Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019
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Date of Graduation
Spring 2015
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts (BA)
Department
Department of Psychology
Advisor(s)
William Evans
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between empathy, service, and other variables that have been seen in the past to be possible predictors of empathy and service. Undergraduate and graduate students took a survey measuring their emotional empathy, strength of religious faith, intent to engage in civic action, other predictor variables, and the amount of service each participant engaged in. Pearson’s correlations and independent t tests were run to analyze the relationships between the variables. The intent to engage in civic action measure was highly correlated with both the emotional empathy scale and strength of religious faith scale. In addition, two groups of majors (group one included social sciences, biology, and education; group two included all other majors) were found to be different in their levels of empathy and their intent to engage in service. To test whether an increase in service was related to a change in empathy, some participants took the survey twice. However, differences at pretest and posttest were not found to be significant.
Keywords: empathy, service, volunteerism, faith, civic action, major
Recommended Citation
Windsor, Nancy L.C., "The relation of service activity to change in empathy" (2015). Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019. 63.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/honors201019/63
