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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
published: 16 November 2021
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.736656
Edited by:
Mohamed A. Ali,
Grand Canyon University,
United States
Reviewed by:
Shaoying Gong,
Central China Normal University,
China
Qing Zhao,
Institute of Psychology, Chinese
Academy of Sciences (CAS), China
*Correspondence:
Weijian Li
xlxh@zjnu.cn
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Educational Psychology,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Received: 05 July 2021
Accepted: 26 October 2021
Published: 16 November 2021
Citation:
Ge Y, Li W, Chen F, Kayani S and
Qin G (2021) The Theories of the
Development of Students: A Factor
to Shape Teacher Empathy From
the Perspective of Motivation.
Front. Psychol. 12:736656.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.736656
The Theories of the Development of
Students: A Factor to Shape Teacher
Empathy From the Perspective of
Motivation
Yabo Ge1,2,3, Weijian Li1*, Fangyan Chen3, Sumaira Kayani1and Guihua Qin1
1Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, China, 2Key Laboratory of Intelligent Education Technology
and Application of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, China, 3Teachers College, Jinhua Polytechnic,
Jinhua, China
Empathy represents an essential prerequisite for developing effective interpersonal
behavior and maintaining interpersonal relationships. Education is a result of teacher-
student interaction, and, therefore, it is worth noting that teaching empathy is critical
for the development of students and the professional growth of teachers. Recently,
researchers began to explore the influential factors of empathy (e.g., empathic mindsets)
based on motivation. Beyond their empathic attitudes, teachers also have a mindset
toward the development of students. A survey study was adopted to explore the
relationship between the theories of the growth of students and teacher empathy.
Four hundred and eighty-four Chinese teachers completed the student development
scale, the teacher empathic motivation scale, and the teacher empathy scale. The
mediation model results showed that the theories of the development of students could
significantly predict teacher empathy and teacher empathic motivation. The teacher
empathic motivation mediated the positive relationship between the theories of the
development of students and teacher empathy. This study proposes a new concept
and method for teacher empathy intervention in future.
Keywords: teacher empathy, empathic propensity, motivation, empathic motivation, teacher education
INTRODUCTION
Empathy, an interpersonal phenomenon, refers to sharing in and understanding the thoughts, and
feelings of other people, and caring for their welfare (Zaki, 2014;Preston and Waal, 2017;Yang
et al., 2018;Weisz and Cikara, 2021). It is broadly believed that empathy is a critical ingredient
in interpersonal processes (Main et al., 2017;Amicucci et al., 2021). Moreover, related studies
have noted an impairment of social functioning consequent upon the empathy deficit in a series
of neuropsychiatric conditions (Shimoni et al., 2012;Laisney et al., 2013;Schreiter et al., 2013;
Yang et al., 2018). As is generally known, teaching is a social interaction that involves a pupil
and a teacher (Holper et al., 2013), which is also inseparable from empathy (Swan and Riley,
2015). Teacher empathy, which involves cognitive and affective elements (Tettegah and Anderson,
2007;Swan and Riley, 2015;Goroshit and Hen, 2016), involves comprehensively understanding
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Ge et al. Shape Teacher Empathy From the Perspective of Motivation
the situation of students sharing the positive and negative
emotions of students, and expressing care for the students
through actions (Berkovich and Eyal, 2015;Meyers et al.,
2019;Ronen, 2020). Currently, there is an enhanced awareness
of the importance of teacher empathy in teacher education
(Swan and Riley, 2015).
The Value of Culturing for Teacher
Empathy
It is generally accepted that teacher empathy is significantly
correlated with the development of students and teachers.
Accumulating evidence suggests that, on the one hand,
teacher empathy can promote the academic achievement of
students (Cadima et al., 2010;Warren, 2018;Ronen, 2020),
their motivation for learning (Cooper, 2004), teacher-student
relationship (Wubbels and Brekelmans, 2005;Stojiljkovi´
c et al.,
2012), and the overall classroom atmosphere (Cooper, 2010).
