The team of Professor Xiang Jiuyu from the School of Marxism, Wuhan University, has published an original research paper in the SSCI international academic journalAnnals of General Psychiatry, which is affiliated to Springer Nature. The paper is entitled Psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the empathy quotient among Chinese minority college students.

The paper points out that when Chinese minority students came to studyaway from home, they encountered difficulties with cultural and socio-psychological adaptation, and empathy education played a vital role in helping them out of this predicament. The study used an empirical approach to select 1, 638 minority college students, who were randomly divided into two groups.One group consisting of 818 students participated in the exploratory factor analysis experiment, and the other 820  took part in the confirmatory factor analysis experiment.

Subsequently, Xiang’s team retained 29 indices on the basis of factor analysis experiments, and extracted four factors: self-consciousness, cognitive empathy, social skills and emotional reactivity, which altogether could explain 51.793% of the total variance. The study found that there was a significant positive correlation between the factors, with the correlation coefficient ranging from0.316 to 0.563. The internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach's α) was 0.824 for the total scale table and 0.640 ~ 0.818 forin the sub-scale. Meanwhile, the confirmatory factor analysis experiment shows that the measured data was in good agreement with the assumed four-factor model. The study concluded that the refined 29 Chinese version of the empathy quotient has good reliability and validity. It can be used to evaluate the empathy ability of minority college students, and it provides empirical evidence for the feasibility of empathy education.

Empathy is a concept proposed by Carl Ransom Rogers, former President of the American Psychological Association. Empathy requires the experience of others’ spiritual world  and to "put oneself in others' shoes". It helps to understand others’ feelings and needs in an appropriate way so as to convey respect,understanding and care for each other. Empathy education can befirmly rooted in the minds of the educated, and greatly promote their psychological cognition, moral cognition and emotional identification. The study is an initial outcome of a major key project supported by the National Social Science Foundation chaired by Xiang Jiuyu.

Annals of General Psychiatry is a SSCI and SCI journal in the psychiatry field of American Medical Association series with worldwide influence.

As the leading expert of major projects supported by National Social Science Foundation, Xiang Jiuyu has published more than 100 papers in journals such as Social Sciences in China and Studies on Marxism, among which 12 are first-level authoritative papers of class A and over 30 papers were reprinted by authoritative journals like Xinhua Digest and Chinese Social Science Digest. He has published more than 10 monographs and co-authored books, and has won many awards including national and provincial outstanding achievements awards. Xiang is also the expert reviewer of many significant journals like Social Sciences in China.

(Rewritten by Lu Huixin, Edited by Zheng Lingling,Shen Yuxi, Hu Sijia &施维娅)