Empathy-Implications for Theatre Research

Empathy: Implications for Theatre ResearchAuthor(s): George GunkleSource: Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Mar., 1963), pp. 15-23Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3204321 .

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EMPATHY: IMPLICATIONS FOR THEATRE RESEARCH

GEORGE GUNKLE

It is no easy matter to come to an un-

derstanding of the meaning of the word, empathy, as it is used either in the behavioral sciences or in the communica- tion arts of speech and theatre. Although the word was born in psychology in the

early years of this century, its German

counterpart, Einfiihlung, had already been associated with aesthetics. The

English word, empathy, found its way immediately into psychological explana- tions for art appreciation, and it grad- ually appeared in dramatic theory where it became a simple and sovereign ex-

planation for all that was valuable in the theatre experience. At each of these

stages, meaning became increasingly dif- fuse. Consequently, it is not surprising to find that, among contemporary writers in theatre arts, the word, empathy, is either avoided altogether, paid lip service, or still advanced with conviction by a small few who, despite their zeal, re- main unable to deal with it consistently.

Nevertheless, a few researchers in the behavioral sciences have recently re- vived the word, and their explorations in the last fifteen years have resulted in new application to such areas as education, anthropology, industry, and psychological counseling. It appears, therefore,

that a re-examination of the term, empathy, together with a consideration of the measurement which has newly emerged in fields outside of theatre may be of some value in the continuing search to better understand the theatre experience. It is to this possibility that the present paper addresses itself.

Edward Titchener is credited with the appearance in English of the word, empathy. Titchener coined the English term, intending a direct translation of the German word, Einfiihlung. As he said, in 1909,

Not only do I see gravity and modesty and pride and courtesy and stateliness, but I feel or act them in the mind's muscles. This is, I suppose, a simple case of empathy, if we may coin that term as a rendering of Einfiihlung; there is nothing curious or idiosyncratic about it; but it is a fact that must be mentioned.1

However, Titchener failed to mention whether he was "rendering" Einfiihlung as he had encountered it in the work of Theodor Lipps, whom he cites in his bibliography, or whether he was trans- lating the German word as he had come into contact with it in popular usage. In any case, Einfiihlung seems already to have been in the German language and to have been used at least as early

Mr. Gunkle is a graduate student at the Uni- versity of Iowa, where he also teaches voice and diction, and oral interpretation.

1 Edward Bradford Titchener, Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought Processes (New York, 19og), pp. 21-22.



16 EDUCATIONAL THEATRE JOURNAL

as Novalis and the Romantics.2 Prior to

Lipps, Einfiihlung had had the ordinary meaning of "putting oneself in the place of some one, of imagining, of experienc- ing, the feelings of some one or some-

thing ... ... In this ordinary meaning, the term had been used by the late nine-

teenth-century German aestheticians, Lotze and Vischer, even before Lipps adopted it in the early twentieth century to express a newer, more technical

meaning. The technical meaning which Lipps

gave to Einfiihlung was the process by which an individual attributes aspects of his own personality to an external

object, animate or inanimate. In the former sense-the attribution of aspects of one's personality to an external, animate object-the meaning comes close to what is now generally called "psychological projection"; in the latter case- the attribution of aspects of one's personality to an external, inanimate ob-

ject-a kind of anthropomorphism seems to be outlined. It was Einfiihlung in this latter meaning which had immediate

implications for aesthetics. As Lipps said:

In aesthetic contemplation I therefore lend to the aesthetic object my own personality in a

particular manner, or at all events a mode of

my personality's existence. The Object, to which I aesthetically lend life or soul, carries in itself a reflection of my personality.4

Inasmuch as Einfiihlung was an activity taking place within ourselves, the ac-

companying satisfactions or dissatisfac- tions could be regarded, at least in part, as our aesthetic response.

While there was considerable ambig-

uity in Lipps' earliest discussions, he soon came to mean by Einfiihlung an

entirely mental process; nowhere in his later work did he adhere to the notion of physical correlates involving motor behavior-an idea, in fact, which he

strongly objected to in the interpreta- tions of Einfilhlung made by some of his

contemporaries. An early opponent, the

English aesthetician, Vernon Lee, came under vigorous attack, and by 1911, reversed her position, aligning herself with Lipps and emphasizing "ideas of movement" rather than actual physical sensations. However, at approximately the same time, the research of the Ger- man psychologist, Karl Groos, yielded a

concept which he called Innere Nach-

ahmung, "inner imitation.'" The covert muscular responses to which this concept referred emerged in a context so similar to the behavior studied by Lipps that, despite the latter's objections, "inner imitation" rapidly became associated with Einfiihlung.

