Abstract:
This study assessed undergraduate college students' ability to recognize facilitative responses on the revised Suicide Intervention Response Inventory (SIRI-2) by adopting an
empathic mindset. Students were exposed to an imagining prompt, an observing prompt,
or no prompt, based on experimental designs in the empathy literature. Empathy was
hypothesized to promote recognition of facilitative responses on the SIRI-2 by improving
the scores of college students who were untrained in suicide intervention. One hundred
seventy six participants, age 18 to 24, volunteered. Participants were randomly assigned
to three prompt groups. Participants in the control (i.e., no prompt) group completed the
SIRI-2. Participants in the imagining group received a verbal prompt to consider how the
suicidal person, described in the SIRI-2, could be feeling and then completed the SIRI-2.
Participants in the observing group received a verbal prompt to consider only the
information conveyed by the suicidal person and then completed the SIRI-2. One hundred
fifty-eight valid test packets were included in the data analysis. A 2 x 3 analysis of
variance with gender by experimental prompt conditions was performed on the SIRI-2
scores. Results showed no significant main effect for prompt condition or interaction for
gender by prompt condition. A gender difference was obtained with women receiving
better SIRI-2 scores than men (better scores on the SIRI-2 are numerically lower scores).
