doi:10.1111/disa.12075
Moderating effects of empathic concern and personal distress on the emotional reactions of disaster volunteers Ioana A. Cristea, Emanuele Legge, Marta Prosperi, Mario Guazzelli, Daniel David and Claudio Gentili1
This study examines stress and mood outcomes in community volunteers who undertook one week’s worth of post-disaster relief work in L’Aquila, Italy, which had been hit by an earthquake four months earlier. The study team obtained pre- and post-relief work data from 130 volunteers involved in activities such as preparing food for the displaced, cleaning the camps and distributing clean linen. The Perceived Stress Scale, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Profile of Mood States were administered at the start and at the end of the aid activities. Psychopathological symptoms and empathy were assessed in the beginning, using the Symptom Checklist 90 Revised and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, respectively. The results show that, following the assistance work, volunteers displayed decreases in perceived stress, general distress, anxiety and anger, as well as increases in positive emotions. The empathy facets empathic concern and personal distress showed different patterns in modulating the post-disaster relief work adaptation for some of the mood outcomes. Keywords: disaster relief, empathy, mood, stress, volunteers
Introduction Facets of empathy and volunteer work Empathy has been defined as ‘an affective response that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of another’s emotional state or condition and is similar to what the other person is feeling or would be expected to feel’ (Eisenberg, 2000, p. 671). Differences in dispositional empathy were shown to be predictive of the willingness to encounter and assist people in need (Davis et al., 1999; Eisenberg and Fabes, 1990). Paradoxically, empathy is considered both a necessary quality for assistance work and a risk factor for secondary traumatisation and compassion fatigue in disaster responders (Figley, 2002). However, research has demonstrated that empathy is a multidimensional construct, encompassing distinct processes (Davis, 1983). In particular, two forms of empathy were found relevant in the context of helping behaviours: empathic concern and personal distress. Empathic concern—also labelled ‘sympathy’ (Eisenberg et al., 1994)—describes the observer’s experience of feelings of sympathy and compassion for a distressed target (Davis et al., 1999). Personal distress, while also referring to an affective reaction experienced by an observer in response to a distressed target, has to do with feelings of personal anxiety and discomfort. In this sense, one difference Disasters, 2014, 38(4): 740−752. © 2014 The Author(s). Disasters © Overseas Development Institute, 2014 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
Moderating effects of empathic concern and personal distress on the emotional reactions of disaster volunteers
between these two facets of empathy is that while empathic concern is more markedly other-oriented than self-oriented, personal distress is self-oriented rather than other-oriented (Davis et al., 1999; Eisenberg and Fabes, 1990). Evidence supports the idea that both empathic concern and personal distress are associated with helping behaviours directed at somebody in need, but the theoretical mechanisms underlying these associations differ for the two constructs (Davis, 2004). Personal distress probably fosters helpful behaviour from an observer in order to relieve his or her own discomfort in the face of another’s plight. On the other hand, empathic concern seems to sustain a kind of help that is solely motivated by the concern for the welfare of another person, upholding the notion of ‘true altruism’ (Batson, Fultz, and Schoenrade, 1987; Batson, 1991). Moreover, empathic concern and personal distress are differentially affected by contextual factors in their influences on helping behaviours. While increased empathic concern can lead someone to help a needy target even when it is easy not to provide assistance, personal distress is not associated with helping someone in need when escape is easy (Batson, 1991). The different associations of empathic concern and personal distress with prosocial behaviours make it plausible that the their associated emotional experiences differ as well (Eisenberg, 2000). In fact, dispositional empathic concern and personal distress have been linked to differences in emotional response and regulation. While personal distress is related to heightened emotional intensity and low regulation, empathic concern is associated with moderately high emotional intensity and bears less of a link to emotional regulation (Eisenberg et al., 1994). Finally, very few studies look at the effects of