The concept of empathy, then, even at these earliest stages, embraced at least the following five meanings: 1) the "common sense" meaning of putting oneself in the place of someone or some-

thing else; 2) the Lipps meaning of a mental process in which an individual attributes aspects of his personality to an external object, animate or 3) inanimate; 4) and the physical meanings involving either overt motor mimicry, as indicated by the earlier formulations of Vernon Lee, or 5) covert motor mim-

icry, as suggested by Groos through his

concept of Innere Nachahmung. It is important to note that while the

term, empathy, enjoyed continued popularity in the years that followed, the distinction between these meanings grad- ually disappeared. The tendency, how-

2 Vernon Lee [Violet Paget] and C. An- struther-Thompson, Beauty and Ugliness and Other Studies in Psychological Aesthetics (New York, 1912). 3 Ibid., p. 46.

4 Ibid., p. 39. This work contains extensive excerpts of the writings of Theodor Lipps in English translation by the authors.

5 Karl Groos, The Play of Man (New York, 1916), pp. 322-333.



EMPATHY: IMPLICATIONS FOR THEATRE RESEARCH 17

ever, was to give credit to Lipps while then proceeding to deal with empathy from the motor mimicry interpretation of Groos, casually interweaving the older, everyday meaning which continued to cling to the word.

In 192o, Herbert Langfeld's discussion of empathy in The Aesthetic Attitude indicated that considerable pains were still being taken to retain the foregoing distinctions.6 However, it appears that while theatre aestheticians were influ- enced by Langfeld, they seized upon the

concept of empathy with more enthu- siasm than accuracy, with the result that the term, stretched to mean almost any- thing, has come to mean almost nothing. John Dolman's elaboration of empathy in The Art of Play Production, first published in 1928, marked an all-time high in this accretion of meanings and may be as responsible as any single work for

insuring a continuation in theatre of the same confusion of meaning, the same failure to make distinctions. In the space of a very few pages, Dolman was able to use empathy to mean at least the

following five things: implicit motor

mimicry; overt motor mimicry; vicarious satisfaction on the part of the audience; arousal in the audience of sympathy and/or antipathy for one or another of the characters in the play; and identification in the audience with one or another of the roles being portrayed. In addition, Dolman invoked empathy as the integral element in casting to which the director of a play should be sen- sitive, as the raison d'etre for stage busi- ness, and as an explanation for the satisfactions of poetic justice.7

George Herbert Mead, in 1934, laid the foundations of role theory with his

book, Mind, Self, and Society. The fol-

lowing passage from this work is of particular interest:

The attitude that we characterize as that of

sympathy springs from this same capacity to take the role of the other person with whom one is socially implicated. Sympathy always im-

plies that one stimulates himself to his assist- ance and consideration of others by taking to some degree the attitude of the other person whom one is assisting. The common term for this is 'putting yourself in his place.'8

The notion of a "capacity to take the role of the other," "putting yourself in his place," recalls the earliest everyday definition of empathy and runs through most of the contemporary verbal definitions now popular in social and clinical

psychology, psychiatry, education, and industry. For example, in more recent times, empathy has been defined as: "A mental state in which one identifies or feels himself in the same state of mind as another person or group";9 "The imaginative transposing of oneself into the thinking, feeling, and acting of another";10 "An objective and insightful awareness of the feelings, emotions, and behavior of another person, and their

meaning and significance";" "Social

sensitivity in the perception of persons";12 "The degree to which an individual achieves understanding of another, as the other understands himself";13 "To enter another person's ex-

6 Herbert Sidney Langfeld, The Aesthetic Attitude (New York, 1920o). 7 John Dolman, Jr., The Art of Play Produc- tion (New York, 1928).

8 George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and So- ciety (Chicago, 1934), P. 366.

9 H. C. Warren, Dictionary of Psychology (New York, 1934), p. 92.

10 Rosalind F. Dymond, "Personality and Empathy," Journal of Consulting Psychology, XIV (1950), 343-350.

11 A Psychiatric Glossary (Washington, D. C., 1957), p. 16.

12 I. E. Bender and A. H. Hastorf, "On Meas- uring Generalized Empathic Ability (Social Sensitivity)," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, XLVIII (1953), 556. 13 P. L. Newbigging, "The Relationship Be- tween Rate of Reversal of Figures of Reversible Perspective and Empathy," Canadian Journal of Psychology, VII (1953), 172-176.




perience to comprehend what life means to him in his living adventure."14

While the common sense idea of "putting yourself in the other fellow's

place" seems to be basic to all of these definitions of empathy, it nevertheless remains a vague idea insofar as it arises from verbal, as opposed to operational, definitions. As a result, other concepts such as sympathy, projection, identification, and insight also give a dangerously similar impression. However, the general feeling, as suggested by the current behavioral science literature, is that the

preceding concepts are each different from one another and must be carefully distinguished.

