The Role of Demographic Characteristics and Spiritual Dimensions in Predicting Empathy: A Study in Muslim Pre-Service Teachers

Although many studies have examined the relationship between spirituality and empathy, very few studies have focused on demographic and spiritual dimensions in influencing empathy for pre-service teachers. This study analyzes the effect of gender, age, and years of formal education on spirituality and empathy and analyzes the influence of the spiritual dimensions on empathy. This research is a cross-sectional study, with 319 Muslim preservice teachers as respondents. The data collection technique used an online questionnaire adapted from the Spirituality Assessment Scale (SAS) and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). The results show that age affects spirituality, while empathy is influenced by age and gender. One unanticipated finding was that years of formal education had no effect on either spirituality or empathy. The most important finding of this study is the higher the level of innerness, the more likely it is to have high empathy. This study's findings are useful as an assessment material and creating counseling designs to increase empathy for pre-service teachers. This is a part of forming the ideal profile of counselors in schools later. Integrating Islamic values is also an essential alternative in counseling for Muslims.


INTRODUCTION
shows the demographic characteristics, in terms of age, gender, and years of formal education.  Table 2 summarizes the means, standard deviations (SD), and the observed range for study measures. The highest mean for the spiritual variable is the interconnectedness (IT) dimension at 27.95, and the standard deviation is 2.99. On the other hand, the empathy dimension with the most significant mean is personal distress (PD), with a score of 24.35, and the standard deviation is 2.41.

Procedure
Participants in this study are voluntary without any compensation. The researcher asked the respondent's consent to fill out this questionnaire and explained that filling out this questionnaire took approximately 10 minutes. Respondents who agree will continue the filling stage. Participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire to measure spirituality, empathy, and demographic characteristics through the google form. Ethical approval is carried out with ethical license number 237/EC/KEPK/UNUSA/2020. Online questionnaires were distributed via social media WhatsApp. In this study, the reliability of the instrument showed an excellent impression at .87.
Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) has a 28-item questionnaire with the construct of empathic concern, fantasy, personal distress, and perspective-taking (Davis, 1980

Data Analysis
Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS version 21 for Windows. Demographic

Results
The first set of questions aimed to analyze the effect of gender, age, and years of formal education on spirituality. Table 3 shows an overview of the Binary Logistics Regression analysis results between demographic characteristics and spirituality. What stands out in the table is the variable age affects a person's spirituality. The respondent's probability if the higher the age, the lower the chance to have the spirituality of 0.560 times.
The second set of questions aimed to analyze the effect of gender, age, and years of formal education on empathy. The third set of questions aimed to analyze the effect of the spiritual dimensions (meaning of purpose, innerness, interconnectedness, and transcendence) on empathy. Table 3 shows an overview of the Binary Logistics Regression analysis results between the spiritual dimensions and empathy. Interestingly, the data in this table is that the indicator of innerness in the spirituality variable affects a person's empathy. The better the respondent's innerness, the higher the chance to have high empathy is 6.367 times than those with low innerness.

Discussion
Several reports have shown that spirituality's role in a psychological and social context has been widely studied (Dose et al., 2014;Edwards et al., 2010;Mohan & Uys, 2006). Spirituality in the relationship between educators and students is useful as a critical psychological problem for students, so prospective teachers need to learn it (Espejo-Siles et al., 2020;Hall & Smotrova, 2013). Pre-service teachers' spirituality is one-factor affecting empathy that needs attention, especially for universities where prospective teachers receive education in preparation for their future career (Jaber et al., 2018). * = significant at .1 | ** = significant at .05 | *** = significant at .01 The current study found that gender had no effect on the spirituality of pre-service teachers. However, this result has not previously been described. Previous research has stated that women are more spiritual than men (Luna et al., 2019). However, in terms of organizational leadership, men are more spiritual than women (Šilingienė & Škėrienė, 2015).
A possible explanation for this might be that the level of spirituality in both men and women is determined by the respondent's situation. Another important finding was that the higher a person's age, the lower his spirituality. Comparison of the findings with those of other studies confirms that the variable age affects the spirituality of both men and women (Šilingienė & Škėrienė, 2015). However, previous research found that the higher the age, the higher the spirituality (Zimmer et al., 2016), this is inversely proportional to these findings. A possible description for this might be that the definition of spiritual in the previous study focused more on a religious ritual routine, in contrast to this study which focused on the relationship between humans and God and the universe.
One exciting finding is gender and age affect empathy. The current study found that women have a higher chance of empathy than men. This finding is contrary to previous studies that have suggested no difference in the level of empathy between men and women (Kamas & Preston, 2021). A possible explanation for this might be that the respondent's situation determines the level of empathy. In this study, it was found that women were more empathetic when the respondents were pre-service teachers. In contrast, the respondents were economic gamers in previous studies, so there was no difference in their empathy for both men and women. Norms instilled in prospective teachers affect their empathy, while other respondents do not need it. The most important clinically relevant finding was the higher the age, the higher the chances of empathy. This finding is consistent with previous studies that age affects empathy. The higher the age, the higher the empathy (Spenser et al., 2020).
One unanticipated finding was that years of formal education had no effect on either spirituality or empathy for Muslim pre-service teachers. There has been no previous research examining this variable. However, the results of this study are very useful in providing recommendations on the university curriculum. Universities have an important role in building empathy for undergraduate students, especially pre-service teachers.
The most important finding of this study is the higher the level of innerness in the respondent, the more likely it is to have high empathy. So, it can be concluded that innerness is a spiritual dimension that affects empathy for Muslim pre-service teachers. Innerness or Inner Resources was defined as the process of striving for or discovering wholeness, identity, and a sense of empowerment. Innerness or inner resources are manifested in feelings of strength in times of crisis, calmness or serenity in dealing with uncertainty in life, guidance in living, being at peace with oneself and the world, and feelings of ability. Innerness or inner resources was operationalized as the innerness or inner resources subscale of the Spirituality Assessment Scale (SAS) (Howden, 1992). These findings contribute to making innerness the main force in indigenous counseling to increase the empathy of Muslim pre-service teachers.

Implication
The present study suggests that age is two factors that influence spirituality and empathy, while gender only affects empathy. These two factors are useful for classifying the level of spirituality and empathy before increasing empathy for pre-service teachers. Age factor affects spirituality and empathy. The provision of more serious counseling services is needed for older pre-service teachers to improve their spirituality. On the other hand, counseling needs to focus more on younger pre-service teachers to increase empathy.
Gender factors have a significant effect on empathy. The results of the study found that female pre-service teachers were more empathetic than males. University counseling services in increasing empathy should focus more on male pre-service teachers than women.
The design of group counseling with the composition of men and women is also an interesting alternative to help increase the level of empathy in men through peer pressure from female pre-service teachers.
Another finding of this study is the significant role of the innerness dimension on empathy. The implication is that innerness is suggested to be the main focus in implementing spiritual counseling at universities. However, it should be noted that the essence of the innerness dimension must be different between religions, so an indigenous counseling approach is needed in this situation.