Engineers' job-related perceptions of empathy in Germany

Engineers are required to adapt quickly to changing work environments, apply new technical skills, create innovative products and perform in a rapidly increasing global environment [1, 2]. One of the personal skills needed to meet these requirements is empathy, which can be defined as understanding another's feelings, experiencing what another is feeling and react to another's feelings [3]. Empathy is assumed to be an important intellectual characteristic for instance to anticipate and resolve interpersonal problems [4], make ethical decisions [5, 6] as well as develop in their professional environment [7, 8]. Especially when it comes to innovation processes, benefits of empathy have been recognized by several studies in a variety of professions [9, 10] as well as in engineering [9]. Despite the findings pointing to a variety of benefits, there is still a lack of curricular approaches in order to promote students' empathic development already during engineering education [2, 11, 12]. With the present study, we seek to investigate German engineers' perceptions of empathy at their workplaces and by that, derive suggestions for developing and improving engineering education. Therefore, the present study had two aims. First, we sought to validate the factor structure of the US-American Empathy and Care Questionnaire by Hess, Strobel and Pan in the German engineering context [2]. Second, the study investigated to what extent German engineers perceived empathy in as existing and important concerning different areas within their occupational field. The sample consisted of 100 engineers. We conducted Principal Component Analysis as well as nonparametric tests to analyze the data. Results indicate that the American factor structure can be transferred to the German context, as well as engineers' perceptions of empathy at their workplaces: empathy is considered an important factor concerning [Current existence, Perceived importance, Potential benefits, Relational value]. However, findings indicate that the perceived importance increases with engineers' work experience, which again emphasizes the need to clarify the role of empathy already during engineering education. Further implications and concrete suggestions for engineering education are discussed based on the findings.     «

Engineers are required to adapt quickly to changing work environments, apply new technical skills, create innovative products and perform in a rapidly increasing global environment [1, 2]. One of the personal skills needed to meet these requirements is empathy, which can be defined as understanding another's feelings, experiencing what another is feeling and react to another's feelings [3]. Empathy is assumed to be an important intellectual characteristic for instance to anticipate and resolve i...     »