Additionally, teacher empathy is not merely meant to encourage
student engagement in learning but to help achieve social
justice across diverse backgrounds (Bullough, 2019). Therefore,
arguably, education is not complete without teacher empathy; if
not, teachers are teaching to transmit content instead of teaching
the students (Swan and Riley, 2015). On the other hand, teacher
empathy plays a vital role in promoting the development of
students and is a crucial feature of the identity of teachers, which
can promote their professional growth (Stojiljkovi´
c et al., 2012;
Zhu et al., 2019). For example, empathy effectively facilitates
the specialization of teachers through establishing positive
teacher-student relationships and a relaxed teaching atmosphere
(Stojiljkovi´
c et al., 2012). Moreover, some investigators noted
that empathy had been long considered central to the teaching
profession (Jaber et al., 2018).
Overall, empathy-building interventions for teachers have
a clear adaptive function for social interaction, both for the
students and the teachers. Thus far, empathy interventions have
focused on building perspective-taking strategies and increasing
empathy-expression strategies (Weisz and Zaki, 2017). However,
these intervention techniques have not yielded impressive results
(Waller et al., 2020). Therefore, it is essential to identify other
factors that shape teacher empathy.
Empathy and Motivation
Empathy is not always automatic but is rather context-
dependent (Zaki, 2014). Furthermore, empathy, like many other
psychological phenomena, involves a motivational component
(Weisz et al., 2020). Empathic motivation is goal-directed,
an internal force that drives people toward and away from
social connections (Weisz and Zaki, 2018). More importantly,
Keysers and Gazzola (2014) proposed that the ability-propensity
distinction is crucial to characterizing empathy. According to
this theory, there may be variations in empathy owing to not
only the ability difference but also the motivation difference.
Similarly, Ferguson et al. (2020) suggested that empathy is a
choice and can be evoked in multiple ways. Therefore, similar
to empathic ability, empathic motivation serves a significant role
in the process of empathy. The relevant theory of empathic
motivation provides a new insight into empathy culturing as to
date, many empathic cultivations focus on developing the ability
of people to empathize via experience-based and expression-
based interventions (Weisz and Zaki, 2017).
Teacher Empathy: The Potential Role of
Teachers’ Beliefs
It is novel to identify the factors that shape teacher empathy
based on motivation. Belief is one of the most critical factors
that influence motivation, such as the achievement goal theory
(Dweck, 1996). Recently, more and more researchers have
focused more on beliefs, which play an essential role in empathy
and empathic motivation, and have gained many advances
(Schumann et al., 2014;Weisz et al., 2020;Gandhi et al., 2021).
For example, Weisz et al. (2020) found that the participants
who had a more robust belief about the malleability of empathy
exhibited greater empathic motivation and empathic accuracy.
Similarly, Gandhi et al. (2021) reported that individuals who
believed that empathy was changeable exhibited more empathetic
behavior (less aggression).
Likewise, various educational researchers suggest that
teachers’ beliefs affect their classroom practice (Kagan, 1992;
Fang, 1996;Mansour, 2009). For example, Wang and Yang
(2021) found that most pre-service STEM teachers hold the
reality of development and the possibility of developing beliefs
about migrant students. Moreover, teachers’ beliefs can also
affect student motivation through classroom practice. Heyder
et al. (2020) suggested that the more teachers believed that math
requires innate ability, the lower the intrinsic motivation of
students with low-achieving was. These studies also show that
there is an intimate relationship between teacher beliefs and
teacher practices. Therefore, just like in the general domain
of empathy studies, we believe that the empathy and empathic
motivation of teachers, belonging to the practices of teachers, may
also be influenced by the beliefs of the teachers. As mentioned
above, empathic motivation is a crucial influencing factor of
empathy. Collectively, we speculate empathic motivation would
play a mediating role in the relationship between the beliefs and
empathy of teachers.
