Research Article Emotional and Cognitive Empathy in First-Year Medical Students

Copyright © 2013 Sandra Dehning et al.This is an open access article distributed under theCreativeCommonsAttribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Objectives. Doctors ’ empathy towards their patients is considered important for treatment outcome. However, during medical school there might be a decline in empathy called “hardening of the heart. ” This study evaluated the cognitive and emotional empathy in medical students and investigated the influence of a preference for a specialty and students attachment styles.Methods. 126 first-year medical students were included and completed the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test revised version (RME-R), the Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale (BEES), and the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised Adult Attachment Questionnaire (ECR-R). Results. Students identified 22 ± 4.30 of 36 photographs in the RME-R test correctly (norm: 26). The female students’ mean BEES total score was 51.1 ± 17.1 and the male students ’ 27.2 ± 22.6