Grant No OEG 2-7-061610-0207

Psychologists and linguists often suggest that empathy or role-taking ability is important in the communication process because it enables a speaker to consider in advance the informational demands of his audience. Despite the vintage of the empathy-effective communication hypothesis, it has never been directly tosed. In this study, empathy was measured by an objectively scored empathy scale; the communication process was reoresentel by an encoding-decoding task (using abstract designs) to provide quantitative estimates of encoding and decoding ability. rot 42 men and women, the average correlation between empathy and encoding skill was +.A0, the correlation between empathy and decoding was 4.14. Results from a second study tended to confirm these findings. (Sample designs from the encoding- decoding procedure, four tables of findings, and a list of references are provided.) (Au1:hor/3MC) DIPA1114111 Of litALDI, 101X111011 i %MI