Amy Overman, associate professor in the psychology department and neuroscience program, recently co-authored a peer-reviewed study, “Closing the empathy gap in college students’ judgments of end-of-life tradeoffs,” in the International Journal of Psychology.
The article examined how college students’ judgments were affected by the age of the person about whom they were making a decision. The results support the existence of an empathy gap in end-of-life care and provide evidence that this empathy gap between young and older adults can be be reduced by the way in which information is presented to younger adults.
This project is the product of an ongoing collaboration with Dr. Joseph D.W. Stephens at North Carolina A&T State University that focuses on cognitive processes such as decision making.