these forms of empathy in actual community volunteers. Such volunteers are broadly defined as external individuals involved in local, national or international humanitarian organisations, which provide them with basic training in emergency response (Thormar et al., 2010). Omoto and Snyder (1995) show that a helping disposition—characterised not only by empathic concern, but also by nurturance and social responsibility—is associated with higher volunteer satisfaction and integration, even if it is not directly related to persistence in volunteering over time. In addition, Davis, Hall and Meyer (2003) demonstrate that in first-year volunteers, both dispositional empathic concern and personal distress were linked to feelings of sympathy. High empathic concern was strongly related to the accomplishment of altruistic aims over time, while personal distress displayed sporadic associations. It is worth emphasising that while these two facets of empathy have been linked to helping behaviours and corresponding emotional reactions, few relevant studies focus on actual volunteers. Yet even among those that do,2 none concentrates on disaster relief activities. Community volunteers in disaster relief In a review focused on the mental health impact of volunteering in disaster settings, Thormar et al. (2010) notice that while there is growing literature on the mental and physical health consequences of disaster survivors and of professional rescuers workers,
741
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Ioana A. Cristea, Emanuele Legge, Marta Prosperi, Mario Guazzelli, Daniel David and Claudio Gentili
there is a knowledge gap concerning consequences for community helpers. These volunteers are a heterogeneous group, usually coming from diverse demographic backgrounds and professions, with different levels of previous training in relief activities and varying degrees of experience. They are usually deployed upon need at disaster sites, where they may take on a number of roles, depending on the context, before returning to their communities, families and workplaces. While research is scarce, it appears to indicate that regardless of the disaster type, community volunteers are at increased risk for mental and physical health complaints (Thormar et al., 2010). Research has identified the length and severity of exposure to gruesome events during disaster work as predisposing factors (Fullerton, Ursano and Wang, 2004; Mitchell et al., 2004). Post-disaster interventions have been categorised in four phases (Rao, 2006; Raphael, 1986). The first one—the rescue phase or heroic phase—covers roughly the first two weeks after the strike of the disaster; the initial intensive search and rescue efforts take place during this period. It is followed by a relief phase, also called the honeymoon phase, which lasts two to six months and is characterised by an outpour of relief supplies, both from the community and from external volunteer agencies. These two early phases of a disaster aftermath are followed by two later stages. During the rehabilitation phase, which is also known as the disillusionment stage and lasts for one to two years, the reality of the impact and of the associated difficulties sinks in. During the rebuilding or reconstruction phase, which can last for years, the individual and the community begin to return to the pre-disaster state. Most papers that examine rescue workers’ involvement in disaster areas are focused on the time period and operations immediately after the event, or on the long-term consequences of this type of exposure to the immediate aftermath of a disaster. A review of the literature shows that few studies consider volunteer efforts in the subsequent stages, nor do they concentrate on the psychological needs and reactions of volunteers. Study objectives This study aims to address two gaps in the literature. First, hardly any research has focused on empathy and its two distinct facets in volunteers who undertake disaster relief activities. Second, there is a dearth of information on the emotional reactions of community volunteers in the relief phase of a disaster aftermath. Specifically, this study aims to explore how stress and mood variables are affected by volunteer work in the relief stage of a disaster aftermath. Further, it investigates whether and how two distinct facets of empathy—empathic concern and personal distress—can moderate distress levels and negative emotions after assistance work. The study focuses on post-disaster relief activities that took place in the Abruzzo region of Italy. On 6 April 2009, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 on the Richter scale struck L’Aquila, one of the main towns in this region. It claimed the lives of 309 people, injured more than 1,000, and displaced 66,000 (Stratta and Rossi, 2010).
