Association between self-reported empathy and sport experience in young adults

Abstract

Problem Statement Empathy, which consists of two components such as cognitive empathy and affective empathy, is an essential skill in humans that allows to create and maintain relationships with others. Although the usual physical activity amount positively correlates with cognitive empathy in healthy young adults, the effect of sport experience on empathy is unclear. Purpose This study aimed to clarify the relationship between sport experience (including type of sports and level of sport success) and self-reported empathy. Approach The participants were college students; there were 189 individual sport athletes and 187 team sport athletes who had over 6 years of sport experience and 128 non-athletes. Self-reported empathy and usual amounts of physical activity in subjects were evaluated using the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy and the International Physical Activity Questionnaire short form, respectively. In addition, their sport major and history of sport experiences were recorded. Results In this study, we determined that both individual sport and team sport athletes showed higher cognitive empathy than non-athletes, although affective empathy was not related to sport experience in the participants. In addition, there was no difference in self-reported empathy between individual sport athletes and team sport athletes. Furthermore, the level of sport success was not related to selfreported empathy in the athletes Conclusion Our results suggest that sport experience may contribute to attaining better empathy in humans regardless of type of sports and level of sport success, which implies the potential role of physical education and extracurricular activities in school on empathy in adolescents.