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The psychological approach to juvenile delinquency introduced in recent years postulates “empathy impairment” as one of the origins of youth criminal behaviour. This means that in order to be cruel, people need to be unable to imagine the pain their victims experience. To test that hypothesis, we compare a group of convicted juvenile offenders (N=43) with a control group of adolescents (N=47) on self-report and ability measures of cognitive empathy (Interpersonal Reactivity Index and Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test, respectively). Discriminant Analysis reveals a significant difference between the two groups, most notably in the dimensions of personal distress, RMET score, and perspective taking. However, after the control for age and education, only the differences in measures of cognitive empathy remain. Although delinquents perceive themselves as less capable of taking the vantage point of another person and, when tested, prove themselves to be inferior in perceiving emotions and facial expressions, there are no differences in self-report scores of the affective component of empathy. On the basis of these findings, we draw several practical implications concerning everyday work with delinquents. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179018 i br. 47011]

In this study we investigated whether psychology students differ than students who have chosen non-helping professions in psychological features important for helping activities: attachment and empathy. The sample consisted of psychology students from Belgrade and Novi Sad (N=452) and students from several Belgrade University faculties for non-helping professions. The revised version of Attachment Questionnaire was used for assessment of attachment, while empathy was assessed by Empathy Quotient. The results confirmed hypotheses about the greater prevalence of secure attachment pattern, higher empathic capacity, better mentalizing, and more positive model of the other among the future helpers. These differences between student groups are present at the enrolment, with gender controlled. Finally, the prevalence of the secure attachment pattern and high empathy scores rises with the years spent at studying psychology. We concluded that psychology studies are chosen by persons with higher motivation and capacities for helping professions. Although women outnumber men, differences between the future helping professionals and others cannot be explained by the gender structure of the sample, since men in the helping professions have better results than women in the nonhelping ones.

The first part of this paper reviews different notions of personality boundaries in dynamic psychology. Although the explicit treatment of this topic was scarce, three different approaches may be discerned. Paul Federn's introduction of the concept, the notion of boundaries in object relation theories, and various contemporary notions subsumed under the heading ?relational theories.? In the second part, the author reviews both experimental and clinical research and theory regarding the emergence of personality boundaries during the first eight weeks of development. Special attention is paid to the importance of developmentally most primitive mental representations of skin experiences for this process.

In the present study we examined psychometric properties of the Serbian translation of the Empathy Quotient scale (S-EQ). The translated version of the EQ was applied on a sample of 694 high-school students. A sub-sample consisting of 375 high-school students also completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), another widely used empathy measure. The following statistical analyses were applied: internal consistency analysis, explanatory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) factor analyses, and factor congruence analysis. Correlation with IRI and gender differences were calculated to demonstrate validity of the instrument. Results show that the Serbian 40-item version of EQ has lower reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = .782) than the original. The originally proposed one factor structure of the instrument was not confirmed. The short version with 28 items showed better reliablity (alpha= .807). The three-factor solution (cognitive empathy, emotional reactivity, and social skills) showed good cross-sample stability (Tucker congruence coefficient over .8) but the results of CFA confirmed the solution proposed in the reviewed literature only partially. The mean scores are similar to those obtained in the other studies, and, as expected, women have significantly higher scores than men. Correlations with all subscales of IRI are statistically significant for the first two subscales of EQ, but not for the „social skills.” We concluded that the Serbian version of the „Empathy Quotient” is a useful research tool which can contribute to cross-cultural studies of empathy, although its psychometric characteristics are not as good as those obtained in the original study. We also suggest that a 28-item should be used preferably to the original 40-item version. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179018: Identification, measurement and development of cognitive and emotional competences important for a society oriented to European integrations]