NATURALISTIC SOCIAL COGNITION - EMPATHIC ACCURACY IN MIXED-SEX DYADS

The research paradigm that Ickes and his colleagues developed for the study of naturalistic social cognition was used to explore the phenomenon of empathic accuracy in the initial, unstructured interactions of 38 mixed-sex (male-female) dyads. The results indicated that an important aspect of empathic accuracy-content accuracy-could be measured reliably (α =.94) with the procedure used. The results further indicated that content accuracy was, to a large extent, an emergent product of social interaction processes occurring at the level of the dyad. Although many of the findings could be explained in informational terms, some significant motivational influences were observed as well. For example, content accuracy was influenced by the partner's physical attractiveness and, more generally, by the perceiver's apparent interest in the partner (as indexed by various thought/feeling measures). The individual difference variables of grade point average and self-monitoring also predicted the subjects' levels of content accuracy; however, gender and self-report measures of empathic skills and empathic accuracy did not.