The Current Study
As stated above, many investigators have paid increasing
attention to the role of beliefs in empathy and empathic
motivation in recent years (Schumann et al., 2014;Weisz et al.,
2020). For example, Schumann et al. (2014) defined the empathic
mindset as a malleable mindset through which believing empathy
can be developed and a fixed theory through which believing
empathy cannot be set. The results suggest that people who
had a malleable mindset expended greater empathic motivation
in challenging contexts than those who believed in a fixed
theory. Similarly, as alluded to earlier, Weisz et al. (2020)
found the same results. These findings suggested that empathic
belief, a motivation-based intervention, is an essential factor
that shapes empathy.
Fives and Buehl (2012) divided the beliefs of teachers into six
categories, in which beliefs about students refer to the views about
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Ge et al. Shape Teacher Empathy From the Perspective of Motivation
linguistic difference, capacity, learning, and the development of
students. Researchers believe that beliefs about students are the
most critical influencing factor of teacher practices, which is in
a relatively central position (Wang and Yang, 2021). In other
words, teachers, in the educational context, have not only their
beliefs about themselves but also beliefs about students (e.g.,
the development of student abilities). According to Dweck et al.
(1995) the theory of mindsets, teachers may have two different
beliefs about the development of the ability of students. Teachers
with malleable beliefs of the ability of students may think that
the ability of students is unstable and can be enhanced through
acquired efforts. On the contrary, teachers with fixed mindsets of
the abilities of students may believe that their abilities are fixed
and unchangeable. This raises the question of whether teacher
empathy and teachers’ empathic motivation are influenced by
their beliefs about the development of students.
Similar to beliefs about oneself, in this study, we expected
teacher beliefs about the development of students to play
an essential role in the empathic motivation and empathy
of teachers. A mediation model was established to test these
hypotheses; Figure 1 presents the conceptual model. This study’s
primary contribution was to first investigate the role of teacher
beliefs about the ability development of students under teacher
empathy based on the motivation perspective.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Participants
Based on the model complexity (e.g., n= 5–10 per estimated
parameter) (Bentler and Chou, 1987), the reasonable sample
size for this investigation was between 285 and 570. A total
of 495 Chinese teachers were recruited from kindergarten,
primary school, junior high school, and senior high school in
Zhejiang province. Eleven participants were excluded from the
data screening process as they chose the same option on all the
scales. The valid sample included 484 Chinese teachers [84.1%
female; 67 no-titles (13.8%), 163 secondary title (33.7%), 194
primary title (40.1%), and 67 senior title (13.8%); 18 kindergarten
teachers (3.7%), 320 primary school teachers (66.1%), 83 junior
high school teachers (17.1%), and 63 senior high school teachers
(13.0%)]. The average age was (mean ±SD) 35.81 ±8.27 years
old; the average teaching experience was (mean ±SD) 14.78
±10.98 years.
Measures
Demographic Information Questionnaire
The sociodemographic characteristics of the participants were
evaluated using a questionnaire that included the following
information: gender, age, teaching experience, and title (i.e.,
“What is your teaching experience in terms off years?”).
Theories of the Development of Students
To construct a more accurate evaluation method of the teacher’s
mindset regarding the development of students (TOS), we
adapted a three-item measure from an existing measure of the
implicit theory of personality (Dweck et al., 1995) and theories of
empathy (Schumann et al., 2014). The questionnaire was scored
on a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree),
followed by three statements related to the teacher’s mindset
of the ability of students. The statements were: “The level of
Students’ learning ability is stable to some extent, and students are
not able to change it. Students can indeed learn new knowledge,
but they cannot improve their learning ability. That is Students’
learning ability is unlikely to change.” After statistical analysis,
the internal consistency of the questionnaire was highly reliable
(Cronbach’s α= 0.86).
Motivation for Teacher Empathy
Empathic motivation is a very abstract concept with motivational
content or driving direction. This study focuses on the driving
direction of motivation. It is self-edited to be suitable for
the educational situation in which teachers are approaching
the intensity of the empathic motivation, that is, the teachers’
empathic motivation (TEM) questionnaire. The questionnaire is
adapted from the study of Schumann et al. (2014), and includes
three statements (e.g., “when a student is in a bad mood,” “I
want to know what they are thinking that moment,” “I am
willing to share in their bad feelings,” and “I want to comfort
them.”). Participants responded to the questionnaire on a 7-
point agreement scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree).
