A Study of perception on empathy among the Filipino youth

Abstract

"College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago." Sara Konrath, 2010 The study intends to discern the true feelings of youth by being into other's situation especially towards people in need in the streets. People in need is indeed a complete stranger to a certain person with whom you are not concerned of giving them what they lack of rather than empathic concern to a friend since you have already established an affection or concern to him or her and this will result to a bias. It is very evident that there are numerous people in need in Metro Manila. Through a quantitative study using a convenience sampling conducted in Metro Manila, the researcher was able to gather the results. This research was able create an analysis that resulted to the following categories: the identification of empathy through the eyes of Filipino youth as taking care, listening and/or appreciating others and the perception of empathy which is about recognizing others feelings or putting oneself to others situation - Through a qualitative research, the study resulted to semi-structured interviews with six respondents that resulted to six themes 1) Feeling towards family/ friends dealing with the death of a relative, 2) Things to do to help or comfort a friend or relative, 3) Feeling towards the needy, 4) Things to do when you see a stranger, 5) Factors considered in Helping the Needy and lastly, 6) Feelings after helping. The results of the study were able to point out that the perception of the youth on empathy and on how they practice it.