It takes two: A replication

In their original study, Zaki, Bolger, and Ochsner (2008) suggest that interpersonal factors may explain the lack of correspondence between affective empathy and empathic accuracy in previous work. Specifically, Zaki et al. found evidence that perceivers' affective empathy may only be related to empathic accuracy when the expressivity of the target is high. We attempted a high powered replication of this original study, but did not replicate the original result. In our study, empathic accuracy was not significantly predicted by either perceiver affective empathy or target expressivity, nor was it predicted by their interaction. We discuss differences in measures, sample, and stimuli that may have contributed to discrepancies between our results and those of the original study and theoretical implications.