In the feature “ Measuring Empathy in the 21^st Century: Development of an Empathy Index Rooted in Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Social Justice,” the authors, Karen Gerdes, Cynthia Lietz, and Elizabeth Segal, explains that the activity of the brain can be measured empirically in cognitive processes to physically differentiate actual empathy from emotional reactions and projection. They introduce theoretical framework index for empathy assessment with a view to enriching technologically supported evidence based research in the field of neuroscience in correlation o empathy.

The authors note that the concept of empathy is based on four brain networks of emotional regulation, self awareness, affective sharing and perspective taking. They argue that empathy is not just a feeling but should lead to an action. This comes about through affective response, processing of the response, and the decision towards empathic action.

The authors invited respondents to participate in the study by sending emails through Qualtrics, software that enabled respondents to participate through the web. They analyzed the qualtrics-based data through SPSS and did a reliability and concurrent validity analysis which indicated valid and reliable data. The authors have helped develop a measure of empathy that has roots in educational neuroscience.

The results show a correlation of current teaching methods as students will tend to show empathetic attitudes and initiate empathetic action towards their peers. Teachers too will tend to behave alike towards their students. The results support differentiated teaching because not all people will complete the full set of the components of the empathic framework.