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Empathy, guilt, and gender: A comparison of two measures of guilt
Author(s) -
SILFVER MIA,
HELKAMA KLAUS
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9450.2007.00578.x
Subject(s) - empathy , psychology , cheating , morality , perspective (graphical) , perspective taking , social psychology , developmental psychology , empathic concern , cognition , artificial intelligence , political science , computer science , law , neuroscience
The relations of empathy with two measures of guilt were examined in a sample of 13‐ to 16‐year‐olds ( N = 113). Empathy was measured using Davis's IRI and guilt by Tangney's TOSCA and Hoffman's semi‐projective story completion method that includes two different scenarios, guilt over cheating and guilt over inaction. Empathy correlated more strongly with both measures of guilt than the two measures correlated with each other. For boys, cognitive perspective‐taking was a stronger predictor for guilt than for girls. Hoffman's guilt over inaction was more strongly associated with empathy measures in girls than in boys, whereas for guilt over cheating the pattern was the opposite. The results indicate that boys and girls may emphasize different aspects of morality.