Impact of Self-Talk and Personality on Empathy

This paper aims at to study the impact of self-talk, and different traits of personality on empathy. Self-talk is a way of describing all the things we say to ourselves all day long as we confront obstacles, make decisions, and resolve problems. Self-talk of a person determines his self-esteem in a positive or negative way which in turn effects his behaviour. A trait is a temporally stable, cross-situational individual difference. According to Stein and Brook (2000), empathy is the ability to be aware of, to understand and to appreciate the feelings and thoughts of others and to be sensitive to what, how and why people feel and think the way that they do. To measure self-talk, Self-Talk Inventory, for the traits of personality, Big-five Personality test, and for empathy, Multidimensional Emotional Empathy Scale were used. This study was conducted on the students of post graduate classes of different faculties of Dr. H.S. Gour University. Multiple regression was done by using SPSS 17. In the correlation matrix positive self-talk, neuroticism and agreeableness are significantly correlated with empathy. All the predictor variables together are responsible for the 8.8% of variance in empathy. Negative self-talk, positive self-talk conscientiousness, and agreeableness are the strongest predictors among all.