Empathy and its Effect on One’s Preference Towards a Particular Model of Addiction

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between empathy and one’s preference towards a particular model of addiction. The models of addiction specified for this study, were the disease model and the psychosocial model. The participants used in this study consisted of 28 college students from psychology classes at a college in Upstate New York. These participates were given course credit if they chose to participate in this study. The study was given online and responses were kept confidential. The results indicated that no significant effect exists between level of empathy with either the disease or psychosocial model.