocial behaviour.
Psychol Sci 33:660662
28. Ellis PL (1982) Empathy: a factor in antisocial behavior. J Abnorm Child Psychol 10:123134
29. Li L (1990) The relationship between empathy and prosocial behavior in adolescents. Acta Psycho-
logica Sinica 1:7279
30. Hojat M, Gonnella JS, Nasca TJ (2002) The Jefferson scale of physician empathy: further psychometric
data and differences by gender and specialty at item level. Acad Med (supplement) 77:560572
31. An XQ, Yang H, Xu JP, Song LP, Qiu YF (2008) Compilation and evaluation of Jefferson empathy
scale. Chin Nurs Res 22(8):20632066
32. Goodman R (1997) The strengths and difficulties questionnaire: a research note. J Child Psychol
Psychiatry 38:581586
33. Kou JH, Du YS, Xia LM (2007) Formulation of children strengths and difficulties questionnaire (the
edition for students) for Shanghai Norm. China J Health Psychol 15(1):35
34. Hau KT, Wen Z, Cheng Z (2004) Structural equation model and its applications. Educational Science
Press, Beijing
35. Su LY, Wang K, Fan F, Su Y, Gao XP (2008) Reliability and validity of the screen for children anxiety
related emotional disorder (SCARED) in Chinese children. J Anxiety Disord 22:612621
36. Schulte-Ruther M, Markowitsch HJ, Shah NJ, Fink GR, Piefke M (2008) Gender differences in brain
networks supporting empathy. NeuroImage 43:393403
37. McMahon SD, Wernsman J, Parnes AL (2006) Understanding prosocial behavior: the impact of
empathy and gender among African American adolescents. J Adolesc Health 39:135137
38. Han SH, Fan Y, Mao LH (2008) Gender difference in empathy for pain: an electrophysiological
investigation. Brain Res 1196:8593
39. Rueckert L, Naybar N (2008) Gender differences in empathy: the role of the right hemisphere. Brain
Cogn 67:162167
123
