How do empathic concern and personal distress relate to types of self-construal? A canonical correlation analysis.

The benefits of living together among humans helped their survival in the face of harshness. It was only possible when evolution fitted humans' capacities in line with that goal and enabled them to see themselves connected and interdependent in societies. Between these abilities, empathy sounds pivotal in paving the way by facilitating mutual understanding and caring for others. Despite a global agreement on the role of empathy in making close relationships and social interactions, recent studies imply contrary behavioral consequences for its sub-components, especially for empathic concern and personal distress. After exploring the bivariate correlations, a Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) was conducted to examine the multidimensional relationship between two subscales of the self-construal scale (SCS; as the criterion variables) and four subscales of the interpersonal reactivity index (IRI; as the predictor variables). In the first yielded function, in which interdependent self-construal was dominant in relevance to the criterion variables, empathic concern was in the first order, and perspective taking was in the second order of relevance with predictor variables. In the second function -in which independent self-construal was the most related to the criterion variable, personal distress was the only dominant variable with the predictor variable. The different consequences of empathic concern and personal distress in relation to types of self-construal are discussed.