Research Question

Empathy refers to the capacity to understand and being sensitive to and sharing in the feelings and emotions of other people (Philip E. Varca, 2014). These feelings and emotions could be resultant of either the past or present conditions the person is going through (Schumann, 2014). Empathy enables people to imagine themselves in the conditions or emotions of others so that they can understand what they are feeling or experiencing.

Being empathetic, we can behave in more compassionate manner towards others. We can share through their thoughts and experiences. Though in a society people could prefer to be individualistic, such traits are overruled by neurological sensations which provide us with ability to understand other people’s emotional reactions through facial expression and other body languages (Throop, 2013).

Previous empirical research has suggested that there exists a relationship between gender and empathy (Hojat, 2002). It has been suggested that females tend to have more empathy towards others compared to their male counterparts (Toussaint, 2005). Commonly held believes and prejudices point out to the fact that women have greater ability to understand others than their male counterparts. Genetic composition could be thought to be an attribute to this condition but a research conducted by Cambridge University found out that there was no genetic basis to the difference in the empathy scores for female and male people. Further, research indicates that the differences in empathy levels between male and females could possibly be resultant of motivation rather than ability (Argo, 2008). This is an implication that regardless of the cause of this difference, females tend to be more empathic than males.  

The research questions for our study are;

1. Is there a difference between male empathy levels and female empathy levels? And more specifically;
2. Are the empathy levels of females greater than the empathy levels of males?

Based on the research question, the following hypothesis shall guide us through the study?

• H₀: There is no difference between male empathy levels and female empathy levels.

H₁: There is a difference between male and female empathy levels.

• H₀: Female empathy levels are not greater than male empty levels.

H₁: Female empathy levels are greater than male empathy levels.    

The participants were a sample of 192 people from Murdoch University. Of the 192 participants, were female representing 68.2%, 57 representing 29.7% were male and 4 representing 2.1 % responded to “other” gender.

The participants reported to be of ages between 17 to 60 years and their average age was 25.51.

In terms of citizenship, 73(38.1%) were from Singapore, 103(53.6) were from Australia and 16(8.3%) were of other citizenships.

The research made use of primary data that was collected and analyzed. Descriptive statistics and t-tests were used for analyzing the data. Descriptive statistics were used to measure mean, minimum and maximum values, standard deviation and frequencies for our data.

T-tests were used to test the comparison between the empathy score means between males and females. Independent t-tests were used as the means to be compared were of two different groups; male and female.

The study employed a quantitative research approach. The quantitative research technique used for obtaining data was a survey. In the survey, data was collected by administering questionnaires to the participants. Respondents were required to fill the questionnaires and submit them. Questionnaires were the preferred tool for data collection since respondents had privacy while filling the forms. Responses from the survey formed the data variables that were used in the analysis stage of the research.

Hypothesis

Respondents provided responses on their gender and empathy scores. The Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale was used to measure the respondents’ empathy scores. It is a self-report measure of the degree to which the respondents felt empathy towards others.  The Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale has 16 subscales and 64 score items with 0 being low and 64 being high. The degree of empathy increased as the scores increased. The higher the empathy score, the higher the degree of empathy, and the lower the empathy score then the lower the degree of empathy.

Data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).   

Results from analysis conducted showed that the respondents responded to empathy scores between 35.0 and 59.0. The mean empathy score was 45.89 and the standard deviation was 5.04, implying that the empathy scores lied within about 2.5 standard deviations on either side of the empathy scores mean. 

The bar graph shows that the empathy scores are normally distributed as there is no skewness, implying that the distribution of the data is mesokurtosic.  The scores displayed no outliers.

The empathy scores of females are normally distributed with a standard error mean of 0.42 while the empathy scores of males are skewed to the right with a standard error mean of 0.71. 

To answer the research question on whether there was a difference in the empathy scores of males and females and to test the hypothesis that there is a difference in male and female empathy scores, descriptive statistics analysis was carried out on the sympathy scores sorted gender-wise.