For example, while earlier writers have occasionally used empathy and

sympathy synonymously, the following distinctions between them are more generally observed today:

The person who says, "I know exactly how you feel," but adds, "But I wouldn't act like you're acting" expresses an empathic response, whereas the person who says, "I know exactly how you feel" and then proceeds to break down and cry with the other, expresses sympathy.15

Empathy, in other words, is independ- ent of love for the other. It becomes

sympathy when a "loving concern" is aroused which may lead to a desire to collaborate or help in some way.16

The distinction between empathy and

projection presents a thornier problem, particularly in the sphere of operational definitions, which will be discussed sub-

sequently. The concept of projection was articulated by Freud in his paper, The Anxiety Neurosis, published in

1894. The following is a characteristic definition:

Projection . . . is the ascription of feelings and qualities of one's own to other people as a defensive process, and without being aware of these phenomena.17

It can be seen that while there may be some relationship between projection and empathy, they do not have the same

implications. Empathy today implies a realistic sensitivity to the behavior of the other, while projection precludes such a possibility since the projector intrudes his own wishes and feelings in- to the situation which then act as a barrier to the accurate perception of the other person.

Many contemporary writers adhere to a distinction between empathy and identification, even though the general tend-

ency to define empathy in terms of the

ability to "put yourself in the other

person's place" implies a similarity. Identification has been defined as "a mental mechanism, operating uncon-

sciously, by which an individual endeav- ors to pattern himself after another."'18

Any tendency, therefore, to equate identification and empathy has been

heavily criticized by the Gestaltists,19 by Allport,20 and by Luchins.21 The last

points out:

Firstly, it is possible to be aware of others' emotions and thoughts when one's own emotions and thoughts are not at all identical with them, and perhaps, are even in sharp contrast with them. . . . The assumption of identification seems to me to be particularly untenable when the object of empathy is a social situa-

14P. E. Johnson, Personality and Religion (New York, 1957), p. 13o. 15 Orlo Strunk, Jr., "Empathy: A Review of Theory and Research," Psychological News- letter, IX (1957), 48.

18 Arthur Koestler, Insight and Outlook (New York, 1949).

17 L. Bellak, "The Concept of Projection, An Experimental Investigation and Study of the Concept," Psychiatry, VII (1944), 354.

18A Psychiatric Glossary, p. 21. 19 Kurt Koffka, Principles of Gestalt Psychol-

ogy (New York, 1935); Wolfgang Kohler, Ges- talt Psychology (New York, 1929).

20Gordon W. Allport, Personality: A Psy- chological Interpretation (New York, 1937). 21 Abraham S. Luchins, "A Variational Ap- proach to Empathy," Journal of Social Psychol- ogy, XLV (1957), 11-18.




tion or a group of people. . . . A process of identification also seems inadequate when the object of empathy is not human.22

There is little indication of a clear- cut distinction between empathy and insight, particularly when the latter term itself has undergone a diffusion of meaning. In its Gestalt form, insight refers to "the sudden apprehension of meaning without reference to previous experience."23 In common parlance, insight may refer to "the power or act of seeing into a situation or into oneself," "discernment," "understanding," and "seeing intuitively."24 Though some have concluded that insight is based upon empathy and is not synonymous with it,25 there is little in any of these verbal definitions to form a sure basis for distinction.

It seems clear, then, that while the general feeling in the behavioral sciences is that empathy is somehow different from sympathy, projection, identification, and insight, attempts to explicate these differences at the level of verbal definitions are not completely convinc- ing. Researchers have therefore confined their interests to obtaining measures which they can relate to an arbitrarily selected verbal definition of empathy, and to seeking relationships between those measures and other measurable behavior. Thus, it appears that a full appreciation of the current status of the term, empathy, cannot be had without some consideration of the major measurement approaches which have been undertaken in its name.

