Exploring Virtual Empathy versus Real-life Empathy among Undergraduate University Students across Five Faculties

ABSTRACT

Empathy is important for effective social interactions since it helps people understand others' feelings, thinking, and intentions, and therefore aids in predicting behavior (Baron Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004). Additionally, the capacity to understand and feel another's pain often leads to compassionate responses (Riess, 2017). Virtual empathy has been described as an important competence for promoting learning given the increasing use of online forums in education (Garcia-Perez, Santos-Delgado, & Buzon-Garcia, 2006). It is particularly important for students to cultivate empathy since it benefits not only them but their future place of work (Gentry, Weber, & Sadr, 2007; Lilius, Kanov, Gutton, Worline, Maitlis, 2013). The current study further seeks to explore any links between real world empathy and empathy expressed online. There is existing evidence to suggest that a person's online social activity is reflective of their personailty (Gosling, Augustine, Vazire, Holtzman,m& Gaddis, 2011). Similar to real world tendencies, extroverts had higher online social networking engagement than introverts, and openess and conscientiousness in online settings were also reflective of that in the real world (Gosling, Augustine, Vazire, Holtzman,m& Gaddis, 2011). Following thiis pattern of reasoning, one can assume that a person's virtual empathy levels might mirror their empathy levels in the real world, For this reason, the authors of this current study sought to determine whether online sociazl media usr had any impact on a person's capacity for empathy. With this background the objective of the current study to explore empathy on social media and in the real world among undergraduates from five faculties (Law, Engineering, Medical Sciences, Humanities, and Education, Science and Technology) at the University of the West Indies.