A statistical analysis showed that this questionnaire has a high
internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach’s α= 0.83).
Teacher Empathy
The Chinese version of the interpersonal reactivity index (IRI-
C) (Huang et al., 2011) was revised and normalized for Chinese
(Sun et al., 2017) to assess empathy (Likert 5-point, from 0 to
4). This scale version is widely used in Chinese culture (Sun
et al., 2017;Chen et al., 2018). To construct a more accurate
evaluation method, we composed an empathy questionnaire
(IRI for Chinese teachers’ empathy, IRI-CT) to evaluate teacher
empathy (TE) based on IRI-C. Specifically, we changed the
statements of IRI-C to fit the current study purpose (i.e.,
empathic target). For example, we revised IRI-C “I often have
tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.”
and “I sometimes find it difficult to see things” from the “other
person’s point of view.” to “I often have tender, concerned feelings
for students less fortunate than me.” and “I sometimes find it
difficult to see things from the ‘Students” point of view” (see
Supplementary Appendix).
IRI-CT, which is similar to the IRI-C, also assesses four aspects
of teacher empathy, namely, empathic concern (i.e., TE-EC, seven
items), perspective-taking (i.e., TE-PT, seven items), fantasy (i.e.,
TE-FS, seven items), and personal distress (i.e., TE-PD, seven
items). Participants rated their agreement or disagreement with
28 items on a 7-point scale (1 = does not describe me well,
7 = describes me very well). To validate the four-factor model,
a confirmatory factor analyses was used to assess the model
fit (x2/df = 3.98, RMSEA = 0.07, CFI = 0.73, TLI = 0.70,
SRMR = 0.10), which shows a moderate structure validity. The
correlations between the IRI-CT subscales and related constructs
were significant (Zhao et al., 2018). For instance, TE-EC was
negatively correlated with verbal aggression (the subscale of AQ)
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Ge et al. Shape Teacher Empathy From the Perspective of Motivation
FIGURE 1 | The conceptual model of the relationships between teachers’ beliefs about Students’ development, teachers’ empathic motivation, and teacher
empathy.
(r=−0.15, p<0.001), difficulty in identifying one’s own feelings
(the subscale of TAS-20) (r=−0.14, p<0.01) and positively
correlated with prosocial tendencies (PTM) (r= 0.41, p<0.001),
relational needs (the subscale of BPNS) (r= 0.30, p<0.001). An
internal consistency analysis revealed that the adapted scale of IRI
has moderate reliability (α= 0.74). All the subscales of the IRI-CT
demonstrated good internal consistencies (ranging from 0.57 to
0.71, see Table 1), which was consistent with other studies based
on the Chinese versions of IRI (Zhao et al., 2021).
Procedures
This study was conducted through a web-based survey via a
Chinese survey website.1All the participants in the questionnaire
survey were volunteers and were asked to read the introduction
to the study. The participants were then immediately instructed
to fill out a demographic information questionnaire, and
complete the whole task carefully. Data including demographic
information, theories of the development of students, the
empathetic motivation of teachers, and the subscales, such as
TE-EC, TE-PT, TE-FS, and TE-PD were collected. The survey
could not be submitted if any questions had not been answered,
like other studies (Zhao et al., 2021). Hence, there were no
missing values. They took approximately 8 min to complete all
the assessments. Once they completed the questionnaire, the
participants were debriefed about the purpose of this study and
thanked for their participation. The Zhejiang Normal University
Review Board approved the current research procedures.
Data Analysis
The data analysis was as follows. First, SPSS (version 23.0) was
used to calculate the descriptive statistics and partial correlations
of crucial variables in this study. One recent cross-cultural study
reported the culture-sex interaction effect for both trait and
state empathy with Australian and Chinese subjects (Zhao et al.,
2021). Therefore, partial correlation analyses (i.e., to control for
the following covariates: gender, age, teaching experience, and
title) were conducted to examine the relationships between the
theories of the development of students (TOS), the empathic
motivation of teachers, teacher empathy (TE), the empathic
concern of teacher empathy (TE-EC), the perspective-taking of
1https://www.wjx.cn
teacher empathy (TE-PT), the fantasy of teacher empathy (TE-
FS), and the personal distress of teacher empathy (TE-EC).
