Abstract

The current study examines changes over time in a commonly used measure of dispositional empathy. A cross-temporal meta-analysis was conducted on 72 samples of American college students who completed at least one of the four subscales (Empathic Concern, Perspective Taking, Fantasy, and Personal Distress) of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) between 1979 and 2009 (total N = 13,737). Overall, the authors found changes in the most prototypically empathic subscales of the IRI: Empathic Concern was most sharply dropping, followed by Perspective Taking. The IRI Fantasy and Personal Distress subscales exhibited no changes over time. Additional analyses found that the declines in Perspective Taking and Empathic Concern are relatively recent phenomena and are most pronounced in samples from after 2000.

Discussion

A meta-analysis of 72 samples of American college students found a decrease in EC and PT, especially in the past decade. Compared to college students in the late 1970s and early 1980s, college students today are less likely to agree with statements such as “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me” (EC) and “I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective” (PT).

The change in the Likert-type scale points in EC and PT between the late 1970s and 2009 is admittedly minor (i.e., about one third of a scale point, when combining the two subscales) and still leaves today’s college student around the midpoint in these traits. However, the effect sizes are large enough that it may foreshadow future trends in empathy. Consider that the effect sizes were much larger than the effect of violent video games on aggression (Anderson & Bushman, 2001) and larger than the effect size for increases in narcissism over time (Twenge et al., 2008).

The changes in empathy were limited to the subscales (EC and PT) that have been shown to be associated with prosocial and antisocial behaviors in past research. The fact that PD remained unchanged over time is conceptually consistent with evidence suggesting an increase in self-focused traits such as narcissism (Twenge et al., 2008) and agency (Twenge, 1997). Importantly, this study provides evidence for a decrease in other-focused traits over time with the finding that EC and PT have significantly decreased. Unlike past work showing that the change in narcissism steadily increased over time, we found that decline in empathy has largely occurred after 2000, with relative stability before that.