RESEARCH QUESTION:

In this paper I will analyse the influence of gender on empathy in a stressful situation.
So the research question is: "¿Are there differences in empathy between men and
women under conditions of stress?"

BACKGROUND:

It is Titchner (1920) who first used the term to refer to a kind of physical imitation of
the distress of another person that evokes the same feeling in oneself. Later, several
authors noted the emotional and affective component of the construct. Currently,
empathy is defined from a multidimensional approach which emphasizes the ability of
the person to respond to others taking into account both cognitive and affective aspects.

Studies about empathy and gender in general show that women respond in more
emphatic ways than men.

In addition, a recent study has demonstrated that when men are stressed they become
more selfish and are less able to understand other feelings whereas women in the same
situations react in the opposite way: women become more empathetic and less selfish.
What the authors expected to find was that when we are stressed we focus more on our
needs and we that don't have the cognitive resources to think about others. Instead of
that, they saw that this could only apply to men.

The explanation for these effects is unknown, but "Silani" says that psychologically,
women may have internalized the experience of receiving more external support so they
are able to interact better with others. This means that they need help more and
therefore, when they are stressed, they apply the social strategies more. At the
physiological level, the gender difference could be explained by oxytocin. Oxytocin is a
hormone related to social behaviour and a previous study found that women under stress
had higher levels of oxytocin that men.
METHODOLOGY

-Participats

The sample consisted of 100 college students of Faculty of Psychology from the Deusto
University of Bilbao being 50 men and 50 women. Participants were between 19 and 21
years old.

-Instruments

Personal data sheet.

Then, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index has been used as an evaluation instrument.
This instrument allows the measurement of individual differences in empathetic
tendencies from a multidimensional view. It is made up of 28 items divided into four
subscales that measure four separate dimensions of the overall concept of empathy

-Procedure

A quantitative study to be carried

Students will complete personal data sheet. They will do it during an hour of their class
schedule.
Before starting, instructions and possible doubts will be explained orally. First of all, a
pre-test will be conducted to monitor their level of empathy.
The next day, several stressful situations will be induced: talking in public and making
three impossible to solve math exercises in a limited time (half an hour). After that, they
will be given a post-test to see if the empathy levels have changed.

The answers will be entered in the Excel program. Subsequently the scores will be
joined through the various ítems in each subs cale of empathy to obtain a total score for
each sub scale of empathy. Finally, relevant statistical analysis will be made.