PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPE AMONG NURSES AND PATIENTS' PERCEPTION OF RECEIVED EMPATHY.
Contributors: New York University.
Published: 1993
Number of pages: 189
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Psychology, Personality.
Description: This study investigated the relationship among psychological type of nurses and patients' perception of received empathy. Jung's (1974) theory of psychological type and Barrett-Lennard's (1962, 1981, 1986) cyclic model of empathy provided the theoretical foundation.

Three hypotheses were set forth: (1) nurses who are more intuitive than sensing will receive higher ratings for received empathy than nurses who are more sensing than thinking, (2) nurses who are more feeling than thinking will receive higher ratings for received empathy than nurses who are more thinking than feeling, (3) nurses who are more intuitive than sensing and more feeling than thinking will receive higher ratings of received empathy than nurses who are more sensing than intuitive and more thinking than feeling. A research question, "Is a similarity between nurses and patients in the functions of intuition, sensing, thinking and feeling related to patients' ratings of received empathy?", was posed.

The Singer-Loomis Inventory of PersonaLity (SLIP) was used to measure psychological type. The Empathy Scale of the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory (BLRI) was used to measure received empathy. A sample of 80 nurse/patient dyads volunteered to participate. Nurse participants completed the SLIP and patient participants completed the SLIP and the BLRI.

Regressed difference scores, intuition adjusted for sensing (I-S) and feeling adjusted for thinking (F-T) were calculated. The hypotheses were tested by multiple regression analysis. The research question was answered by correlational analysis.

The hypotheses were not supported. The I-S score contributed 0% to the variance of received empathy, the F-T score contributed 6% and the interaction I-S x F-T, 4%. An unexpected finding was that nurses who were low in feeling adjusted for thinking received higher ratings for received empathy than nurses who were high in feeling adjusted for thinking. Similarity between nurses and patients in the functions of intuition, sensing, feeling and thinking was not related to patients' ratings of received empathy.

Failure to support the hypotheses may have been related to methodological issues. Suggestions for future research included psychometric analyses of the SLIP with the intent to improve the reliability of the instrument and control for nurse/patient contact time by having stratified periods of time, by days, with an equal number of dyads in each period.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-08, Section: B, page: 4081.

Thesis (PH.D.)--NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, 1993.

School code: 0146.