Moderating effects of empathic concern and personal distress on the emotional reactions of disaster volunteers
Method Participants The participants were volunteers who worked with the Italian Department of Civil Protection. They came from all the regions of Italy, representing a wide variety of professions. None of the volunteers were involved in rescue operations in the Abruzzo region in the first three weeks following the disaster. Three hundred volunteers were approached to take part in the study. They were told the study was designed to examine the quality of life and stress indicators in connection with their assistance work in the survivors’ camp. Of those who were approached, 28 (9.3%) declined to participate. The remaining 272 volunteers (mean age =40.13, standard deviation=14.38), of whom 165 were men and 107 were women, agreed to take part in the study and fill out the questionnaires. Of those who had agreed to participate in the study, approximately 48% (130 volunteers) returned the questionnaires. The rest of the volunteers could not be given the questionnaires because they could not be located, said they did not have enough time to fill them out or failed to return the package of questionnaires they had taken. Measures The Symptom Checklist 90 Revised, or SCL-90-R, is a widely used, self-report rating scale designed to measure the severity of psychopathological symptomatology (Derogatis, 1994). Participants are asked to rate 90 statements regarding the severity of symptoms they may have experienced during the previous week. The items cover nine categories of clinical problems related to somatisation, obsessive-compulsive behaviour, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation and psychoticism. The SCL-90-R was adapted to and validated on the Italian population (Prunas et al., 2011). It shows good reliability for its subscales, with Cronbach’s alphas between 0.70 and 0.90. The Interpersonal Reactivity Index, or IRI, is a 28-item, five-point Likert-type scale that assesses four dimensions of dispositional empathy: perspective taking, fantasy, empathic concern, and personal distress (Davis, 1980). The IRI was validated on the Italian population, confirming the factorial structure proposed by Davis (Albiero, Ingoglia and Lo Coco, 2006). All four subscales displayed adequate reliability coefficients, with Cronbach’s alphas ranging from 0.63 to 0.75. For purposes of this study, the empathic concern and the personal distress scales were used. Empathic concern is reflected by statements such as the following: • ‘I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.’ • ‘When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective towards them.’ Personal distress is indicated by assertions such as: • ‘I sometimes feel helpless when I am in the middle of a very emotional situation.’ • ‘When I see someone who badly needs help in an emergency, I go to pieces.’
743
744
Ioana A. Cristea, Emanuele Legge, Marta Prosperi, Mario Guazzelli, Daniel David and Claudio Gentili
The Profile of Mood States, or POMS, is a 58-item questionnaire that measures six affective states: tension–anxiety, fatigue, anger–hostility, depression, confusion– bewilderment and vigour (McNair, Lorr and Droppleman, 1981). The POMS was adapted to the Italian population (Farne et al., 1991). Cronbach’s alphas for the Italian version of the scale and its subscales ranged from 0.84 to 0.95. The present study uses a total distress score—constructed by summarising the five scales that measure negative emotions—as a distress measure. The score on the vigour scale is used as an index of positive emotions. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Y, or STAI Y1-State, asks participants to evaluate how they feel ‘right now’ by rating 20 statements regarding anxious mood in terms of perceived intensity (Spielberger et al., 1983). The STAI Y was adapted and validated on the Italian population (Pedrabissi and Santinello, 1989). Cronbach’s alpha for the Italian version of the scale is over 0.90. The Perceived Stress Scale is a ten-item self-report questionnaire that measures a person’s evaluation of the degree to which the situations in the previous week were stressful, meaning unpredictable, uncontrollable or the like (Cohen and Williamson, 1988). It has been shown to be a reliable and valid instrument for measuring perceived stress (Roberti, Harrington and Storch, 2006). For this sample, the reliability for the scale was satisfactory, with Cronbach’s alphas of 0.72 and 0.78 as pre- and posttest measures, respectively. Procedure Volunteers were deployed in the survivors’ camp in L’Aquila for one week. They took part in aid activities, such as preparing food for the refugees, cleaning the camp and the survivors’ tents, and distributing clean linen. Since they conducted their work around the survivors’ tents and lived in the same camp—albeit in a separate part— interaction with the survivors was unavoidable although it was not specifically required. The whole operation lasted six weeks, starting in August 2009 (four months after the earthquake); new groups of 50 volunteers were deployed each week. Before each group began work, coordinators of the survivors’ camp organised an orientation meeting and explained how the volunteers should go about their tasks. At the same meeting, a team of psychologists informed the volunteers that they could choose to participate in this study. Interested volunteers were assigned a number, which was given to them on a sheet of paper, together with a set of questionnaires to fill out. They were instructed to write this number on all questionnaires. After they had completed their assistance work, individual volunteers were approached and asked whether they wished to continue participating in the study; if they agreed, they were given the questionnaires and again instructed to label them with their number. In an effort to ensure confidentiality, the psychologists responsible for the data collection were not involved in entering the data in the database. All potential participants were screened for clinical problems prior to their involvement. Only volunteers who presented no evidence of clinical problems on any of the nine subscales of the SCL-90-R were included in the study, meaning that their
Moderating effects of empathic concern and personal distress on the emotional reactions of disaster volunteers
scores had to be under the cut-off point of 65. As a result, two volunteers were excluded from the study. Stress and mood measures were administered both before the volunteer work began, as a baseline measure, and after the one-week volunteering period. Empathy was assessed before the relief work began.
