The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between personality, empathy ability, and mental effort on empathy based on the HEXACO personality factors. For this, HEXACO-PI-R, Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) to measure the empat...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between personality, empathy ability, and mental effort on empathy based on the HEXACO personality factors. For this, HEXACO-PI-R, Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) to measure the empathic ability, Demand Selection Task to choose between description and empathy for portraits and subjective mental effort on empathy task by using some of NASA-Task Loal Index were measured for adults in their 20s and over. 297 cases of total data gathered by the survey were analyzed by SPSS 23.0 program. The results are summarized as follows.
First, Stepwise method of multiple regression analysis was conducted to determine the effect of personality 6 factor on empathy ability. As the results, among the personality 6 factors, Emotionality, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Honesty-Humility were found to have a significant positive effect on empathy ability, and Conscientiousness alone did not. In addition, personality 6 factors had a significant positive influence on cognitive empathy, which is a sub-factor of empathy, in order of Openness to Experience, emotionality, Agreeableness, and extroversion. Honesty-Humility and Conscientiousness did not significantly affect. Emotional empathy, another sub-factor of empathy, had a significant positive effect in the order of Emotionality, Openness to Experience, Honesty-Humility, and Agreeableness, also Conscientiousness and Extraversion had no significant effect.
Second, multiple regression analysis was conducted to verify the relationship between empathy selection task performance and personality factors, and independent sample t-test was conducted to confirm the difference of personality factors between the high and low group who chose empathy. As a result, there was no significant relationship between empathy selection task performance and personality factor.
Third, multiple regression analysis was conducted to verify the relationship between subjective reporting of mental efforts on empathy and personality factors, and independent sample t-test was conducted to confirm the difference of personality factors in the group that said that mental efforts on empathy were needed. As a result, Openness to Experience had a significant negative effect on multiple regression analysis, and Emotionality had a significant positive effect on it. In comparison between groups, Emotionality showed significant difference.
Fourth, regression analysis was conducted to verify the relationship between empathy selection task performance and empathy ability, and independent sample t-test was conducted to confirm the difference of empathy ability between high and low group who chose a lot of empathy. As a result, it was found that empathy ability and cognitive empathy ability, which are sub-factors, have a significant positive relationship with empathy selection task performance.
Fifth, regression analysis was conducted to verify the relationship between subjective reporting of mental effort on empathy and empathy ability, and independent sample t-test was conducted to confirm the difference in empathy ability of the group that said that mental effort on empathy is necessary. As a result, it was found that the mental effort and empathy ability on empathy did not have a significant relationship.
The significance of this study is to explore the relationship between empathy ability and personality measurement using HEXACO model based on the new personality structure theory. In addition, the research on mental effort has been discussed in terms of cognitive and cost-benefit perspectives but It can be significant to explore the association with intrinsic personality traits. Lastly, it was found that there is a distinct factor between the level of mental effort and the actual empathy that we feel subjectively about empathy. This suggests that decision to empathize is related to cognitive factors rather than individual’s own personality. This study provides implications that it should be considered not only empathy ability in operation of correctional facilities, educational sites, counseling sites, and parent education programs that require psychological education related to empathy but also mental effort that makes empathy difficult for each individual and actual empathy behavior decision.