CONVERGENT VALIDITY AND UTILITY OF EMPATHIC ACCURACY MEASURES ACROSS THERAPISTS AND NON-THERAPISTS

Empathic accuracy (EA) is the therapist variable most frequently associated with positive client outcomes, and is a skill that can improve with training (Barone et al., 2005; Forrester, Kershaw, Moss, & Hughes, 2008). EA is heterogeneous in nature, comprising both affective and cognitive components, yet very little research has compared the ability of various assessments to accurately reflect these nuances. Theoretically, therapists should be more accurate on self-report measures of EA than non-therapists, and the convergent validity of these subjective measures should be higher with objective measures as a result. This study compared the scores of 36 therapists (clinical psychology students) and 36 "non-therapists" (age and gender matched controls) on self-report measures of EA as well as a video-based performance task in which participants' heart rates were measured as they attempted to infer the thoughts and feelings of a videotaped woman while she narrated a prior traumatic experience. It was hypothesized that therapist scores would show stronger convergent validity than non-therapist controls, and that this would strengthen with clinical training. Analyses revealed predominantly small and non-significant correlations across all indices-pairings in the sample as a whole. However, correlations of self-report and physiological assessments of affective EA, as well as global and study-specific measures of cognitive EA were significantly stronger among therapists than non-therapists. These results indicate that EA measures may reflect higher convergent validity among therapists than non-therapist controls.