Results Table 1 presents the correlations between the two selected dimensions of empathy— empathic concern and personal distress—and the selected stress and mood outcomes. Empathic concern bore small and, for the most part, non-significant correlations with the emotional outcomes. Personal distress had significant medium-size correlations with the emotional outcomes, indicating that they refer to distinct, albeit related, constructs. Table 1 Correlations between empathy dimensions and emotional variables at baseline (n=272) 1 Empathy dimensions
Emotional variables
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1. Empathic concern
–
2. Personal distress
0.07
–
3. Perceived stress
0.10
0.51
–
4. General distress
0.17
0.43
0.57
–
5. Anxiety
0.16
0.41
0.51
0.52
–
6. Anxiety– tension
0.12
0.39
0.50
0.83
0.47
–
7. Depression
0.14
0.37
0.52
0.89
0.47
0.66
–
8. Anger– hostility
0.07
0.31
0.46
0.90
0.41
0.70
0.79
–
9. Fatigue
0.22
0.44
0.51
0.81
0.47
0.66
0.64
0.61
–
10. Confusion– bewilderment
0.22
0.35
0.45
0.76
0.43
0.55
0.59
0.59
0.63
–
11. Vigour– positive emotions
-0.03
-0.37
-0.42
-0.25
-0.48
-0.15
-0.31
-0.19
-0.27
-0.14
11
–
Notes: Darker shaded cells indicate p
Moderating effects of empathic concern and personal distress on the emotional reactions of disaster volunteers Ioana A. Cristea, Emanuele Legge, Marta Prosperi, Mario Guazzelli, Daniel David and Claudio Gentili1
This study examines stress and mood outcomes in community volunteers who undertook one week’s worth of post-disaster relief work in L’Aquila, Italy, which had been hit by an earthquake four months earlier. The study team obtained pre- and post-relief work data from 130 volunteers involved in activities such as preparing food for the displaced, cleaning the camps and distributing clean linen. The Perceived Stress Scale, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Profile of Mood States were administered at the start and at the end of the aid activities. Psychopathological symptoms and empathy were assessed in the beginning, using the Symptom Checklist 90 Revised and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, respectively. The results show that, following the assistance work, volunteers displayed decreases in perceived stress, general distress, anxiety and anger, as well as increases in positive emotions. The empathy facets empathic concern and personal distress showed different patterns in modulating the post-disaster relief work adaptation for some of the mood outcomes. Keywords: disaster relief, empathy, mood, stress, volunteers
Introduction Facets of empathy and volunteer work Empathy has been defined as ‘an affective response that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of another’s emotional state or condition and is similar to what the other person is feeling or would be expected to feel’ (Eisenberg, 2000, p. 671). Differences in dispositional empathy were shown to be predictive of the willingness to encounter and assist people in need (Davis et al., 1999; Eisenberg and Fabes, 1990). Paradoxically, empathy is considered both a necessary quality for assistance work and a risk factor for secondary traumatisation and compassion fatigue in disaster responders (Figley, 2002). However, research has demonstrated that empathy is a multidimensional construct, encompassing distinct processes (Davis, 1983). In particular, two forms of empathy were found relevant in the context of helping behaviours: empathic concern and personal distress. Empathic concern—also labelled ‘sympathy’ (Eisenberg et al., 1994)—describes the observer’s experience of feelings of sympathy and compassion for a distressed target (Davis et al., 1999). Personal distress, while also referring to an affective reaction experienced by an observer in response to a distressed target, has to do with feelings of personal anxiety and discomfort. In this sense, one difference Disasters, 2014, 38(4): 740−752. © 2014 The Author(s). Disasters © Overseas Development Institute, 2014 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
Moderating effects of empathic concern and personal distress on the emotional reactions of disaster volunteers
