Williams C A
Issues Ment Health Nurs. 1990;11(2):155-74. doi: 10.3109/01612849009014551.
Empathy is a topic of growing concern in a variety of disciplines. Although considerable empathy research is reported, often single dimensions of a multidimensional and multiphasic construct are actually being studied. Empathy is a unitary construct involving biopsychosocial components and is particularly well suited for nursing study because of its theoretical congruence with nursing philosophy and concerns. Empathy's importance goes beyond the usual emphasis on helper empathy. Although commonly associated with prosocial behavior, empathy involves underlying processes which may be used for either positive or negative social purposes. Recent technological improvements in research methodology, concerns regarding social violence, and conceptual shifts have led to greatly increased interest in the phenomenon of empathy and an expanded research thrust. One major recent change in empathy research is the tendency to view the phenomenon as multidimensional and consequently to include a variety of measures to capture different elements of the construct. This paper reviews the major approaches to measurement of empathy and classifies these approaches according to the dimensions of empathy that they measure. Physiological change in association with empathy is less frequently measured, but because empathy is commonly assumed to include an emotional response to another, concomitant physiological changes should accompany the emotional aspect of empathy and indicators of physiological response may be appropriate measures to include in nursing studies of empathy. A conceptualization of empathy is presented that considers empathy to be a multidimensional phenomenon, with emotional, cognitive, communicative, and relational components. Because empirical approaches can only examine the most easily measured aspects of empathy, phenomenological approaches are also needed to begin to capture the total construct.
共情是各个学科日益关注的话题。尽管有大量关于共情的研究报道，但实际上往往只是在研究一个多维度、多阶段概念中的单一维度。共情是一个涉及生物心理社会成分的统一概念，由于其与护理理念和关注点在理论上的一致性，特别适合护理研究。共情的重要性超出了通常对帮助者共情的强调。尽管共情通常与亲社会行为相关，但它涉及的潜在过程可用于积极或消极的社会目的。研究方法的最新技术改进、对社会暴力的关注以及概念的转变，导致人们对共情现象的兴趣大幅增加，研究重点也有所扩展。共情研究最近的一个主要变化是倾向于将这一现象视为多维度的，因此采用各种测量方法来捕捉该概念的不同要素。本文回顾了共情测量的主要方法，并根据它们所测量的共情维度对这些方法进行分类。与共情相关的生理变化较少被测量，但由于通常认为共情包括对他人的情感反应，共情的情感方面应伴随着相应的生理变化，生理反应指标可能是护理共情研究中合适的测量方法。本文提出了一种共情的概念化，认为共情是一种多维度现象，包括情感、认知、沟通和关系成分。由于实证方法只能研究共情最容易测量的方面，因此还需要现象学方法来全面把握这一概念。