A few preliminary comments seem ad-

visable. Since the word, empathy, has been used to refer to a multiplicity of behavioral processes, not all of which have seemed ripe for study, researchers have been required to choose some verbal definition as a starting point. In

general, they have articulated the fol-

lowing: empathy is the ability to put yourself in the other person's place. They have then proceeded to devise a set of

operations which involve estimation of the verbal responses of another individual, or type of individual, on a number of personality trait scales or personal preference dimensions. Accordingly, research has concentrated upon the de-

velopment of a test which will yield a

single score reflecting how well an individual can predict the verbal responses of another. In exploring the relationship of this score to other test scores, the pur- pose has been to validate the original score; consequently, the research has been barren of information concerning how empathy, so defined, actually works. To put it another way, investigators seem not to ask the question, "How do we know about other persons?" but merely, "How well do we know about other persons?" It should not pass unnoticed that the operational definition here indicated

implies a subtle refinement of the original verbal construct; empathy now becomes "the ability to see the other person as he sees himself." However, the

validity of inferring empathy defined as "the ability to put yourself in the other person's place" from the operations involved in the estimation of another's verbal responses has been neither

seriously questioned nor convincingly established.

Of the three major test approaches which have been developed to date, that of Rosalind Dymond, published in 1949, was the first one to appear and has re-

22 Ibid., p. 12. 23Warren, p. 139. 24 Webster's New International Dictionary

(Springfield, Mass., 1946). 25 Rosalind F. Dymond, "A Preliminary In.

vestigation of the Relation of Insight and Empathy," Journal of Consulting Psychology, XII (1948), 228-233.




mained the most characteristic.26 It may be described as the "self-other" rating method and is most practical for use with pairs of individuals or with small

groups. It tests empathy in the following way: Given: two subjects, A and B.

For Subject A: i. A rates himself (A). 2. A rates B as he (A) sees him. 3. A rates B as he thinks B would rate

himself. 4. A rates himself (A) as he thinks B

would rate him. For Subject B:

1. B rates himself (B). 2. B rates A as he (B) sees him. 3. B rates A as he thinks A would rate

himself. 4. B rates himself (B) as he thinks A would

rate him.

The ratings are made on the following personality traits: self-confidence; su-

perior-inferior; selfish-unselfish; friendly- unfriendly; leader-follower; and sense of humor. The rater is to use a five-point scale of intensity. The measure of A's

empathic ability, for example, is ob- tained by calculating how closely A's

predictions of B's ratings correspond with B's actual ratings.

The preceding account is a summary of the original formulation of the Dy- mond test, and while some researchers have modified it, her "self-other" rating approach has remained quite popular. It is well to note the operational definition of empathy which emerges from this test: empathy is here defined in terms of a deviation score which is drawn from the comparison of an estimate of another's verbal responses on

personality trait dimensions with the actual verbal responses, themselves. Low deviation score, high empathy; high deviation score, low empathy.

In 1952, the team of Hastorf and Bender attacked the Dymond test and similar procedures on the basis that the role of psychological projection was ig- nored.27 As a result of a previous ex-

ploration in which they had used Dy- mond's method,28 Hastorf and Bender now reported:

It was quite apparent that when a person was required to predict the scores of two other people on one of the tests, that these predictions were much more highly related to each other and to the predictor's own score on that test than they were to the scores of the people predicted for. This result quite definitely raises the question of the role projection plays in this task. Projection, as used here, is the attribution to others of one's own needs, interests, and attitudes.29

Coupled with the statement of their

objection was the presentation of a new procedure which Hastorf and Bend- er claimed would correct Dymond's 'raw" empathy score by factoring out

projection and yielding what they called a "refined" empathy score. They utilized this new technique with some success in a study which was subsequently published in 1953.30

In the meantime, Kerr and Speroff, taking an approach quite different from the self-other rating, made available for commercial consumption the first "ob-

jective" empathy test in the literature.1 This is a very simple, one-page, paper- and-pencil test in which subjects are asked to rank three kinds of things: 1) the popularity of certain types of music

26 Rosalind F. Dymond, "A Scale for the Measurement of Empathic Ability," Journal oJ Consulting Psychology, XIII (1949), 127-133.

27 A. H. Hastorf and I. E. Bender, "A Caution Respecting the Measurement of Empathic Ability," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psy- chology, XLVII (1952), 574-576.

28 I. E. Bender and A. H. Hastorf, "The Per- ception of Persons: Forecasting Another Per- son's Responses on Three Personality Scales," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, XLV (1950), 556-561.

