What being empathic means: applying the transformation rule approach to individual differences in predicting the thoughts and feelings of prototypic and nonprototypic others

To assess the influence of individual differences in empathy on predictions about the likely thoughts and feelings of prototypic and nonprototypic oth ers, high school students completed Davis's (1983) IRI empathy scale and ma de predictions about young and old, male and female targets' likely thought s and feelings. Predictions were categorized using Karniol's (1986) transfo rmation rules and the variety of rules served as the dependent measure. A g reater variety of rules was used for making predictions about old targets t han young ones. Subject gender did not influence the variety of rules used for making predictions. As for individual differences in empathy, individua ls high versus low in overall empathy, on the Perspective Taking subscale a nd on the Empathic Concern subscale, used a greater variety of transformati on rules for making predictions about others' likely thoughts and feelings and differentiated more between targets in different social categories. The findings provide support for the view of empathy as a method of informatio n gathering and illustrate the heuristic value of the transformation rule m odel for making predictions about others' thoughts and feelings. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.