between these two facets of empathy is that while empathic concern is more markedly other-oriented than self-oriented, personal distress is self-oriented rather than other-oriented (Davis et al., 1999; Eisenberg and Fabes, 1990). Evidence supports the idea that both empathic concern and personal distress are associated with helping behaviours directed at somebody in need, but the theoretical mechanisms underlying these associations differ for the two constructs (Davis, 2004). Personal distress probably fosters helpful behaviour from an observer in order to relieve his or her own discomfort in the face of another’s plight. On the other hand, empathic concern seems to sustain a kind of help that is solely motivated by the concern for the welfare of another person, upholding the notion of ‘true altruism’ (Batson, Fultz, and Schoenrade, 1987; Batson, 1991). Moreover, empathic concern and personal distress are differentially affected by contextual factors in their influences on helping behaviours. While increased empathic concern can lead someone to help a needy target even when it is easy not to provide assistance, personal distress is not associated with helping someone in need when escape is easy (Batson, 1991). The different associations of empathic concern and personal distress with prosocial behaviours make it plausible that the their associated emotional experiences differ as well (Eisenberg, 2000). In fact, dispositional empathic concern and personal distress have been linked to differences in emotional response and regulation. While personal distress is related to heightened emotional intensity and low regulation, empathic concern is associated with moderately high emotional intensity and bears less of a link to emotional regulation (Eisenberg et al., 1994). Finally, very few studies look at the effects of these forms of empathy in actual community volunteers. Such volunteers are broadly defined as external individuals involved in local, national or international humanitarian organisations, which provide them with basic training in emergency response (Thormar et al., 2010). Omoto and Snyder (1995) show that a helping disposition—characterised not only by empathic concern, but also by nurturance and social responsibility—is associated with higher volunteer satisfaction and integration, even if it is not directly related to persistence in volunteering over time. In addition, Davis, Hall and Meyer (2003) demonstrate that in first-year volunteers, both dispositional empathic concern and personal distress were linked to feelings of sympathy. High empathic concern was strongly related to the accomplishment of altruistic aims over time, while personal distress displayed sporadic associations. It is worth emphasising that while these two facets of empathy have been linked to helping behaviours and corresponding emotional reactions, few relevant studies focus on actual volunteers. Yet even among those that do,2 none concentrates on disaster relief activities. Community volunteers in disaster relief In a review focused on the mental health impact of volunteering in disaster settings, Thormar et al. (2010) notice that while there is growing literature on the mental and physical health consequences of disaster survivors and of professional rescuers workers,
741
742
Ioana A. Cristea, Emanuele Legge, Marta Prosperi, Mario Guazzelli, Daniel David and Claudio Gentili
there is a knowledge gap concerning consequences for community helpers. These volunteers are a heterogeneous group, usually coming from diverse demographic backgrounds and professions, with different levels of previous training in relief activities and varying degrees of experience. They are usually deployed upon need at disaster sites, where they may take on a number of roles, depending on the context, before returning to their communities, families and workplaces. While research is scarce, it appears to indicate that regardless of the disaster type, community volunteers are at increased risk for mental and physical health complaints (Thormar et al., 2010). Research has identified the length and severity of exposure to gruesome events during disaster work as predisposing factors (Fullerton, Ursano and Wang, 2004; Mitchell et al., 2004). Post-disaster interventions have been categorised in four phases (Rao, 2006; Raphael, 1986). The first one—the rescue phase or heroic phase—covers roughly the first two weeks after the strike of the disaster; the initial intensive search and rescue efforts take place during this period. It is followed by a relief phase, also called the honeymoon phase, which lasts two to six months and is characterised by an outpour of relief supplies, both from the community and from external volunteer agencies. These two early phases of a disaster aftermath are followed by two later stages. During the rehabilitation phase, which is also known as the disillusionment stage and lasts for one to two years, the reality of the impact