Empathy In Social Work

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emotionality (focused on negative emotions, first undifferentiated distress and later both fear and anger), activity, sociability, and impulsivity.
Besides this, in his model of temperament, Rothbart has argued that temperament traits consist of “constitutional differences in reactivity and self-regulation, with ‘constitutional’ seen as the relatively enduring biological makeup of the organism influenced over time by heredity, maturation, and experience” (Rothbart & Derryberry, 1981, p. 37). Children’s reactive traits (such as emotional tendencies) reflect biological arousability, whereas regulatory traits modulate children’s reactivity. According to this view, new temperament traits emerge over time as children mature.
Like Rothbart, others …show more content…
Empathy can be defined as the ability to feel or imagine another person’s emotional experience. The ability to empathize is an important part of social and emotional development, affecting an individual’s behavior towards others and the quality of social relationships. The idea that empathy is essential for effective social work practice is commonly accepted within the profession (Shulman, 2009; Hepworth et al., 2009). Despite the significance of empathy to social work and related fields, there is a long history of dissimilar and often vague definitions of empathy in the literature. Some consider empathy a dispositional trait or ability (Hoffman, 1982). Other researchers see empathy as a situation- specific cognitive -affective state (Duan and Hill, 1996). Still others define empathy as a multi-stage interpersonal process (Reik, 1948; Rogers, …show more content…
Cognitive empathy can be described as the ability to understand someone’s emotional state, and affective empathy refers to the sharing of the emotional state of another person (Cohen & Strayer, 1996).The definition of empathy used in this thesis will contain components of both cognition and affect. Cognition will be included in the definition since it is emphasized by the theories covered in this study and the cognitions of adolescents will also be measured as a part of this study. Social cognitive theory, social information processing theory, neutralization theory, and cognitive distortion theory all emphasize the use and interpretation of cognition in youth, so empathy will be defined
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