IS GENDER OR GENDER-ROLE ORIENTATION A BETTER PREDICTOR OF EMPATHY INADOLESCENCE

To assess the relative contribution of gender and gender-role orientat ion to empathy and its development, 8th and 11th grade Israeli adolesc ents completed Davis' empathy scale and Bem's gender-role orientation inventory, which yields a femininity score and a masculinity score for each participant. With masculinity and femininity treated as a within subjects variable, masculinity/femininity interacted with grade, such that whereas masculinity in both boys and girls increased with grade, femininity decreased in girls and increased in boys. Empathy was unre lated to grade or to masculinity but was related to gender and to femi ninity. When the contribution of masculinity/femininity was covaried, empathy was found to be unrelated to gender This pattern was found for three of the empathy subscales: Perspective Taking, Empathic Concern, and Personal Distress, which were positively correlated On the basis of a median split, participants were then classified as Masculine, Fem inine, Undifferentiated, or Androgynous. Androgynous individuals did n ot differ from Feminine individuals on any of the empathy subscales. T he findings were discussed in terms of the socialization of emotions a nd gender-role orientation.