Nursing, as a profession dealing with the health care system, places considerable emphasis on empathy, i.e., responsiveness to the feelings of another. To investigate whether individual differences in empathy are reflected in freshmen nursing students' scores on the Paired Hands Test (PHT), which measures the construct of the "others' concept," it was hypothesized that students rated high in empathy by clinical instructors would have high PHT scores and students rated in low in empathy by clinical instructors would have low PHT scores. Freshmen nursing students (N=33) completed the PHT, and ratings of empathy were obtained from their instructors. Results showed that scores on the PHT were related to ratings of empathy by instructors, but that the relationship was more pronounced for lower scores than higher scores. Findings suggest that the PHT might be considered another helpful instrument for predicting certain personality characteristics inluding sensitivity to others' feelings and, as such, may be a helpful index for research and, possibly, for admission decisions. (PAS)