Abstract
Adolescents develop a sense of self by exploring the world through social interaction. However, the digital technology nowadays changes the way how adolescents interact. By spending time online, adolescents enjoy to interact with others virtually than face-to-face. This superficial interaction might reduce their capacity to understand what others’ thinking and feeling, which is called by empathy. The objective of this study was to describe the perception of empathy, and also to validate the Basic Empathy Scale (the BES) by Jolliffe & Farrington (2006) towards late adolescents in digital age. A total of 656 college students at various universities in Jakarta participated in this research. By convenience sampling, respondents were divided into two groups: (1) 201 college students (61 males dan 140 females) participated in Focus Group Discussion to investigate the empathy comprehension; (2) 455 college students (132 males and 323 females) from three courses (social and humanity, health, and engineering) completed the questionnaire in order to validate the BES. The results revealed that late adolescents more comprehend empathy in affective than in cognitive meaning. Further analysis also found that female students have higher empathy than male. It is also found that students in health science have higher empathy than two other courses. Finally, this research implies that adolescents must elevate their ability to empathize in order to develop a sense of self and, yet make interaction succeeded.
Author Information
Charyna Ayu, University of Pancasila, Indonesia
Ade Iva, University of Pancasila, Indonesia
Citra Wahyuni, University of Pancasila, Indonesia
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