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Empathy consists of experiencing an emotion as a consequence of observing its occurrence in another person. This conceptualization indicates a much broader range of empathized emotions than the usually researched ones of pain or distress. The process generating empathy entails attention to the other's emotion and imagining what the other is experiencing emotionally. Because people can learn from experiencing empathy and its consequences, they may be motivated to empathize in some situations, to avoid empathizing in others, or to escape from empathy-eliciting situations. A wide range of motivations—prosocial, asocial, or antisocial—may be involved. Throughout, the article presents new hypotheses and areas of research suggested by this approach. We propose that people regulate then-social relationships so as to optimize empathized emotional experiences, on the one hand, and regulate empathic experiences to serve social relationships, on the other.

Research by the author reported in detailed elsewhere indicates that police officers with low workloads are oriented toward their departments, particularly their sergeants, and suffer more stress when relations with others in their departments are negative. This research also indicates that police officers with high workloads are not susceptible to stress from this source, because they appear to be more “crime-fighter” oriented, but that they are susceptible to stress from any difficult professional and other problems they encounter, more so than are low-workload officers facing such problems. These findings are consistent with other studies of high- and low-workload officers. The findings are relevant to the theoretical concepts of Wilson and others regarding policing. Implications for police administration are indicated.

Data relevant to stress and strain were analyzed separately for police officers with high and low workloads. Although these groups of officers were not found to differ in demographic characteristics or on overall levels of stress and strain, the sources of stress and strain were remarkably different. For the low workload officer, the sources of stress and strain appear to be difficulties in interpersonal relations with peers, community, and especially with supervisors. These difficulties appear to be mediated by effects on self-evaluation. The sources of stress and strain among high workload officers appear to be stress-producing events in their lives in general, as well as in performing the job of patrol officer and in dealing with crime and related matters. The differences between high and low workload officers can be explained by social comparison theory, by identity theory, or by Selye's stress theory.

As part of a large-scale study of police stress and strain, officers were questioned with regard to their physical, mental and behavioral health, and they permitted the researchers to examine their records regarding sickness, disability, auto accidents, and citizen complaints against them. These variables were deemed to be indices of strain, the negative outcome of stress. Stress was indexed by a self-report measure of job difficulty. It was hypothesized that stress and strain would be lower with greater tenure on the job. This hypothesis did not receive substantial support, except among police supervisors. However, it was found that among patrol officers who were above the median in tenure, those who reported greater job difficulty experienced more strain than those reporting less job difficulty. This relationship between job difficulty and strain did not obtain among officers below the median in tenure. Several explanations are suggested for this unexpected finding.

In an attempt to discover how investigation of white-collar crime can be protected from improper influences, the Fraud Investigation Division of the Israel Police Force was studied. Despite the number of powerful persons investigated, the division was able to resist improper influences for a variety of reasons, including strong leadership, lateral entry, support from both administrative and political superiors, but most importantly the relative independence of the Attorney General (prosecutor) and of the judiciary from political influence. The Attorney General is not directly answerable to the public through election, nor are the judges, and the prosecutor has great control over investigations by the police. Possible lessons for the U.S. are discussed.

White collar crime, which is a generic term for all forms of criminal misuse of trust, creates great problems of economic, political, and moral damage to all segments of American society, and helps to sustain common or street crime. It takes an ever increasing variety of forms, ranging from consumer fraud to complex business thefts. White collar criminals appear to be motivated by money, avoidance of threats to goal attainment, sense of superiority, mastery, the admiration of others, conformity pressures, etc. Psychological restraints on their criminal behavior are weakened by their jungle view of society, the perception of the moral ambiguity of white collar crime, the lightness of punishment, the view of victims as being morally culpable, the size of some organizational victims, and a belief in their own beneficence. An appeal is made to psychologists to participate in the growing national effort to fight white collar crime.

To help the undergraduate student better understand the criminal justice system, the Society and Justice Program of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington offers a course in which the student traces the progress of a felon from just after arrest through the disposition of the case. This provides the student with an overview of the total system from a practical standpoint. Some of the benefits and difficulties are discussed.

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(1961). Motivation for Security, Certainty, and Self-Esteem. The Journal of General Psychology: Vol. 65, No. 1, pp. 75-87.

Publisher Summary It is possible for one person to experience an emotion when he or she perceives that another person is experiencing an emotion. The relationship between action and the sharing of feelings is obviously not a simple or direct one. It is possible to study so subtle and important a phenomenon as empathy in the laboratory and to examine some of the determinants of empathy. The process leading to empathy can be understood in terms of cognitive variables such as the mental set that the person has when he or she observes the other. The form or type of social relationships between one person and another influences the amount of empathy, presumably because the form of the social relationship influences the manner of perceiving the other and thinking about him or her. Individual differences in reactions to social situations, in perceiving the other, and in thinking about him or her must be considered in predicting how much empathizing will occur. These individual differences appear to be determined in part by the birth order of the person.