Second, the hypothesized mediation model was tested using
the PROCESS macro for SPSS (Hayes, 2013). The hypothesized
mediation [the theories of the development of students →the
empathic motivation of teachers (mediator) →teacher empathy,
TE-EC, TE-PT, TE-FS, and TE-PD, respectively] was tested using
model 4 of the PROCESS macro for SPSS (version 3.3, see
Hayes, 2013). For the current analyses, a meaningful indirect
effect was identified depending on whether zero was outside the
95% confidence interval (CI) of the indirect effect (Field, 2013).
Gender, age, teaching experience, and title were controlled for.
Further, the models were tested using 5,000 bootstrap samples.
RESULTS
Preliminary Analyses
Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics and the partial correlation
analyses (i.e., to control for covariates) for the key variables.
As expected, the theories of the Students’ development were
positively correlated with the empathic motivation of teachers,
teacher empathy, TE-EC and TE-PT, but negatively correlated
with TE-PD. Additionally, the empathic motivation of teachers
was significantly and positively related to teacher empathy, TE-
EC, TE-PT, and TE-FS. The above preliminary analyses indicate
a close relationship with the theories of Students’ development,
empathic motivation, and teacher empathy (including subscales),
which is also the basis of the mediation model analysis.
Mediation Model
Two univariate outliers (i.e., an outlier for each of TEM, TE-
PD) were identified (z-scores >3.29) and excluded (Zhao et al.,
2019, 2020). As indicated in Figure 2A, for teacher empathy, the
total effects model with the theories of Students’ development
and beforementioned covariates (i.e., gender, age, teaching
experience, and title) showed that the regression coefficient for
the theories of the development of the students was significant
(b= 0.42, SE = 0.18, p= 0.02, 95% CI = [0.06,0.78]), which
indicated that the total effect of the theories of the development
of the students on teacher empathy was significant. Further, the
mediation model controlled for the covariates was tested. The
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Ge et al. Shape Teacher Empathy From the Perspective of Motivation
TABLE 1 | Descriptive statistics and partial correlations for key variables.
Variable M±SD 1234567
1 Theories of the development of students 12.50 ±3.36 0.86
2 The empathic motivation of teachers 16.87 ±2.99 0.31*** 0.83
3 Teacher empathy (TE) 134.88 ±13.64 0.13*** 0.43 *** 0.74
4 Teacher empathy-EC (TE-EC) 38.38 ±4.84 0.25*** 0.51 *** 0.64*** 0.57
5 Teacher empathy-PT (TE-PT) 37.88 ±4.95 0.37*** 0.55 *** 0.51*** 0.54 *** 0.70
6 Teacher empathy-FS (TE-FS) 28.49 ±6.60 0.03 0.18*** 0.74*** 0.20*** 0.07 0.71
7 Teacher empathy-PD (TE-PD) 30.13 ±5.89 −0.24*** −0.08 0.53*** −0.02 −0.20 *** 0.37*** 0.71
Cronbach’s alpha for each scale is in bold and in the diagonals. ***p <0.001.
results showed that the empathic motivation of teachers was
significantly predicted by the theories of the development of the
students (b= 0.26, SE = 0.04, p<0.001, 95% CI = [0.19,0.34]) and
that teacher empathy was significantly predicted by the empathic
motivation of teachers (b= 1.93, SE = 0.19, p<0.001, 95%
CI = [1.55, 2.31]). Further, the predictive relationship between
the theories of Students’ development and teacher empathy was
not significant when teachers’ empathic motivation was included
in the regression equation (b=−0.09, SE = 0.17, p= 0.62, 95%
CI = [−0.43,0.26]). The indirect effect of the empathic motivation
of teachers was (b= 0.51, SE = 0.10, 95% CI = [0.33,0.72]). There
is a meaningful indirect effect, as mentioned above when the zero
was outside the 95% confidence interval (CI) of the indirect effect
(Field, 2013). Therefore, the relationship between the theories of
Students’ development and teacher empathy was mediated by the
empathic motivation of teachers.
