What is empathy for laypeople? – A replication study of Hall, Schwartz, and Duong (2021)

To understand how laypeople define empathy, Hall, Schwartz, and Duong (2021) asked U.S. participants to rate how well items from various empathy measures matched their own definitions. The current paper (<i>N</i> = 549) is a replication of Hall, Schwartz, and Duong (2021, Study 2) using a highly similar study procedure, with a small extension consisting of items from an emotional contagion scale. We conducted a multi-group CFA to test the replicability of Hall et al.'s model, but the factor structure was not replicated. As an extension, we conducted an exploratory graph analysis (EGA), that revealed a similar factor structure, though some items were discarded due to poor fit. Additionally, the ranking of the items (i.e. what the participants saw as closest to their definition of empathy) shows the same pattern as in the original study. We consider this to be a successful partial replication of Hall et al.'s (2021) findings.