Empathy in future teachers: differences by gender

Empathy represents the ability to understand what the other person is feeling and to walk in another person’s shoes. According to the multidimensional perspective proposed by Davis (1980, 1983), empathy includes four factors: perspective taking, fantasy, empathic concern and personal distress. Considering that empathy is one of the most relevant characteristics for professional performance in education, it is necessary to evaluate this capacity in future teachers in order to design appropriate training programs. Therefore, the aim of this work is to analyze if there are differences by gender on the factors that define empathy among future teachers. The sample is composed of 162 students from the University of León. The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1980, 1983) was used, in its Spanish version. The results indicate that there are significant differences by gender among the future teachers regarding the four factors that characterize empathy. Specifically, women have significantly higher scores in perspective taking, fantasy, empathic concern and in personal distress. Therefore, these differences should be considered to design training programs aimed to develop empathy in future teachers