(2016) Science and education, 5, 200-205. Odessa.

Alla Lytvynchuk,
post-graduate student,
Department of History, Political Sciences and Psychology,
Zhytomyr State University named after Ivan Franko,
40, Velyka Berdychivska Str., Zhytomyr, Ukraine

REFLECTION OF EMPATHY IN ADOLESCENCE: ECOLOGICAL ASPECT

The article is aimed at examining the peculiarities of understanding empathy by adolescents and determining the level of their empathy manifestation. The experiment involved 43 students of Socio-Humanitarian Faculty aged from 19 to 23 years. In order to study the level of empathy, the method “Test for determining the level of empathy in adolescents” by L. Zhuravlova was used. It consists of 15 different situations, which provide the opportunity of choice as beforehand considered behaviour patterns as well as the opportunity to suggest one's own solution to the problem. Besides, after carrying out of this part of the experiment, some interviews concerning the situations presented in a test, as well as the theoretically possible similar situations have been performed. The research results have shown that involvement (empathy) is peculiar to the most of the surveyed (56%). These adolescents are characterised by the ability to control their emotions, by the realisation of their emotional states. Sympathy is peculiar to 14.6% of the respondents. They can express their feelings in a verbal way and, as a rule, they keep to this kind of interpersonal interaction. 17.4% of the adolescents have manifested inner facilitation, 8% - real facilitation not against themselves, 2% - facilitation against themselves. The most of the respondents describe the phenomenon of empathy as the ability to support and sympathise. On the whole, the results of the empirical research make it possible to describe the revealed paculiarities of empathy through the attitude towards one’s empathic reactions: 1) positively-positive: “I am able to sympathise and support and I consider these qualities as very important ones”, 2) positively-negative: “I am able to sympathise and support but these qualities complicate my life”, 3) negatively-positive: “I am not able to sympathise and support and it makes my life difficult”, 4) negatively-negative: “I am not able to sympathise and support and it makes my life better”. The prospects for the further research involve studying the specificity of empathy reflection depending on personal qualities, gender peculiarities and other characteristics.

empathy, relationship, reflection, self-consciousness, compassion, empathy, adolescence.

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