The abovementioned analytic approach will also be used for
subscales of teacher empathy including TE-EC, TE-PT, TE-FS,
and TE-PD. The results showed that the empathic motivation of
teachers has a mediating effect between the theories of Students’
development and teacher empathy subscales except for TE-PD;
namely, TE-EC (the indirect effect b= 0.19, SE = 0.04, 95%
CI = [0.13,0.27], see Figure 2B), TE-PT (the indirect effect
b= 0.21, SE = 0.04, 95% CI = [0.14,0.28], see Figure 2C), TE-
FS (the indirect effect b= 0.10, SE = 0.03, 95% CI = [0.04,0.18],
see Figure 2D) and TE-PD (the indirect effect b= 0.01, SE = 0.02,
95% CI = [−0.04,0.06], see Figure 2E).
DISCUSSION
Teacher empathy plays a vital role in the Students’ development
and the professional development of teachers (Stojiljkovi´
c
et al., 2012). It is the foundation of the empathy culture to
identify the factors that shape this psychological variable. This
study investigates the role of teachers’ beliefs about Students’
development in the empathic motivation and empathy of
teachers via the mediation model. Our finding suggests that the
theories of Students’ development were positively associated with
the empathic motivation and teacher empathy. The empathic
motivation of teachers was positively associated with teacher
empathy, and mediated the positive relationship between the
theories of Students’ development and the teacher empathy.
Therefore, the belief of teachers about Students’ development
may be an essential characteristic of empathic motivation that
contributes to teacher empathy in the educational context.
The Theories of the Development of
Students and Teacher Empathy
To the best of our knowledge, no previous study investigates
the direct link between the theories of Students’ development
and teacher empathy. However, some evidence from previous
research indicates that the beliefs of teachers affect teacher
practice, such as teaching effectiveness (Jordan et al., 2010).
Additionally, Lavigne (2014) suggests that teachers develop
beliefs about students as part of the teacher identity process,
and focus more on student understanding and achievement.
Besides, the research found that the teachers’ self-confidence
was significantly associated with their Students’ self-confidence
(Larina and Markina, 2020). Consistent with these previous
findings among educational context, we observed a significant
association between the teachers’ belief (i.e., the theories of
Students’ development) and teachers’ practices (i.e., teacher
empathy and three subscales). In other words, teachers who have
a malleable mindset of the ability of students were more likely
to exhibit high empathic concern and perspective-taking, and
low personal distress toward students, while fantasy does not.
One possible explanation for this is that fantasy was designed
to evaluate a person’s propensity to appreciate the emotions of
fictitious characters in movies, plays, or books (i.e., “When I
watch a good movie, I can very easily put myself in the place
of a leading character”) (Davis, 1980); some researchers assert
that fantasy does not evaluate empathy per se (Baron-Cohen and
Wheelwright, 2004) and hence exclude it from the data analysis
(Zhao et al., 2019). Therefore, fantasy may not accurately reflect
teacher empathy, which is to comprehensively understand the
situation of students, share the positive and negative emotions
of students, and express care for them through their actions
(Berkovich and Eyal, 2015;Meyers et al., 2019;Ronen, 2020).
The Mediating Roles of Empathic
Motivation
More importantly, we discovered the mediating roles of the
empathic motivation of teachers in explaining why the theories
of the development of students further generate teacher empathy.