and of the associated difficulties sinks in. During the rebuilding or reconstruction phase, which can last for years, the individual and the community begin to return to the pre-disaster state. Most papers that examine rescue workers’ involvement in disaster areas are focused on the time period and operations immediately after the event, or on the long-term consequences of this type of exposure to the immediate aftermath of a disaster. A review of the literature shows that few studies consider volunteer efforts in the subsequent stages, nor do they concentrate on the psychological needs and reactions of volunteers. Study objectives This study aims to address two gaps in the literature. First, hardly any research has focused on empathy and its two distinct facets in volunteers who undertake disaster relief activities. Second, there is a dearth of information on the emotional reactions of community volunteers in the relief phase of a disaster aftermath. Specifically, this study aims to explore how stress and mood variables are affected by volunteer work in the relief stage of a disaster aftermath. Further, it investigates whether and how two distinct facets of empathy—empathic concern and personal distress—can moderate distress levels and negative emotions after assistance work. The study focuses on post-disaster relief activities that took place in the Abruzzo region of Italy. On 6 April 2009, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 on the Richter scale struck L’Aquila, one of the main towns in this region. It claimed the lives of 309 people, injured more than 1,000, and displaced 66,000 (Stratta and Rossi, 2010).
Moderating effects of empathic concern and personal distress on the emotional reactions of disaster volunteers
Method Participants The participants were volunteers who worked with the Italian Department of Civil Protection. They came from all the regions of Italy, representing a wide variety of professions. None of the volunteers were involved in rescue operations in the Abruzzo region in the first three weeks following the disaster. Three hundred volunteers were approached to take part in the study. They were told the study was designed to examine the quality of life and stress indicators in connection with their assistance work in the survivors’ camp. Of those who were approached, 28 (9.3%) declined to participate. The remaining 272 volunteers (mean age =40.13, standard deviation=14.38), of whom 165 were men and 107 were women, agreed to take part in the study and fill out the questionnaires. Of those who had agreed to participate in the study, approximately 48% (130 volunteers) returned the questionnaires. The rest of the volunteers could not be given the questionnaires because they could not be located, said they did not have enough time to fill them out or failed to return the package of questionnaires they had taken. Measures The Symptom Checklist 90 Revised, or SCL-90-R, is a widely used, self-report rating scale designed to measure the severity of psychopathological symptomatology (Derogatis, 1994). Participants are asked to rate 90 statements regarding the severity of symptoms they may have experienced during the previous week. The items cover nine categories of clinical problems related to somatisation, obsessive-compulsive behaviour, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation and psychoticism. The SCL-90-R was adapted to and validated on the Italian population (Prunas et al., 2011). It shows good reliability for its subscales, with Cronbach’s alphas between 0.70 and 0.90. The Interpersonal Reactivity Index, or IRI, is a 28-item, five-point Likert-type scale that assesses four dimensions of dispositional empathy: perspective taking, fantasy, empathic concern, and personal distress (Davis, 1980). The IRI was validated on the Italian population, confirming the factorial structure proposed by Davis (Albiero, Ingoglia and Lo Coco, 2006). All four subscales displayed adequate reliability coefficients, with Cronbach’s alphas ranging from 0.63 to 0.75. For purposes of this study, the empathic concern and the personal distress scales were used. Empathic concern is reflected by statements such as the following: • ‘I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.’ • ‘When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective towards them.’ Personal distress is indicated by assertions such as: • ‘I sometimes feel helpless when I am in the middle of a very emotional situation.’ • ‘When I see someone who badly needs help in an emergency, I go to pieces.’