29 Hastorf and Bender (1952), p. 574. 30 Bender and Hastorf (1953). 31 W. A. Kerr and B. J. Speroff, The Empathy

Test (Chicago, 1951).




as the subjects imagine the "average non-office factory workers prefer at work"; 2) the kind of magazine most en-

joyed by the "average American"; 3) the behavior in others which is most

commonly annoying to the "average person, aged 25-39." This is the "A" form. The "B" form which was later added is essentially the same except that the subject is asked to predict music

preferences against a norm of "office workers of the United States," magazines according to "paid circulation," and an-

noying experiences relative to "persons over forty." In both forms, the test is

provided with scoring keys in which the

subject's rankings may be compared with the actual rankings which were pre- viously established by sampling the pop- ulations in question.

It is important to observe that the operational definition of empathy indicated by the Kerr and Speroff test is

markedly different from that involved in the self-other approach of Dymond. With Kerr and Speroff, instead of ask- ing the subject to predict responses of others with whom he has had personal contact, the subject now must estimate the stereotype of a group, the members of which he may never have had direct contact with. It is not surprising, then, to discover that no significant correla- tion has been found between the Dy- mond rating scale and the Kerr and

Speroff objective test.32

Despite this lack of relationship, there has been considerable subsequent research using either one or the other of the tests. However, this exploration has been confined to the discovery of variables related to empathy test scores, and the conclusions which have emerged in such areas as industry, education, and

psychological counseling seem tentative, often contradictory, and generally pre-

mature.33 Curiously, empathy in the arts and in dramatic arts, specifically, has been almost completely overlooked by empirical research workers in their recent surge to extend these measurement tools to applied areas. The writer has been able to discover only one study which was undertaken with a direct focus upon theatre, and this peculiar and isolated example will be discussed

shortly. The theatre area, therefore, from an empirical point of view, remains ripe with promise and largely unmarred by primitive investigation.

However, modern theatre aestheticians, while betraying a greater interest in the concept of empathy than their

empirically-minded fellows, may be found to employ the term with an as- surance that conceals confusions of verbal definitions. Here, empathy is at once a panacea for theatrical ills and an expression of all that is valuable to an audience in the theatre experience. At the hands of one writer,34 it even becomes a symbol of minority dissent and an expression of all that is wrong with traditional, illusionistic representation in theatre. Frequently, the contexts in which the term appears make it impos- sible to infer any meaning from it.35 In others, the dominant usage of em-

pathy seems more akin to the Groos notion of "inner imitation,"36 but subsid-

32 Strunk, p. 50.

33 The Strunk article provides a compre- hensive review of applications of empathy tests.

34 Bertolt Brecht, "The Alienation Effect," in Actors on Acting, ed. Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy (New York, 1949), pp. 281-285.

35 Henning Nelms, Play Production (New York, 1950); John Wray Young, Directing the Play (New York, 1958).

36 Nelms; Dolman; H. D. Albright, Working Up a Part (New York, 1947); H. D. Albright, William P. Halstead, and Lee Mitchell, Princi- ples of Theatre Art (New York, 1955); John Dietrich, Play Direction (New York, 1953); Barnard Hewitt, J. F. Foster, and Muriel S. Wolle, Play Production: Theory and Practice (New York, 1952); Edward A. Wright, A Primer for Playgoers (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1958).




iary usages, usually with the same author, also suggest identification,31

"taking the role of the other,"''38 the arousal of sympathy and/or antipathy in the spectator towards one or another of the actors,39 and the vicarious arousal of emotion, generally, in the audience.40

Empathy has even been said to work in

conjunction with the James-Lange effect,41 on the one hand, and "aesthetic distance,"42 on the other. Finally, em-

pathy has been used synonymously with "theatrical illusion"43 where, taken to its logical extreme, it has been extended to mean a state of near-hypnosis in the audience.44

At this point, it would seem advisable to draw several conclusions which are relevant to the interests of research workers and practicing artists in theatre. In the first place, when empathy, as defined in the behavioral sciences, is con- trasted with empathy as defined in theatre arts, an intriguing spectrum of in-

terpersonal processes is revealed-processes which may well be sufficiently different to deserve separate study and yet which, when taken together, may con- tribute much to our understanding of the theatre experience. "Inner imitation," the arousal of sympathy and an-

tipathy (and the vicarious arousal of emotion, generally), "aesthetic distance," and the nature of theatrical illusion- all these seem to be particularly prom- ising areas of empirical research for which, at present, measures are either in-

adequate or non-existent. In connection

with this, it does not seem unreasonable to state that at last, new names-or at least, distinctly different names-for these distinctly different processes will have to be supplied. In any case, it appears to be a decidedly more fruitful approach to suppose that in the interaction between spectator and actor, there is more than one process occurring.

