The Mediating Role of Empathy in the Relationship between Forgiveness Level and Psychological Symptoms among Psychological Counselor Candidates

The aim of this study is to investigate the intermediary role of empathy in the correlation between the level of forgiveness and psychological symptoms exhibited by candidates for psychological counseling. The study's sample population comprises of students from the Guidance and Psychological Counseling Department of Mehmet Akif Ersoy University, Dokuz Eylul University, and Necmettin Erbakan University who were enrolled in the first, second, and third years of the undergraduate program during the academic year of 2017-2018. The Personal Information Form, Heartland Forgiveness Scale, Short Symptom Inventory, and Basic Empathy Scale were employed as data collection instruments. The analysis of the data was conducted using SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 22.0, and confirmatory factor analysis and item analysis (item-total correlation and Cronbach Alpha) were applied to assess the construct validity of the scales. The results indicate that the impact of psychological symptoms on levels of forgiveness is negative and meaningful, yet empathy levels have no significant impact on forgiveness, and psychological symptom levels have no significant impact on empathy levels. Furthermore, empathy levels do not play a mediating role in the relationship between forgiveness levels and psychological symptom levels. The findings are discussed in light of existing literature.