Are there cross-cultural differences in empathy, self-esteem and distress disclosure?

The purpose of this research was to find possible cross-cultural differences in empathy, self-esteem and distress disclosure involving 418 adolescents (217 females, 201 males) from four schools in the U.K., U.S.A., Serbia, and Luxembourg. Moreover, we wanted to know are there gender differences and is there an association between academic achievement and empathy, self-esteem, and distress disclosure. We used three scales: A Measure of Emotional Empathy for Adults and Adolescents (MEEAA) (Caruso & Mayer, 1998), The Distress Disclosure Index (DDI) (Kahn & Hessling, 2001), and Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale (RSE) (Rosenberg, 1965). The scales appeared to be reliable (alphas ranging from .87 for the MEEAA, .86 for the RSE, and to .93 for DDI). The factor analysis showed that the RSE is bidimensional depicting Self-Worth and Self-Deprecation, the DDI is unidimensional as it supposed to be, and we chose three-dimensional solution for MEEAA depicting Empathic Suffering, Responsive Crying, and Positive Sharing.
The MANOVA results showed that hypothesis on country differences in empathy, self-esteem, and distress disclosure is confirmed. There are significant country differences especially concerning the U.K. participants that reported the lowest tendency for empathy, self-esteem, and distress disclosure. Hypothesis that Serbian participants are the highest in reporting empathy was not confirmed. Moreover, hypothesis that American participants are the highest in reporting self-esteem was not confirmed either. Finally, hypothesis that the U.K. participants are the lowest in reporting distress disclosure was confirmed. Furthermore, hypotheses on gender differences were confirmed: females reported more of a tendency for empathy than males, males reported more of a tendency for self-esteem than females, and females reported more of a tendency to disclose distress than males. No association between academic achievement and empathy, self-esteem, and distress disclosure was found.
Considering associations between empathy, self-esteem, and distress disclosure the results showed that there is a medium to strong association between empathy and distress disclosure in all countries, and a positive association between distress disclosure and self-esteem. Moreover, the results showed that there is a significant negative association between self-esteem and empathy, especially in the U.K. and Luxembourg. As well, cluster analysis grouped participants who are high in self-esteem, but low in empathy, and distress disclosure, in one group. We speculated that this general self-esteem might be “false” self-esteem or narcissism since narcissism is negatively correlated to empathy.