Empmpathic Accuracy and Inaccuracy

Empathic accuracy refers to the degree to which one person can accurately infer the specific content of another person's thoughts and feelings. During the past two decades, psychologist William Ickes and his colleagues have extensively studied this phenomenon in the context of close relationships. The results of their research suggest that relationship partners are often motivated to “manage” their empathic accuracy—usually seeking to know, but occasionally seeking to avoid knowing, what their partner is thinking or feeling.

The standard method for measuring empathic accuracy in relationship partners is the unstructured dyadic interaction paradigm. In this paradigm, the partners are left alone together in a waiting-room situation for several minutes, while the experimenter is presumably completing a necessary errand. During this brief observation period, the partners' spontaneous interaction is covertly audio- and videotaped. At the conclusion of this interaction, the partners are seated in separate cubicles, where they individually view a copy of the videotaped interaction and stop the tape at each point where they remember experiencing a particular thought or feeling. The partners also write down the specific content of these thoughts and feelings, noting the times when they occurred. Then they view the tape again, this time for the purpose of writing down their inferences about the content of their partner's reported thoughts and feelings at each of the partner's “tape stops.” People who can accurately infer the specific content of their partner's thoughts and feelings, based on the comparative judgments of trained raters, are considered to be high in their empathic accuracy. This entry describes several aspects of research into empathetic accuracy and inaccuracy.