IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ibn/ijpsjl/v9y2016i1p62.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Be Empathic! The Influence of Empathy on Attitude Formation in the German Refugee Debate

Author

Listed:
  • Julia Weber
  • Marc-André Reinhard

Abstract

The study was conducted to investigate the elaboration and memorisation of the emotionally charged refugee debate with reference to the possible influences of empathic feelings, political attitude and mood. It was hypothesised that empathy towards refugees correlates positively with advanced elaboration and memorisation of the refugee debate. Participants’ personal empathy was assessed through a self-report questionnaire which differentiates between four distinct dimensions of empathy. Afterwards, participants listened to an interview with a politician from a German populist party about refugee policies concluding with a test about the content. As expected, the results revealed a positive correlation between the empathy dimensions’ Fantasy and Personal Distress and the correct answers of the open-ended question test. The Fantasy dimension of empathy was significantly correlated with the elaboration and memorisation of the extreme and populist positions in the refugee debate. Important practical implications as well as limitations of the study were discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Julia Weber & Marc-André Reinhard, 2016. "Be Empathic! The Influence of Empathy on Attitude Formation in the German Refugee Debate," International Journal of Psychological Studies, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 9(1), pages 1-62, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:ibn:ijpsjl:v:9:y:2016:i:1:p:62
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijps/article/download/64398/35253
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijps/article/view/64398
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • R00 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General - - - General
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ibn:ijpsjl:v:9:y:2016:i:1:p:62. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Canadian Center of Science and Education (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cepflch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.