Students’ Assertiveness and Empathy Social Skills and Gender at the University of Seville

Abstract

The social skills of assertiveness and empathy are valuable and useful in our daily lives, influencing the quality of our interactions and relationships. This fact underscores the need for research that examines the various factors influencing these constructs. The present study addressed gender disparities in the social skills of assertiveness and empathy in a sample of students from the University of Seville. Its objectives were to identify the gender differences in the social skills of assertiveness and empathy in university students and identify the obstacles gender posed to assertiveness and empathy. For this purpose, an exploratory study was conducted with 116 students, 56% women and 44% men. A Google questionnaire was used to collect various sociodemographic variables, and the Rathus Assertiveness Schedule (Ras, 1973), the Spanish adaptation of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980), and a questionnaire concerning students’ beliefs (Colás-Bravo y Villaciervos-Moreno, 2007) were applied. The results yielded no gender differences in the development of students’ levels of assertiveness and empathy. However, when analyzing the external factors, “socioeconomic level” and “religion” stood out. The findings of this work have relevant implications for the promotion of gender equality and the formation of public policies. Studies in this field should be extended to different educational contexts.

Keywords

• social skills
• assertiveness
• empathy
• gender identity