Empathy And Ethnocentrism

Chapter 1 Introduction
Background of Empathy. Empathy is originated from Greek word “empatheia”, the meaning of “em “is into or penetration whereas the “pathos” means feelings. (Oxford Dictionary )The meaning of the word is “feeling into “from the social perspective. (All About Empathy ) Basically, empathy is an ability to understand and share another person’s physical and emotional needs. Empathy is believed to be a pro-social trait as it views a society as a whole and promote benefits of others. (McKeiver, 2013)It is a selfless trait that beneficial to one’s social skills and emotional management which improves interpersonal relationships and promotes society’s well being.
Many research showed that empathy plays a crucial role in interpersonal

Empathy is important in culture differences because it is about understanding and accepting another culture that is different with yours instead of judging the culture whether good or bad and adapts to the foreign culture. (Adler, 1991) Without understanding and accepting culture differences, it will form intercultural barriers such as ethnocentrism. (Donald B. Pope-Davis, 2013) Ethnocentrism is a social bias which views own culture is superior compared than others cultures. Every individual holds ethnocentric behaviors. The degree of ethnocentrism will influence one’s intercultural competence to communicate efficiently and successfully in social context. People who high in ethnocentrism will tend to behave hostile and defensive while encounter any difference in culture. (McKeiver, 2013)They tend to decline the acceptance of difference in culture compared to their own. On the other hand, people who are low in ethnocentrism tend to feel curious and interested towards others culture thus tend to accept the difference of cultures. (McKeiver, 2013) One of the ways to reduce ethnocentrism is to tolerate or accept other culture that is different from ours. Empathy is one of the important communication skills in tolerating intercultural differences. Empathy can be one of the foundational building blocks of great intercultural interactions and leads to a heightened valuation of others’ culture and overall society’s wellbeing. Thus this study purpose is to examine the different variables in demographics such as age and gender in empathy levels and how empathy levels leads to the culture of