Previous research indicates a close relationship between the
teachers’ beliefs and their practice. This study expands this work
to explore the mechanism in these psychological variables (e.g.,
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Ge et al. Shape Teacher Empathy From the Perspective of Motivation
FIGURE 2 | Models of teacher empathic motivation (TEM) as a mediator
variable for the relationship between the theories of student development
(TOS), teacher empathy (TE; A), empathic concern of teacher empathy
(TE-EC; B), perspective taking of teacher empathy (TE-PT; C), fantasy of
teacher empathy (TE-FS; D) and personal distress of teacher empathy
(TE-PD, E). Non-standardized coefficients are reported. The solid lines
represent significant coefficients, and the dashed line means insignificant
effects. ***p< 0.001.
teachers’ beliefs, teacher empathy). The relationship between
teachers’ beliefs and motivation has been confirmed by numerous
studies (Dweck et al., 1995;Blackwell et al., 2007;Dweck, 2012;
Yeager et al., 2013). We further investigate why the theories
of Students’ development are particularly predictive of the
empathic motivation of teachers. Empathy is, to our knowledge,
felt as a cognitive cost (e.g., the uncertainty associated with
inferring information about another person’s experience), which
causes people to avoid adopting empathy (Cameron et al., 2019;
Ferguson et al., 2020, 2021). Therefore, empathy, an instrumental
process, is tied to real-world rewards (e.g., affiliation, positive
affect, etc.). This association-power motivates the adoption of
empathic behavior (Zaki, 2014;Ferguson et al., 2021). When a
teacher has a fixed mindset of the ability of students, they may
believe that the abilities of students are fixed and unchangeable.
The little reward results from empathy because no matter how
hard the teacher tries to practice, the students will not change
significantly. Therefore, as a primary outcome, teachers exhibit
less empathy in that devoid of an obvious reward, and empathy is
not significant for them (Ferguson et al., 2021).
Furthermore, previous studies indicate that there is a positive
relationship between empathic motivation and empathy (Zaki,
2014;Cameron et al., 2017a, 2019;Cameron, 2018;Weisz and
Zaki, 2018;Ferguson et al., 2020;Weisz et al., 2020). For example,
researchers suggested that empathy, a motivational phenomenon,
is a process of decision-making based on values (Cameron
et al., 2019;Ferguson et al., 2020). In addition, Keysers and
Gazzola (2014) suggest that empathic ability and propensity
affect empathy. In other words, empathic motivation may be an
important cause of empathic variations. Consistent with these
previous findings and theories, this study observed a significant
positive association between empathic motivation and teacher
empathy, including empathic concern, perspective-taking, and
fantasy for students while personal distress was not affected by
empathic motivation. To our knowledge, it is generally accepted
that empathy involves two information processes, namely, top-
down and bottom-up. The former refers to self-regulation, while
the latter refers to the automatic process (Decety and Lamm,
2006;Fan et al., 2011;Cameron et al., 2017b). Personal distress
is a component of bottom-up processes, which is a self-oriented
automatic aversive response to the suffering of other people
(Lopez-Perez et al., 2014), and may not be influenced by cognitive
control (i.e., motivation). Therefore, this is a possible explanation
for the fact that the personal distress of teacher empathy was not
significantly predicted by the empathic motivation of teachers
and the mediation effect for the relationship between theories of
Students’ development and teacher empathy-PD.
Limitations and Implications
This study has several limitations. First, this study employed
only self-report measures, which might be susceptible to response
bias (e.g., social desirability). Moreover, this study was cross-
sectional in design. The interpretations of the causal relationship
between theories of students development, empathic motivation
and empathy should be considered carefully. There is a need
for future studies to examine the results using an experimental
design. Second, although we try our best to recruit more Chinese
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Ge et al. Shape Teacher Empathy From the Perspective of Motivation
teachers, the number of subjects in this study is still relatively
small. Future research needs to adopt multiple approaches (for
example, a combination of online and offline surveys) to expand
the number of subjects. Third, some cross-cultural studies show
that there are cultural differences in empathy (Zhao et al., 2019,
2021). However, we did not collect information about the cultures
(i.e., teachers’ perceived professional ethics, social expectation,
and educational level) that may affect teacher empathy. The
relationships between cultures and teacher empathy could also be
a new direction for future research. Finally, although Cronbach’s
alpha coefficient of both the questionnaire of theories of Students’
development and the empathic motivation of teachers was high,
and suggest a satisfactory internal consistency, we were unable
to evaluate the construct validity as the number of items was
too small to analyze statistically. To address these problems,
a multidimensional questionnaire about the theories of the
development of students and the empathic motivation of teachers
needs to be developed in future studies.
