INTERRELATION BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL EMPATHY AND ALTRUISM AND EGOISM: AGE AND SEX DIFFERENCES
The paper presents the study of age and sex differences in empathy, altruism and egoism and the correlation between empathy and altruism and egoism for the three age samples: teenagers (high school pupils aged 14-15 years), early adulthood (senior university students aged 20-23 years) and late adulthood (high school teachers aged 50-60 years). The scores of empathy were obtained with the help of A. Mehrabian’s Questionnaire Measure of Emotional Empathy, while the scores of personal altruism and egoism were measured by means of T. Leary's Interpersonal Behavior Grid. The differences among the measured individual characteristics were calculated with the use of factorial ANOVA, separately for each variable. The sex differences were found only for the scores of empathy and egoism, while age differences for them appeared to be not statistically significant. Females scored higher in empathy and lower in egoism. The age differences were registered exclusively for the scores of altruism. The highest scores in personal altruism self-assessment were acquired for the sample of teenagers, while the lowest - for the sample of students. The rationale for this is seen in that teenagers are mostly focused on establishing personally important relationships within their referent groups, which makes them demonstrate more prominently how they intend to contribute to their group. In case of university students it is expected to see them actively explore the opportunities on most efficient professional self-realization for which it is a common practice to sacrifice personal relationships to a certain extant. The empathic traits, being a rather stable property of one’s personality, showed a specific pattern of correlation with personal altruism and egoism within different age samples. It could predict higher scores on altruism for the samples of teenagers and late adults, while one’s agoistic tendencies showed lower scores for more empathic individuals only within the sample of university students. Empathy didn’t affect significantly egoistic behaviors in the groups of teenagers and barely correlated with them within the group of late adults.