The mediating role of personality and gender roles on the relationship between gender and empathy: a study on preservice teachers

Ivana Pikić Jugović, PhD, Dora Petrović and Iris Marušić, PhD are the authors of the scientific paper “The mediating role of personality and gender roles on the relationship between gender and empathy: a study on preservice teachers”, which was published in Sociology and Space, 61 (1).

Teacher empathy is an essential part of teacher professional role, related to various student outcomes. Research have shown that women are more empathetic than men. However, when personality traits or gender roles are included into regression models, gender no longer predicts empathy. Research have pointed to agreeableness and expressiveness as the strongest correlates of empathy among personality traits and gender roles respectively, but these determinants of empathy are still rarely studied in teachers. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine the role of agreeableness and expressiveness in the relationship between gender and empathy on a sample of preservice subject teachers. Two serial mediation models with gender as a predictor, agreeableness and expressiveness as mediators, and empathic concern and perspective taking as criterion variables were tested. Results showed that agreeableness and expressiveness mediated the relationship between gender and empathy. Significant serial mediation effects showed that female preservice teachers reported greater agreeableness, which had a positive effect on expressiveness, which then had a positive effect on empathic concern and perspective taking. Our study indicates that a differentiated approach to empathy training should be used with different groups of preservice teachers, particularly with those who report lower agreeableness and expressiveness.

The paper is available at the link.