Despite these limitations, the current study primarily
contributed to investigating the relationship between the theories
of the development of students, empathic motivation and teacher
empathy and identifying an essential factor that shapes teacher
empathy. This study has an important theoretical implication.
Although the term “empathy” is significantly difficult to define
(Assmann and Detmers, 2016;Zembylas et al., 2020), it is
often viewed as an “ability” (Decety and Lamm, 2006;Shamay-
Tsoory et al., 2009;Batson, 2011;Lockwood et al., 2017).
Recently, however, research in the field of clinical psychology
has challenged this conclusion, suggesting that individuals with
mental disorders may not be impaired by their ability to
empathize, but rather a lack of empathic motivation (Meffert
et al., 2013;Gillespie et al., 2014). Furthermore, the theory of
dissociating the ability and propensity for empathy has been
proposed by Keysers and Gazzola (2014), which upholds that
empathic behavior is influenced not only by the capacity for
empathy but also by the motivation to empathize. Therefore, the
perspective of empathy research should shift from the “ability”
framework to the “ability motivation” framework. However,
there is still a lack of empirical research on the relationship
between empathic motivation and empathy; this study fills
this research gap.
Beyond its theoretical contribution, this study also has
practical implications. The empathy brain is plastic and
provides a theoretical basis for the cultivation of empathy
(Hein et al., 2016). Many empathic interventions focus
on developing people’s ability to empathize via experience-
based and expression-based interventions (Weisz and Zaki,
2017). However, empathy results from a combination of
empathic capacities and motivation (Keysers and Gazzola,
2014). Therefore, studies have increasingly begun to focus on
the intervention of empathic motivation via the change of
mindsets (Schumann et al., 2014;Weisz, 2018), norms (Weisz
et al., 2020), rewards (Ferguson et al., 2020), etc. The purpose
of these interventions is to engage the empathic motivation
of observers. However, the field of teacher empathy training
mainly focuses on improving the ability to be empathetic
(Jaber et al., 2018;Ronen, 2020). This study addresses the vital
gap in the empathic motivation intervention of teachers by
identifying the essential factor, which is the teachers’ beliefs about
students (i.e., theories of Students’ development), that shape
this psychological variable. Helping teachers improve empathic
motivation through psychological interventions (e.g., changing
the theories of Students’ development) should be an explicit goal
for teacher education programs.
To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the
influence of the theories of Students’ development on empathic
motivation and follow upon and expand the work of Schumann
et al. (2014) and Weisz et al. (2020), which found that
the empathy mindsets of individuals can significantly predict
empathic motivation.
CONCLUSION
Central to the teaching profession, teacher empathy can promote
the development of students and the professional growth of
teachers. Based on the motivation perspective, our finding may
suggest that the teachers’ beliefs of the ability of students could
predict empathic motivation and teacher empathy. Moreover,
empathic motivation plays a mediating role in the theories of
the development of students to expect teacher empathy, which
requires more research for validation. Providing new ideas and
methods to cultivate empathy for teachers, in this study, is a
primary contribution.
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be
made available by the authors, without undue reservation.
ETHICS STATEMENT
The studies involving human participants were reviewed and
approved by the Zhejiang Normal University Review Board. The
patients/participants provided their written informed consent to
participate in this study.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
YG designed the current study, collected the data, analyzed the
data, and wrote this manuscript. WL proposed the research idea
and demonstrate the feasibility of the method. SK participated
in language polishing to ensure manuscript quality. FC and GQ
joined the data analysis and the manuscript writing. All authors
contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
FUNDING
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (No. 31871124) and Project supported
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Ge et al. Shape Teacher Empathy From the Perspective of Motivation
Open Research Fund of College of Teacher Education, Zhejiang
Normal University (No. jykf20012).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are grateful to all the teachers who took part in the current
study and would like to thank Junjie Zhang and Linqiu Xie for
assisting with data collection. We thank Associate Editor MA and
reviewers for their excellent feedback and guidance throughout
the review process.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found
online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.
2021.736656/full#supplementary-material
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Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the
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