Elección del tipo de estudios dependiendo del nivel de empatía desde el modelo psiconeurobiológico

Abstract

Background: It might be obvious that the selection of the type of university studies that a person does is straight related to their personal traits. One of these traits is empathy understood from the Psiconeurobiological Model (Montes-Berges y cols., 2012) as the capacity to recognise and understand other’s feelings. This capacity affects us in relation to others and, therefore, to our own personal development. In the current study, it is proposed to analyse the relation between empathy variables and the selection of the type of university studies among students of nursing, social work, law and business administration degrees. Method: A sample of 591 subjects from nursing, social work, law and business administration degrees of the University of Jaén answered to the empathy scale. This scale was composed by five scales: a) sincerity, b) feelings, c) ápatas features, d) separation or reverberation and e) simplicity. A sociodemographic scale was answered as well. Results: There was no correlation between the total score of empathy and the selection of type of university studies. However there was correlation between feelings and ápatas scale and the selection of the type of studies. Thereby the subjects who have high scores at feeling scale tend to study nursing and social work degrees. Whereas those subjects who have high scores at ápatas scale tend to study law and business management degrees. Conclusion: The capacity of identifying with others, introjecting and projecting feelings, is related to the selection of degrees connected with personal treat. However, subjects who scored high at ápatas scale, which measured the difficulty of feeling other’s emotions, tended to study degrees where identification of others’ feelings it is not a priority to develop their jobs.