There are several self-reported instruments measuring one of the central aspects of empathy, perspective taking. Instruments developed to investigate the relation of perspective taking and objective tasks of theory of mind (ToM) are not as common. This is a significant shortcoming when aiming to use information gathered with self-report instruments in applied fields. The ability of perspective taking has been considered to be a crucial element in the professional profile of a police officer, but alternative approaches to further investigate the validity of the construct remain to be studied. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relation between how recruits perceive their own ability of perspective taking (self-reported) and how they perform in tasks associated with this ability.
The research design of this study was to administer instruments to about 200 police recruits in Sweden at two different occasions. The self-reported instrument was the first one administered. At the second occasion, tests based on tasks that could be considered more objective were administered to the same recruits. The instruments used were the adapted Swedish version of the Empathy Assessment Index (EAI), The Swedish version of the Reading the mind in the eyes test and an instrument that measures ToM based on different vignettes developed for a Swedish police context. The methodological procedure includes, instrument development, investigation of the association between the subjective measure and the more objective measures using CFA models.
There was an expectation that recruits reporting higher on the perspective taking ability would perform better in the more objective tasks. The findings support this expectation to a certain level, but the findings also reveal more information on this complex relation.
The main conclusions are that perspective taking is an important ability that ought to be measured comprising alternative approaches to be valid in applied settings.