EMPATHY AS RELATED TO CREATIVITY, DOGMATISM, AND EXPRESSIVENESS

Empathy (affective sensitivity) was hypothesized to be positively related to creativity and expressiveness and inversely related to dogmatism, when gender and age were controlled. Participants were 56 graduate students enrolled in counseling and educational psychology courses at a large southwestern (U.S.) university. Participants were administered the Affective Sensitivity Scale (Kagan and Schneider, 1977) to measure empathy, the Statement of Past Creative Activities (Bull and Davis, 1980) to measure creativity, the Opinion Scale (Kleiber, Veldman, and Menaker, 1973) to measure dogmatism, and the Extended Personal Attributes Questionnaire (Spence, Helmreich, and Holahan, 1979) to measure expressiveness. The results of multiple regressions provide support for the hypotheses that empathy is positively related to creativity and inversely related to dogmatism, but the results do not support the hypothesized positive relationship between empathy and expressiveness. Implications of these findings for persons serving as counselors and counselor educators are discussed.