Really excited to share a new In Press article at @PsychScience with @minzlicht and @ZoeLFrancis titled The Experience of Empathy in Everyday life! This is my first first-author publication and I'm thrilled to finally tell you about it😀! Preprint psyarxiv.com/hjuab, thread:
We used quota-sampling and experience sampling to examine everyday experiences of empathy and their connection with subjective well-being and prosocial behaviour in the everyday lives of a sample of U.S. adults that was representative of the population on key demographics 1/8.
Our sample of 246 adults answered 7,343 surveys, yielding a rich dataset we are happy to open to interested researchers (osf.io/y3ud7/). We found some really interesting findings that can inform our understanding of empathy moving forward. 2/8
1. We defined empathy as an umbrella concept involving perspective taking, emotion sharing, and compassion. While these constructs can be differentiated, they've also been proposed to interact. We find that, when empathy is reported, these constructs typically co-occur. 3/8 
2. Positive empathy 😁. While empathy in the literature typically involves pain or suffering 😭, we find that in daily life, people report opportunities to empathize with + emotions 3 times as often as - emotions. They also empathize to a greater extent with + emotions. 4/8
3. Closeness. In lab studies of empathy, participants are typically asked to empathize with a stranger in a vignette or stimuli. However, in daily life, individuals typically empathize with close others, and empathize to a greater extent as closeness increases. 5/8
3. While trait empathy measures were unassociated with prosocial behaviour and negatively associated with subjective well-being, empathy in daily life was highly associated with prosocial behaviour, and generally associated with increased well-being. 6/8
4. We also found interesting differences and nulls along demographic lines. While women and the religious 🛐 appeared to empathize more than men and the non-religious, we found few or no significant differences in empathy according to income or political orientation 🐘🐴. 7/8
These findings help us to expand our thinking about empathy beyond the prototypical situation of encountering a suffering stranger. While these findings are great, I think there is much potential remaining to be tapped in this data, and hope others can find a use 8/8 #openscience
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