The relationship between empathic tendencies and nomophobia of prospective teachers

Abstract

Mobile phone ownership and use is prolific in many countries like Turkey, with the numbers of people owning and using mobile phones rising rapidly in recent years. Nomophobia is the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. The term, an abbreviation for "nomobile-phone phobia", was coined during a study by the UK Post Office who commissioned YouGov, a UK-based research organisation to look at anxieties suffered by mobile phone users. The study found that nearly 53 percent of mobile phone users in Britain tend to be anxious when they “lose their mobile phone, run out of battery or credit, or have no network coverage.â€Empathy is a potential psychological motivator for helping others in distress. Empathy can be defined as the ability to feel or imagine another person’s emotional experience. The ability to empathize is an important part of social and emotional development, affecting an individual’s behavior toward others and the quality of social relationships. The concept of empathic tendency is ability demonstrate the potential emotional empathy of the individual. The Empathic Tendency Scale developed by Dökmen (1988) was used in the determination of empathic tendencies level of the participants. The aim of this study, examine the relationship between teachers’ empathic tendency and nomophobia. In the study, data will collect from 389 prospective teachers. Research applications and data analysis is underway.

Keywords: Nomophobia, empathy, empathic tendency, prospective teachers.