Empathy and Imagination

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between empathy and imagination. The hypotheses were: a) the greater an individual's imagination, the more empathy the individual will show, and b) individuals instructed to imagine themselves in another's unfortunate situation will show greater empathy than others not similarly instructed. The subjects were 141 tenth- and eleventh-grade Israeli boys and girls. Imagination was measured by the daydreaming and night-dreaming scales of the Imaginal Processes Inventory [1] and empathy was rated on the Israeli version of the Accurate Empathy Scale [2]. The data support the first hypothesis, but not the second.