Altruism, emotional empathy and self-esteem among students of humanitics and economic studies

Slunjski, Ivana. (2006). Altruism, emotional empathy and self-esteem among students of humanitics and economic studies. Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Psychology. [mentor Kuterovac Jagodić, Gordana].

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Abstract

In the widest meaning, prosocial behavior is defined as an intentional behavior that has positive effect on others. Altruism implies really non-selfish behavior. On the other hand, empathy includes sharing perceived emotions of other persons. Self-esteem is defined as self-evaluation that maintains our attitude of accepting or not accepting ourselves. The aim of this research was to establish the connection between altruism, emotional empathy and self-esteem among students of different study orientation. Three types of scales were used in this research: Scale of Altruism, Scale of Emotional Empathy and Coopersmith's Questionnaire of Self-esteem. In this research, there were total of 229 examinees, 108 students of Faculty of Philosophy, and 121 students of Faculty of Economics. It was demostrated that there is statistical significant connection between altruism, emotional empathy and self-esteem. Besides that, a simple analysis was conducted, which revealed that students of Philosophy have higher level of altruism, and that female students, no matter which study orientation they have chosen, have higher results on applied scales of altruism and emotional empathy. And, at the end, gained results demonstrated that the empathy, sex and study orientation are good predictors of altruism, while the self-esteem is not such good predictor, among students of Faculty of Philosophy and Faculty of Economics.

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