Do you view your fellow beings as objects or subjects?

Senior Lecturer in psychology, Jakob Håkansson Eklund, Mälardalen University,
presents, in the article “Empathy and viewing the other as a subject” of Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, a new method to measure how we view our fellow beings as objects or subjects. Jakob connects this to empathy and his research shows that it is necessary to view another person as a subject rather than an object to be able to feel empathy; it is impossible to objectify someone and still feel empathy.

Regardless which situation she is in, a person can be objectified or be seen as a subject. The research concludes that empathy is evoked primarily when a person
in difficulty is viewed as a subject. Empathy is evoked, for example, when a severely ill person’s situation is being viewed as real.

Scandinavian Journal of Psychology publishes original work from Scandinavia and the rest of the world. The journal covers the entire area of psychology with a specific focus on experimental psychology and is being read globally by psychologists, researchers and students.