Empathy (Final) Flashcards
Definitions of Empathy
From the German ‘einfuhlung”: feeling into. “An affective response more appropriate to someone else’s situation than to one’s own” (Hoffman, 1987). “The drive to identify another person’s emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion”. (Baron-Cohen, 2002).
A Three Party Model
- Cognitive Empathy (Empathic accuracy, mentalizing, perspective-taking).
- Affective Empathy (Emotion contagion, emotion sharing, personal distress).
- Prosocial Motivation (Empathic concern, helping behaviour)
Affective Empathy
Sharing another person’s emotional state (can be negative or positive emotional state). Emotion contagion: the spontaneous spread of emotions from one person to another.
Assessing Affective Empathy
Most commonly assessed via self-report. E.g. The Basic Empathy Scale (“After being with a friend who is sad about something, I usually feel sad.” Limitations: Socially desirable to report higher empathy.
Mimicry
Reflexive mirroring another person’s behaviour: Facial expressions, body posture. Emerges in infancy and apparent throughout life. In humans, mimicry contributes to emotion contagion by eliciting the corresponding emotions associated with the mimicked behaviour.
Facial Expressions Influences Humor Judgments (Strack et al., 1988; Noah et al., 2018)
Method: Participants watched funny cartoons while holding a pen in their mouth.
Teeth: Participants held a pen in their teeth without letting their lips touch it, which facilitates the muscles associated with smiling.
Lips: Participants held a pen in their mouth making sure that their lips touched it, which inhibits the muscles associated with smiling.
Rated level of amusement while watching cartoons.
Facial Expressions Influences Humor Judgments (Strack et al., 1988; Noah et al., 2018): Results
Participants in the teeth condition found the cartoons funnier.
Facial Expressions Influence Emotional Experience (Davis et al., 2020)
Method: Participants watched emotional video clips pre and post cosmetic procedure: Botox (partial facial muscle paralysis). Restylane (no facial paralysis). Self-reported emotional intensity. Results: Botox group reported decreased emotional intensity, but only to mildly positive videos. Partially supports the idea that facial expressions influence emotions.
Neural Resonance
The same neural systems are activated when we experience an affective state as when we simply observe another person experiencing that same affective state. Shown for motor intentions, physical, and disgust.
Stimulation Theory
To understand others’ “minds” we use our own motor, neural, and mental processes as a model to “stimulate” the experiences of others. Low-level/bottom-up simulation: automatic and rapid (mimicry, neural resonance). Perception of the target’s expression –> Shared neural activation –> Automatic mimicry –> Emotional contagion –> Understand the emotions of another.
Blocking Mimicry Impairs Emotion Recognition
Botox impaired recognition of positive and negative emotional facial expressions, compared to control group. Blocking facial muscles mimicry by biting on a pen impaired recognition of emotional expressions, specifically happiness and disgust.
Simulation Theory
To understand others’ “minds”, we use our own motor, neural, and mental processes as a model to “simulate” the experiences of others. Low-level/bottom-up simulation: automatic and rapid (mimicry, neural resonance). High-level/top-down: controlled, slow (mentally putting oneself in someone else’s situation).
Cognitive Empathy
Understanding another person’s emotional/mental state. Synonyms: Theory of mind, mentalizing, empathic accuracy. Can be accomplished via: Emotion contagion, Perspective-taking: explicitly imagining oneself in another person’s situation.
Development of Cognitive Empathy
In children, assessed using false-belief tasks (E.g. Sally-Ann Task). Emerges around age 4: Across countries, most 3 year olds fail and most 5 year olds pass false belief tasks.
Assessing Cognitive empathy: Self-repprt
Self-report: E.g. The Basic Empathy Scale (“I can often understand how people feel even before they tell me”). Limitations: Social desirability issues. How do we know their accuracy?
Assessing Cognitive empathy: Behavioural measures
Behavioural measures assessing empathic accuracy: Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (too easy, static when in real-life emotions evolve over time). Empathic accuracy task.
Empathic Accuracy Task
Target: Target is filmed while talking about an emotion event. Watch video and continuously rate how they were feeling.
Perceiver: Watches target’s video and continuously rates how they think the target was feeling.
Empathic accuracy = time-series correlation between the target’s emotions and the perceiver’s inference of the target’s emotions.
Does Empathic Accuracy Matter?
Empathic accuracy has been associated with a variety of positive relationship outcomes. E.g. Targets feeling understood, better support provision, greater romantic relationships satisfaction, better quality friendships.
A three part model: affective empathy to cognitive empathy
Provides information: you’re feeling what the target is feeling which helps you understand their experience, low-level stimulation.
A three part model: Cognitive empathy to affective empathy
Informs more accurate emotion sharing: You share the correct emotion, high-level simulation.
A three part model: Cognitive empathy to prosocial motivation
What am I helping with? More effective emotional support or instrumental help.
A three part model: Affective Empathy to Prosocial Motivation
Why should I help? Emotion sharing often triggers empathic concern. Feeling emotionally compelled to help the other person.
The Hunt for Empathic Perceivers
There is more variability in target’s ability to accurately express themselves than in perceiver’s ability to accurately “read” targets’ emotions. I.e. The target needs to be sufficiently expressive for individual differences in empathy between perceivers to emerge.
Characteristics of Empathic Perceivers: Trait affective empathy
Self-reported affective empathy is positively correlated with an empathic accuracy, but only when for expressive targets.