743
744
Ioana A. Cristea, Emanuele Legge, Marta Prosperi, Mario Guazzelli, Daniel David and Claudio Gentili
The Profile of Mood States, or POMS, is a 58-item questionnaire that measures six affective states: tension–anxiety, fatigue, anger–hostility, depression, confusion– bewilderment and vigour (McNair, Lorr and Droppleman, 1981). The POMS was adapted to the Italian population (Farne et al., 1991). Cronbach’s alphas for the Italian version of the scale and its subscales ranged from 0.84 to 0.95. The present study uses a total distress score—constructed by summarising the five scales that measure negative emotions—as a distress measure. The score on the vigour scale is used as an index of positive emotions. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Y, or STAI Y1-State, asks participants to evaluate how they feel ‘right now’ by rating 20 statements regarding anxious mood in terms of perceived intensity (Spielberger et al., 1983). The STAI Y was adapted and validated on the Italian population (Pedrabissi and Santinello, 1989). Cronbach’s alpha for the Italian version of the scale is over 0.90. The Perceived Stress Scale is a ten-item self-report questionnaire that measures a person’s evaluation of the degree to which the situations in the previous week were stressful, meaning unpredictable, uncontrollable or the like (Cohen and Williamson, 1988). It has been shown to be a reliable and valid instrument for measuring perceived stress (Roberti, Harrington and Storch, 2006). For this sample, the reliability for the scale was satisfactory, with Cronbach’s alphas of 0.72 and 0.78 as pre- and posttest measures, respectively. Procedure Volunteers were deployed in the survivors’ camp in L’Aquila for one week. They took part in aid activities, such as preparing food for the refugees, cleaning the camp and the survivors’ tents, and distributing clean linen. Since they conducted their work around the survivors’ tents and lived in the same camp—albeit in a separate part— interaction with the survivors was unavoidable although it was not specifically required. The whole operation lasted six weeks, starting in August 2009 (four months after the earthquake); new groups of 50 volunteers were deployed each week. Before each group began work, coordinators of the survivors’ camp organised an orientation meeting and explained how the volunteers should go about their tasks. At the same meeting, a team of psychologists informed the volunteers that they could choose to participate in this study. Interested volunteers were assigned a number, which was given to them on a sheet of paper, together with a set of questionnaires to fill out. They were instructed to write this number on all questionnaires. After they had completed their assistance work, individual volunteers were approached and asked whether they wished to continue participating in the study; if they agreed, they were given the questionnaires and again instructed to label them with their number. In an effort to ensure confidentiality, the psychologists responsible for the data collection were not involved in entering the data in the database. All potential participants were screened for clinical problems prior to their involvement. Only volunteers who presented no evidence of clinical problems on any of the nine subscales of the SCL-90-R were included in the study, meaning that their
Moderating effects of empathic concern and personal distress on the emotional reactions of disaster volunteers
scores had to be under the cut-off point of 65. As a result, two volunteers were excluded from the study. Stress and mood measures were administered both before the volunteer work began, as a baseline measure, and after the one-week volunteering period. Empathy was assessed before the relief work began.
Results Table 1 presents the correlations between the two selected dimensions of empathy— empathic concern and personal distress—and the selected stress and mood outcomes. Empathic concern bore small and, for the most part, non-significant correlations with the emotional outcomes. Personal distress had significant medium-size correlations with the emotional outcomes, indicating that they refer to distinct, albeit related, constructs. Table 1 Correlations between empathy dimensions and emotional variables at baseline (n=272) 1 Empathy dimensions
Emotional variables
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1. Empathic concern
–
2. Personal distress
0.07
–
3. Perceived stress
0.10
0.51
–
4. General distress
0.17
0.43
0.57
–
5. Anxiety
0.16
0.41
0.51
0.52
–
6. Anxiety– tension
0.12
0.39
0.50
0.83
0.47
–
7. Depression
0.14
0.37
0.52
0.89
0.47
0.66
–
8. Anger– hostility
0.07
0.31
0.46
0.90
0.41
0.70
0.79
–
9. Fatigue
0.22
0.44
0.51
0.81
0.47
0.66
0.64
0.61
–
10. Confusion– bewilderment
0.22
0.35
0.45
0.76
0.43
0.55
0.59
0.59
0.63
–
11. Vigour– positive emotions
-0.03
-0.37
-0.42
-0.25
-0.48
-0.15
-0.31
-0.19
-0.27
-0.14
11
–
Notes: Darker shaded cells indicate p
