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The relationship between subconstructs of empathy and general cognitive ability in the context of policing

PURPOSE: Empathy has been widely theorized as an important ability in professions such as policing, in which to perform well individuals require multiple and interacting abilities, not least when resolving conflict situations. Even so, there are few studies investigating how subconstructs of empathy...

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Autores principales: Inzunza, Miguel, Brown, Gavin T. L., Stenlund, Tova, Wikström, Christina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9765079/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36562059
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.907610
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author Inzunza, Miguel
Brown, Gavin T. L.
Stenlund, Tova
Wikström, Christina
author_facet Inzunza, Miguel
Brown, Gavin T. L.
Stenlund, Tova
Wikström, Christina
author_sort Inzunza, Miguel
collection PubMed
description PURPOSE: Empathy has been widely theorized as an important ability in professions such as policing, in which to perform well individuals require multiple and interacting abilities, not least when resolving conflict situations. Even so, there are few studies investigating how subconstructs of empathy relate to other constructs such as general cognitive ability. The purpose of this paper is to establish, after evaluating psychometric properties, relationships among measures of empathy and cognitive ability in a sample of Swedish police students (n = 157). DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Multiple latent variable models of how the different measures work to predict tasks that can be seen as proxies for the ability to understand another person’s situation and intentions are evaluated to determine the most robust relationship(s) within the data. FINDINGS: We find support for the psychometric properties reported in previous studies with the used instruments. We also find support for perspective-taking, a cognitive empathy subconstruct predicting the ability to recognize emotions, and also the affective part of empathy, predicting general cognitive ability. These findings are discussed at length in the paper. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This research adds more knowledge to the issue of how general cognitive ability relates to cognitive empathy and other subconstructs of empathy or Theory of Mind.
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spelling pubmed-97650792022-12-21 The relationship between subconstructs of empathy and general cognitive ability in the context of policing Inzunza, Miguel Brown, Gavin T. L. Stenlund, Tova Wikström, Christina Front Psychol Psychology PURPOSE: Empathy has been widely theorized as an important ability in professions such as policing, in which to perform well individuals require multiple and interacting abilities, not least when resolving conflict situations. Even so, there are few studies investigating how subconstructs of empathy relate to other constructs such as general cognitive ability. The purpose of this paper is to establish, after evaluating psychometric properties, relationships among measures of empathy and cognitive ability in a sample of Swedish police students (n = 157). DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Multiple latent variable models of how the different measures work to predict tasks that can be seen as proxies for the ability to understand another person’s situation and intentions are evaluated to determine the most robust relationship(s) within the data. FINDINGS: We find support for the psychometric properties reported in previous studies with the used instruments. We also find support for perspective-taking, a cognitive empathy subconstruct predicting the ability to recognize emotions, and also the affective part of empathy, predicting general cognitive ability. These findings are discussed at length in the paper. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This research adds more knowledge to the issue of how general cognitive ability relates to cognitive empathy and other subconstructs of empathy or Theory of Mind. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-11-23 /pmc/articles/PMC9765079/ /pubmed/36562059 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.907610 Text en Copyright © 2022 Inzunza, Brown, Stenlund and Wikström. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Inzunza, Miguel
Brown, Gavin T. L.
Stenlund, Tova
Wikström, Christina
The relationship between subconstructs of empathy and general cognitive ability in the context of policing
title The relationship between subconstructs of empathy and general cognitive ability in the context of policing
title_full The relationship between subconstructs of empathy and general cognitive ability in the context of policing
title_fullStr The relationship between subconstructs of empathy and general cognitive ability in the context of policing
title_full_unstemmed The relationship between subconstructs of empathy and general cognitive ability in the context of policing
title_short The relationship between subconstructs of empathy and general cognitive ability in the context of policing
title_sort relationship between subconstructs of empathy and general cognitive ability in the context of policing
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9765079/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36562059
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.907610
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