Vicarious Embarrassment Scale: More of Culture than Empathy

Traditionally, the vicarious embarrassment scale (VES) is developed by involving a protagonist with no relationship with the observer. This condition becomes problematic, especially in collectivistic contexts with interdependence in personal social relations. The protagonists of the original VES were modified from strangers to friends and family and were compared their psychometric properties and associations with empathy and self-construals. A total of 112 university students in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, filled out the online questionnaires voluntarily. Tests with Unrestricted Factor Analysis showed the retrieved eigenvalues of VES Other, VES Friend, and VES Family accounted for 61.54, 68.29, and 77.05, respectively. All VES were unidimensional, according to the parallel analysis with robust parallel using 500 random polychoric correlation matrices. Good internal consistency reliability was achieved, and fit criteria were met. This study supported previous findings of VES disassociation with empathy. The importance of cultural values reflected in self-construal showed interdependent self-construal relations with different protagonists with all VE scales. In contrast, independent self-construal was associated only with vicarious embarrassment with an unknown protagonist.