Introversion,neuroticism, empathy and embarrassibility

Previous research suggests that actors particularly susceptible to embarrassment are likely to be sensitive to others (especially to others' views), inhibited and overconcerned with their public image. That is, they are likely to be empathic, but neurotic introverts. This experiment was designed to investigate this possibility. The EPQ, Hogan Empathy Scale (HES) and Embarrassibility Scale (ES) were administered to over 100 Ss. The factor structures obtained in the present study for the latter two scales were compared with those obtained in previous studies and revealed a close correspondence. There was a predicted significant negative correlation between E and embarrassibility and a significant positive correlation between N and embarrassibility. Contrary to expectation, empathy was significantly negatively correlated with embarrassibility, although this was largely accounted for by the Social Self-confidence and Nonconformity subscales of the HES. Three aspects of the results are discussed: the multidimensionality of the HES; whether the ES is uni- or multidimensional and implications of the results for our understanding of embarrassibility.