Females were found to have a mean sympathy score of 46.13 and a standard deviation of 4.83. Males were found to have a mean sympathy score of 45.00 and a standard deviation of 5.35. These results show that females had higher empathy scores compared to males. The empathy scores of females less deviated from the mean compared to the empathy scores of males. In agreement with our alternative hypothesis, there was found a difference between male empathy scores and female empathy scores and therefore we rejected the null hypothesis that there was no difference in empathy scores as exhibited by females and males. 

Independent t-test was used to answer the research question on whether females scored higher than males in terms of empathy scores and to test the hypothesis that females have higher empathy scores compared to their male counterparts. Independent t-test examined the possible difference in the means of the two genders.

The t-test was not significant, t (186) = 1.43, p=0.16.  Therefore the group means are not statistically significantly different because the p-value is greater than 0.05. We therefore lack sufficient evidence against the null hypothesis that female empathy scores are not greater than male empathy scores. Contrary to our previous studies, we fail to justify that female empathy scores are higher than male empathy scores.

The goal of our research was to investigate whether there are differences in the empathy scores of males and females. This was achieved by carrying out descriptive statistics and independent t-test analyses. The hypothesis that females would score higher than males on empathy levels was not supported by our study.

Research Methodology

Contrary to our expectations, t-test performed showed no statistically significant difference in the means of empathy scores between males and females. We failed to prove the alternative hypothesis that there exists a statistically significant difference between the male and female empathy score means and we therefore cannot conclude that females score higher compared to their male counterparts in terms of empathy levels. These results were in disagreement with previous works which suggested that women were found to score higher than males in terms of empathy levels.

However, our results are in agreement with previous studies which suggested that genetic composition of humans has no influence on empathy levels. The difference in chromosal composition between males and females cannot be thought to be a factor affecting empathy levels.  

Empathy was not defined to the respondents. The respondents could therefore have possibly easily confused the term with other emotions such as sympathy. Provision of the definition of empathy could therefore eliminate any chance of the participants responding to a question they did not understand.

The average age of the participants was found to be about 25.51 implying that majority of the respondents were young people. The respondents admitted into the study were therefore not a representative of the whole population. In future researches, consideration should be put on age of the participants to ensure that both the young and the elderly population groups shall participate in the study.

Since our study failed to justify a statistically significant difference between empathy scores of females and males, more participants to represent the whole population should be employed into the study.

While majority of the participants were found to be young people, more older people should be employed into the study to investigate the effect of cross-sectional relationships between age and gender on empathy levels.

Further research should be conducted to assess the impact of factors such as citizenship and age on empathy. 

Conclusion

The ability to being sensitive and sharing in other people’s emotions and feelings is important as it makes people aspire to live for each other. It is crucial that people understand what factors affect empathy levels. Previous studies had been done to investigate the impact of gender on empathy levels. It was found out that empathy levels are higher in females than in males. However, our research has failed to justify these claims from previous researchers.

Likely, there are factors that indeed affect empathy levels. Lack of relationship between gender and empathy as outlined in this study proves that there is still need to conduct more research on the same topic.  

References

Argo, J. J. (2008). An Investigation of Empathy Differences in Response to Emotional Melodramatic Entertainment. Journal of Consumer Research, 10.

Hojat, M. G. (2002). Physician Empathy: Definition, Components, Measurement, and Relationship to Gender and Specialty. American Journal of Psychiatry, 7.

Philip E. Varca, T. L. (2014). Emotional Empathy during service encounters: the price for caring. 21.

Schumann, K. Z. (2014). Addressing the empathy deficit. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 19.

Throop, D. W. (2013). The Anthropology of Empathy. Anthropology in Action, 9.

Toussaint, L. W. (2005). Gender Differences in the Relationship Between Empathy and Forgiveness. The Journal of Social Psychology, 13.