It may also be observed that while the behavioral science notion of empathy as a predictive ability appears to involve a cognitive process rather than an emo- tional one, such an approach may nevertheless have relevance to the theatre. However, refinement of the measuring instrument as well as specific adjustment in it for use with theatre persons seem a necessity. For example, the study earlier referred to in which such measurement was applied to the theatre45 utilized, with actors, form B of the Kerr and Speroff objective test. It will be re- membered that this form claims to measure, among other things, "empathic sensitivity" to the norms of office workers, and to stereotypes, in general. Sensing that they might get better results if some changes were made, the researchers did not alter the test, but rather devised a new scoring key based upon conform-

ity to drama group responses, as a whole. The results revealed negative correla- tions between empathy score and "chances of success in any related field of dramatics," "ability to assume char- acter," and "ability to create atmos-

phere." The authors interpreted their results as clear proof that actors were non-conformists, both to people in general and to each other, but the field ot theatre was left with the conclusion that the worst empathizers make the best

37 Albright, Halstead, and Mitchell; Dolman; Wright; Hubert C. Heffner, Samuel Selden, and Hunton D. Sellman, Modern Theatre Practice (New York, 1959).

38 Albright; Heffner, Selden, and Sellman. 39 Albright, Halstead, and Mitchell; Dolman;

Heffner, Selden, and Sellman; Wright. 40Dolman; Nelms; Wright. 41 Nelms. 42 Wright. 43 Brecht; Heffner, Selden, and Sellman. 44 Brecht.

45 F. P. Tobolski, Charles V. Juliano, and Willard A. Kerr, "Conformity and Success in the Field of Dramatics," Journal of Social Psy- chology, XLIII (1956), 269-273.




actors-a notion, one suspects, which would arouse among theatre persons the demand for much more careful investi-

gation using tools adjusted specifically for theatre research.

The problem with this study, and indeed with almost all of the studies mentioned in this paper, rests in the assumption that empathy is a general ability- an assumption which has led to dan-

gerous oversimplification in the operations which have been developed to measure it. In 1955, Lee Cronbach published a paper which, had it appeared earlier, might have radically altered the course of the so-called empathy test. As Cronbach noted:

Our analysis of social perception scores may be instructive regarding research strategy generally. This area of research has developed in an ultra-operationalist manner; of late, workers have seemed content to regard 'empathy' as 'what empathy tests measure.' The principal research activity has been correlating 'empathy,' so defined, with other variables. We shall show, however, that the operation involves many un-

suspected sources of variation, so that scores are impure and results uninterpretable. Studies based on myopic operationism are largely wasted effort when the operation does not cor-

respond to potentially meaningful constructs.

Defining a measure operationally is only a preliminary to analytic studies which can refine the measure and bring it closer to the intended construct.46

Cronbach continues with a highly sophis- ticated approach to social perception measurement. There can be found here

a series of techniques and impressive theoretical justification for breaking down what has been known as empathy into well over a half-dozen different

meaningful processes, all of which op- erate simultaneously whenever an individual estimates the behavior of another.

The effect of this work is to facilitate future investigations dedicated to meas-

uring accuracy in social perception; but, at the same time, it explains why em-

pathy research, so called, has been inde- cisive, and renders the emergent conclusions extremely suspect. The implications for theatre research are clear. To continue to refer to the interaction between spectator and actor in the theatre

experience as "empathy" is to mask the

multiplicity of processes, each of which

may have a separate claim upon our at- tention. Such carelessness blends perhaps vital distinctions into an undifferentiated

vagueness while, at the same time, pro- viding us with a label that conceals a

very real ignorance. To invoke the word, empathy, in discussing interpersonal processes in the theatre today can only continue to stall inquiry rather than stimulate it into a more exacting search. Indeed, the conclusion is inescapable that abandonment of the term, empathy, would be an excellent point of de-

parture and would incidentally provide for some restoration of semantic well-

being in speculations about theatre prob- lems. It is hoped that such implications as have been suggested by this paper will bring empirical research closer to fruitfulness in theatre arts.

46 Lee J. Cronbach, "Processes Affecting Scores on 'Understanding of Others' and 'As- sumed Similarity,' " Psychological Bulletin, LII (1955), 177-178.



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Empathy-Implications for Theatre Research