Today's College Students Lack Empathy
By Jeanna Bryner
<http://www.livescience.com/php/contactus/author.php?r=jb> , LiveScience
Managing Editor
posted: 28 May 2010 08:05 am ET
Live Science - College students today are less likely to "get"
the emotions of others than their counterparts 20 and 30 years ago, a
new review study suggests.
Specifically, today's students scored 40 percent lower on a measure of
empathy
<http://www.livescience.com/culture/nasal-spray-men-empathy-100430.html>
than their elders did.
The findings are based on a review of 72 studies of 14,000 American
college students overall conducted between 1979 and 2009.
"We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000," said Sara
Konrath, a researcher at the University of Michigan's Institute for
Social Research.
The study was presented this week at the annual meeting of the
Association for Psychological Science in Boston.
Is "generation me" all about me?
Compared with college students of the late 1970s, current students are
less likely to agree with statements such as "I sometimes try to
understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their
perspective," and "I often have tender, concerned feelings for people
less fortunate than me."
"Many people see the current group of college students sometimes
called 'Generation Me
<http://www.livescience.com/culture/generation-gap-workplace-100310.html\
> ' as one of the most self-centered, narcissistic, competitive,
confident and individualistic in recent history," said Konrath, who is
also affiliated with the University of Rochester Department of
Psychiatry.
Konrath's colleague graduate student Edward O'Brien added, "It's not
surprising that this growing emphasis on the self is accompanied by a
corresponding devaluation of others."
Other recent studies have shown mixed results on the character of
today's youth
<http://www.livescience.com/culture/how-generations-compare-psychology-1\
00317.html> . For instance, one study of more than 450,000 high-school
seniors born at different time periods showed today's youth are no
more self-centered than their parents were at their age.
The role of media
Even so, Konrath and O'Brien suggest several reasons for the lower
empathy they found, including the ever-increasing exposure to media in
the current generation.
"Compared to 30 years ago, the average American now is exposed to three
times as much nonwork-related information," Konrath said. "In terms of
media content, this generation of college students grew up with video
games
<http://www.livescience.com/culture/video-games-control-dreams-100525.ht\
ml> , and a growing body of research, including work done by my
colleagues at Michigan, is establishing that exposure to violent media
numbs people to the pain of others."
The rise in social media could also play a role.
"The ease of having 'friends' online might make people more likely to
just tune out when they don't feel like responding to others' problems,
a behavior that could carry over offline," O'Brien said.
In fact, past research has suggested college students are addicted to
social media
<http://www.livescience.com/culture/addicted-social-media-100423.html> .
Other possible causes include a society today that's
hypercompetitive and focused on success, as well as the fast-paced
nature of today, in which people are less likely than in time periods
past to slow down to really listen to others, O'Brien added.
"College students today may be so busy worrying about themselves and
their own issues that they don't have time to spend empathizing with
others, or at least perceive such time to be limited," O'Brien said.
You can find out your empathy score and how it compares with today's
college students by taking the empathy quiz
<http://umichisr.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_bCvraMmZBCcov52&SVID> .
http://www.livescience.com/culture/empathy-college-students-generation-m\
e-100528.html
