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solution. Second, to define a factor as only two items is not
acceptable. Third, these two items were the only ones that were
phrased as ‘I know’ and it is possible that Swedish respondents
are more cautious about agreeing with such statements than US
respondents. A Swedish respondent who is highly empathetic
and/or is aware of the discrimination that occurs in society
would not claim to know what it is like to belong to an ethnic
minority, because of the Sweden notion that you should be
careful about what you claim to know. An additional four items
(9, 14, 23, and 29) were eliminated when the principal compo-
nents analysis was confirmed in EQS because they did not con-
tribute to an interpretable and strong factor structure with
goodness of fit with the data.
The four factors of the established Swedish SEE are Accep-
tance of Cultural Differences (Factor 1) with 11 items (e.g. ‘I
get impatient when communicating with people from other
racial or ethnic backgrounds, regardless of how well they speak
English’), Communicative Ethnocultural Empathy (Factor 2)
with seven items (e.g. ‘I express my concern about discrimina-
tion to people from other racial or ethnic groups’), Ethnocul-
tural Empathic Awareness (Factor 3) with four items (e.g. ‘I am
aware of how society differentially treats racial or ethnic groups
other than my own’), Intellectual Ethnocultural Empathy (Fac-
tor 4) with three items (e.g. ‘It is difficult for me to put myself
in the shoes of someone who is racially and/or ethnically dif-
ferent from me’)
The first factor, Acceptance of cultural differences, is com-
posed of items that indicate acceptance, understanding and
valuing of cultural traditions and customs of individuals from
different racial and ethnic groups. Some items also concern
feelings that relate to individuals belonging to other ethnic
groups. Most of these items belonged to the subscale Accep-
tance of Cultural Differences of the original version of SEE, but
five of the items, which pertain to feelings, belonged to the
subscale Empathic Feeling and Expression of the original SEE.
One possible explanation for this could be that Swedish re-
spondents may have regarded those items as less emotive and
that in the Swedish version the awareness aspect is more salient
than the emotional aspect.
The second factor Communicative Ethnocultural Empathy is
concerned with the communication of behaviour that reflects
prejudice and discrimination. These items also pertain to ac-
tions that are taken to prevent discriminatory behaviour or de-
fend ethnic minorities, as in ‘I show my appreciation of….’ and
‘I speak up for’. This factor only includes items that be-
longed to the subscale Empathic Feeling and Expression of the
original SEE. A possible explanation for this similarity may be
that there is not as much room for cultural interpretation of this
factor, which pertains to thoughts, feelings, and actions directly
related to ethnic discrimination.
Factor 3, Ethnocultural Empathic Awareness, is about aware-
ness and knowledge about what it might be like to belong to an
ethnic minority different from one’s own. Three of the four
items belonging to this factor are clearly about awareness and
knowledge about experiences of discrimination and prejudice
against people from other ethnic groups, and loaded on the
same factor in the original version of the SEE. The last item,
however, refers more to perspective-taking than to awareness.
The last factor, Intellectual Ethnocultural Empathy, includes
items that deal with one’s efforts to understand what it is like to
belong to an ethnic minority, such as trying to put oneself in the
shoes of another person. All of these items belong to the sub-
scale Empathic Perspective-Taking of the original SEE. This
similarity may also be because there are few cultural differ-
ences between the US and the Swedish culture regarding a per-
son’s efforts to understand what it is like to belong to an ethnic
minority. The results from the exploratory factor analysis sug-
gest that the concept of ethnocultural empathy can be measured
in Sweden. The CFA replicated the original findings. It is also
possible that cultural issues may have an impact on the results.
Finally, the first CFA presented by Wang et al. (2003) was not
reliable and a higher order hierarchal model was used instead.
The intercorrelations between the four factors of the Swedish
version of SEE varied from very low to moderate. The correla-
tions between the second, third and fourth factors were signifi-
cant and stronger than the correlations between the first factor
and the other factors. The best explanation for this is probably
that the first factor, Acceptance of Cultural Differences, in-
cludes 11 items that deal more with knowledge and experience
of diverse cultures and acceptance of this. In other words, this
factor taps a broader span of what Ethnocultural Empathy is
and works on many levels. There seems to be more room for
interpretations regarding the items of this factor, i.e. what is
perceived as empathy among our respondents. This factor had a
significant, albeit small correlation with Intellectual Ethnocul-
tural Empathy. The other three factors are more precise and
concrete, which leaves less room for interpretation. Thus, they
have stronger correlations among themselves. The intercorrela-
tions between each factor and the total SEE were all significant
with moderate to strong correlations.
We also found evidence of convergent validity for the SEE
scale and its four factors. Significant correlations in the low to
moderate range were found between the subscales of IRI (Per-
spective-Taking and Empathic Concern) and the sub-factors of
SEE as well as with the total score of SEE. The Acceptance of
Cultural Differences subscale had the highest correlation coef-
ficient with the IRI subscales. The most probable explanation is
that this factor contains the greatest number of items of the
Swedish SEE, and thus taps the essence of basic empathy. A
possible explanation for the differences between the US and the
Swedish version of the SEE is that cultural differences between
the Swedish and US society exist. Another possible explanation
could be that differences came about because of different sam-
ples, e.g. the distribution of men/women or educational profiles.
It could also be that the capacity of Ethnocultural Empathy
develops later in life and is not equally present in undergraduate
students and graduates or adults with greater experience of
working life.
There are some limitations of the study. First we relied on
self-report measures and although this facilitates the collection
of large data sets, we are aware that self-report does not always
transfer to actual behaviour, in this case behaviours that would
corroborate the concept of ethnocultural empathy (Fan et al.,
2006). A second limitation of the present study might be the
primary use of undergraduate students and secondary school
students in the locality of the university. Obviously, these stu-
dents may not be representative of all individuals in Sweden.
Clark and Watson (1995) stressed the importance of examining
the factor structure of psychological assessment scales in het-
erogeneous samples. A future task would be to test the SEE in a
more diverse group (e.g., socioeconomic status, ethnicity, age,
etc.). Such data would be required to establish norms as well.
An additional future task would be to add items to the Swedish
version of the SEE that may better reflect Ethnocultural Empa-
thy in a Swedish context.
To conclude, the findings from this study indicate that the
Swedish version of the SEE is a reliable and valid measure of
empathy directed towards people from ethnic cultural groups