[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 63(1) of Journal of Counseling Psychology (see record 2015-58774-003). In the article, the last name of author Emily Teding van Berkhout was incorrectly set in the running head as van Berkhout. It should be Teding van Berkhout. All versions of this article have been corrected.] High levels of empathy are associated with healthy relationships and prosocial behavior; in health professionals, high levels of empathy are associated with better therapeutic outcomes. To determine whether empathy can be taught, researchers have evaluated empathy training programs. After excluding 1 outlier study that showed a very large effect with few participants, the meta-analysis included 18 randomized controlled trials of empathy training with a total of 1,018 participants. The findings suggest that empathy training programs are effective overall, with a medium effect (g = 0.63), adjusted to 0.51 after trim-and-fill evaluation for estimated publication bias. Moderator analyses indicated that 4 factors were statistically significantly associated with higher effect sizes: (a) training health professionals and university students rather than other types of individuals, (b) compensating trainees for their participation, (c) using empathy measures that focus exclusively on assessing understanding the emotions of others, feeling those emotions, or commenting accurately on the emotions, and (d) using objective measures rather than self-report measures. Number of hours of training and time between preintervention assessment and postintervention assessment were not statistically significantly associated with effect size, with 6 months the longest time period for assessment. The findings indicate that (a) empathy training tends to be effective and (b) experimental research is warranted on the impact of different types of trainees, training conditions, and types of assessment. (PsycINFO Database Record

Greater optimism is related to better mental and physical health. A number of studies have investigated interventions intended to increase optimism. The aim of this meta-analysis was to consolidate effect sizes found in randomized controlled intervention studies of optimism training and to identify factors that may influence the effect of interventions. Twenty-nine studies, with a total of 3319 participants, met criteria for inclusion in the analysis. A significant meta-analytic effect size, g = .41, indicated that, across studies, interventions increased optimism. Moderator analyses showed that studies had significantly higher effect sizes if they used the Best Possible Self intervention, provided the intervention in person, used an active control, used separate positive and negative expectancy measures rather than a version of the LOT-R, had a final assessment within one day of the end of the intervention, and used completer analyses rather than intention-to-treat analyses. The results indicate that psychological interventions can increase optimism and that various factors may influence effect size.

The purpose of this meta-analysis was to quantify the relationship between the Five-Factor Model of personality and alcohol involvement and to identify moderators of the relationship. The meta-analysis included 20 studies, 119 effect sizes, and 7,886 participants. Possible moderators examined included: five-factor rating type (self vs. other); study time-frame (cross sectional vs. longitudinal); sample type (treatment vs. non-treatment); type of alcohol involvement measure used; gender of the participants; and age of the participants. The meta-analysis showed alcohol involvement was associated with low conscientiousness, low agreeableness, and high neuroticism, a personality profile that: a) fits on the low end of a superordinate personality dimension that has been called self-control; and b) makes treatment difficult. Several significant moderators of effect size were found, including the following: studies of individuals in treatment for alcohol problems showed a more negative pattern of personality traits than did other studies; cross-sectional studies, but not longitudinal studies, showed a significant effect for agreeableness, perhaps suggesting that low agreeableness may have a different causal link to alcohol involvement from the other factors; mixed-sex samples tended to have lower effect sizes than single-sex samples, suggesting that mixing sexes in data analysis may obscure effects.

This article provides a meta-analysis of experimental research findings on the existence of bias in subjective grading of student work such as essay writing. Twenty-three analyses, from 20 studies, with a total of 1935 graders, met the inclusion criteria for the meta-analysis. All studies involved graders being exposed to a specific type of information about a student other than the student’s performance on a task. The hypothesized biasing characteristics included different race/ethnic backgrounds, education-related deficiencies, physical unattractiveness and poor quality of prior performance. The statistically significant overall between-groups effect size was g = 0.36. Moderator analyses showed no significant difference in effect size related to whether the work graded was from a primary school student or a university student. No one type of biasing characteristic showed a significantly higher effect size than other types. The results suggest that bias can occur in subjective grading when graders are aware of irrelevant information about the students.