Multidimensional Model of Empathy
Davis, M. H. · 1983
เป็นที่รู้จักในชื่อ: Davis empathy model · IRI framework
Davis's model treats empathy not as a single capacity but as four separable constructs that happen to share a name: perspective taking (the cognitive tendency to adopt another's point of view), empathic concern (other-oriented feelings of sympathy and compassion), personal distress (self-oriented anxiety in response to another's suffering) and fantasy (the tendency to identify with fictional characters). The decisive evidence for separation is that empathic concern and personal distress predict opposite helping behaviour: concern promotes assistance, distress promotes escape from the situation.
Model treating empathy not as a single trait but as a set of separate though related constructs (Davis, 1980, 1983): two cognitive — perspective taking, the tendency to adopt another person's point of view, and fantasy, the tendency to transpose oneself imaginatively into the feelings and actions of fictional characters — and two affective — empathic concern, other-oriented feelings of sympathy for people in difficulty, and personal distress, self-oriented anxiety and unease when witnessing another person's suffering. The dimensions vary independently and correlate unevenly, with personal distress typically running against the others, which is why the model prescribes a profile of separate readings and no composite empathy score.
- แหล่งที่มา:
- Davis, M. H. (1980). A multidimensional approach to individual differences in empathy. JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 10, 85. Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(1), 113-126.
ทำแบบทดสอบที่ผ่านการตรวจสอบซึ่งสร้างบนทฤษฎีนี้
การอ่านเกี่ยวกับโครงสร้างจะบอกคุณว่ามันคืออะไร เครื่องมือที่ผ่านการตรวจสอบจะบอกคุณว่าคุณอยู่ตรงไหน ทำฟรี ผลลัพธ์ภายในไม่กี่นาที
ภาพรวมหลักฐาน
- การสนับสนุนเชิงประจักษ์
- หลักฐานแข็งแกร่ง
- การทำซ้ำ
- ทำซ้ำได้ดี
- ข้ามวัฒนธรรม
- ส่วนใหญ่เป็นสากล
- การวิเคราะห์อภิมาน
- 10 ที่จัดทำดัชนี
คะแนนเหล่านี้สรุปจากวรรณกรรมที่ตีพิมพ์เกี่ยวกับทฤษฎี ไม่ใช่คุณภาพของแบบทดสอบใด ๆ ที่สร้างบนทฤษฎีนี้ เป็นการประเมินจากบรรณาธิการตามแหล่งข้อมูลด้านล่าง และจะเปลี่ยนแปลงเมื่อมีหลักฐานเพิ่มเติม
บริบททางประวัติศาสตร์
Empathy research through the 1960s and 1970s was split between a cognitive tradition treating it as accurate perspective inference and an affective tradition treating it as vicarious emotion, with each camp using measures the other regarded as invalid. Davis's 1980 and 1983 work on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index resolved the impasse empirically rather than by argument: he built a multi-scale instrument covering both traditions and showed the subscales had distinct correlates. Batson's parallel experimental programme on the empathy-altruism hypothesis provided the behavioural evidence that concern and distress diverge.
โครงสร้าง
Perspective Taking
The cognitive tendency to reconstruct how a situation looks from where another person stands, with their information and their stakes (Davis, 1980). The dimension of the model that behaves most like a skill: it improves with deliberate practice and costs effort a person may skip when tired or certain they are right.
Fantasy
The tendency to transpose oneself imaginatively into the feelings and actions of fictional characters in books, films and plays (Davis, 1980). Cognitive rather than affective in the model, and less trivial than it sounds: the machinery that lets a novel take over an evening is the machinery used to simulate lives one has never lived.
Empathic Concern
Other-oriented feelings of sympathy, tenderness and protectiveness toward people going through difficulty (Davis, 1980). The affective dimension pointed outward, at the other person, and the one closest to what everyday language calls a good heart.
Personal Distress
Self-oriented anxiety and unease when witnessing another person's suffering (Davis, 1980). Read differently from the other three: a high score does not mean more empathy, it means the sight of pain sets off the observer's own alarm, and energy goes to managing that reaction before it can go to the person in trouble. In the reference model this dimension tends to correlate negatively with the others, which is why no composite empathy score exists.
เครื่องมือ
- NOESIS Multidimensional Empathy ScaleNOESIS2026
แบบทดสอบที่สร้างบนทฤษฎีนี้
การประยุกต์ใช้เชิงปฏิบัติ
The four-dimensional reading is used in healthcare and caregiving training, where the practical target is high empathic concern combined with low personal distress — the profile associated with sustained helping rather than burnout and withdrawal. In developmental and clinical research the subscales differentiate conditions that a single empathy score would confuse: perspective-taking deficits and empathic-concern deficits have different implications. In self-knowledge contexts the model explains a common experience, that being overwhelmed by another's pain is not the same as being able to help.
วิธีการวัดผล
Measured with a self-report Likert instrument (IRI: 28 items) producing four subscale scores that are reported separately; a total empathy score is not computed because the subscales have opposing correlates.
ข้อวิจารณ์และข้อจำกัด
The fantasy subscale's status as empathy is disputed; it correlates with openness and imaginative absorption more than with prosocial outcomes, and many researchers drop it. Self-reported perspective taking correlates weakly with performance measures of actual accuracy in inferring others' states, so the cognitive subscale may measure motivation or self-concept rather than ability. The instrument is over forty years old and its wording has aged; several items reference situations that no longer read naturally. Empathic concern is also socially desirable and inflates in any evaluative setting.
ผลงานตีพิมพ์สำคัญ
- Davis, M. H.. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. 10.1037/0022-3514.44.1.113
- Davis, M. H.. (1980). A multidimensional approach to individual differences in empathy.
- Batson, C. D., Fultz, J. & Schoenrade, P. A.. (1987). Distress and empathy: Two qualitatively distinct vicarious emotions with different motivational consequences. 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1987.tb00426.x