Comparison of affective and action responses of male delinquents and students in empathy arousing situations

Abstract

Past studies on delinquents and offenders have focused on trait empathy. However, it is important to identify characteristics of affective and action responses of delinquents and offenders under different empathy-arousing situations. Therefore, responses of male delinquents in a juvenile classification home (n＝174) were compared with responses of male undergraduate students (n＝164). The study assessed personal distress responses and empathic concern responses as indicative of affective responses, and automatic action responses, action responses for improving a situation within a person’s own abilities, and avoidance action responses as indicative of action responses by using three empathy-arousing vignettes. Results of Covariance Structure Analysis of a model based on the organizational model of empathy by David indicated that both types of affective responses positively influenced action responses for improving a situation within a person’s own ability. Conversely, personal distress responses negatively influenced automatic action responses and positively influenced avoidance action responses, whereas empathic concern responses positively influenced automatic action responses and negatively influenced avoidance responses. Moreover, delinquents compared to students tended to make fewer personal distress responses, fewer action responses for improving a situation within their own abilities and fewer avoidant action responses. Furthermore, delinquents tended to have more empathic concern responses and more automatic action responses than students.