Body Empathy and Measurement of Its Individual Characteristics:Creation of a Body Empathy Scale

Assuming that there exists some "body empathy" at the core of the conventional concept of empathy, we have defined body empathy as "a process in which one’s body perceives another person’s body in the same space at the same time and makes necessary adjustments accordingly." Now, in this study, we attempted to develop a questionnaire to measure individual characteristics of such body empathy. Based on results of factor analyses, we decided to create a Body Empathy Scale (BES) that consists of the three factors: "Consciousness of movements made by another body," "thinness of the boundary," and "consciousness of internal rhythm." To verify the validity of the BES, we examined its correlations with the scores of the Questionnaire Measures of Emotional Empathy (QMEE; Mehrabian & Epstein, 1972; Kato & Takagi, 1980) and the Empathy Quotient (EQ; Baron-Cohen & Weelwright, 2004; Wakabayashi & Baron-Cohen, 2006). The examination showed that the BES provides valid measurements of empathy. Moreover, we conducted regression and multiple regression analysis and identified that the BES, with its own behaviors, is not subsumed by the EQ and the QMEE. However, no correlation was found with Witkin’s Embedded Figure Test (Witkin et al.., 1954) that measures cognitive styles. Therefore, we can conclude that we need to create some new items in the BES to measure individual characteristics on the cognitive level. Moreover, we searched for correlation between the BES scores and motion experiences but found no significant correlation. Furthermore, we examined the correlation between gender difference and characteristics in empathy, and observed that females tend to score higher than men do with "thinness of the boundary" in the BES