Relation of sympathy and personal distress to prosocial behavior: A multimethod study

Task demands matter in shaping how preschoolers express instrumental helping, comforting, and sharing: A longitudinal analysis

The current research provides a detailed longitudinal examination of instrumental helping, comforting, and sharing in early childhood. Preschoolers completed a series of prosocial behavior tasks when they were 2 years old (n = 200), 3 years old (n = 161), and 4 years old (n = 135). As expected, children's prosocial behaviors increased with age across all tasks. Yet children's prosocial behaviors were more nuanced than expected, with significant differences in scores between trials within each type of prosocial behavior. Cross-lagged panel modelling revealed that instrumental helping at 3 years predicted comforting when an experimenter was sad or cold at 4 years. Furthermore, children's comforting of a sad experimenter at 3 years predicted sharing their own toy with a sad experimenter at 4 years. These findings offer novel insights into the developmental trajectory of three types of prosocial behavior in early childhood.

Measurement of Empathy in Virtual Reality with Head-Mounted Displays: A Systematic Review

We present a systematic review of 111 papers that measure the impact of virtual experiences created through head-mounted displays (HMDs) on empathy. Our goal was to analyze the conditions and the extent to which virtual reality (VR) enhances empathy. To achieve this, we categorized the relevant literature according to measurement methods, correlated human factors, viewing experiences, topics, and participants. Meta-analysis was performed based on categorized themes, and under specified conditions, we found that VR can improve empathy. Emotional empathy increased temporarily after the VR experience and returned to its original level over time, whereas cognitive empathy remained enhanced. Furthermore, while VR did not surpass 2D video in improving emotional empathy, it did enhance cognitive empathy, which is associated with embodiment. Our results are consistent with existing research suggesting differentiation between cognitive empathy (influenced by environmental factors and learnable) and emotional empathy (highly heritable and less variable). Interactivity, target of empathy, and point of view were not found to significantly affect empathy, but participants' age and nationality were found to influence empathy levels. It can be concluded that VR enhances cognitive empathy by immersing individuals in the perspective of others and that storytelling and personal characteristics are more important than the composition of the VR scene. Our findings provide guiding information for creating empathy content in VR and designing experiments to measure empathy.

Determinants of social loneliness among older adults in job retirement and the role of emotional expressivity

OBJECTIVES

The study examined the possibility that a mediating role of positive and negative emotional expressivity may contribute to understanding the associations between social loneliness and its previously identified predictors (i.e. health, age, sex, and social living situation).

METHOD

Self-reported assessments were collected from community-dwelling Swedish residents (aged 65 and above) in job retirement. Structural equation modeling with manifest variables was applied to cross-sectional data (N = 601) to analyze two competing models; one main-effect regression model, examining the predictive effect of emotional expressivity (along with health and sociodemographics) on social loneliness, and one mediation model, examining the mediating effect of emotional expressivity (using the bootstrapping technique provided in Mplus).

RESULTS

The results indicated that the mediation model fit the data considerably better than the main-effect regression model (Δχ2 [Δdf = 8] = 72.69, p < 0.00001), and demonstrated a good fit on its own, with CFI = 0.986 and RMSEA = 0.030. This suggests that emotional expressivity contributes to the understanding of the connection between social loneliness and its previously identified predictors.

CONCLUSION

Recognizing the significance of emotional expressivity has the potential to enhance our understanding of loneliness in older adults, both in theory and in practice.

Cardiac Autonomic Reactivity Tests in Type A and Type B Personalities

BACKGROUND

A considerable link between personality types and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) has been seen. Autonomic responses in both type A and type B personality individuals were found to be influenced by their personality traits. The study suggests further research on cardiac autonomic functions in larger sample sizes and the use of non-invasive screening techniques like cardiovascular reflex tests to stratify participants' risk of future illness.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to assess autonomic stress reactivity tests in type A and type B personalities using cardiovascular reflex tests.

METHODS

This study was conducted at the Department of Physiology, Vardhman Mahavir Medical College and Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi. The Hunter-Wolf Personality Questionnaire Scale was used to identify 60 adults, 30 of whom were classified to have type A personality and 30 have type B personality, from the psychiatry department. Autonomic function tests, such as the handgrip tests, cold pressor test, deep breathing test (DBT), lying-to-standing test (LST), and Valsalva maneuver, were performed and recorded for each subject. IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, version 21 (released 2012; IBM Corp., Armonk, New York, United States) was used for the compilation and analysis of data.

RESULTS

 The E:I (expiration-to-inspiration) ratio and delta heart rate of the type A personality patients both significantly decreased (p = 0.000*) as compared to the type B personality patients (1.18 ± 0.03 versus 1.25 ± 0.77 and 1.18 ± 0.03 versus 1.25 ± 0.77). The Valsalva ratio of the type A personality patients decreased (1.38 ± 0.10) as compared to the type B personality patients (1.48 ± 0.18), which was statistically significant (p = 0.001*). The 30:15 ratio in the type A personality patients was significantly decreased (p = 0.03*) compared to the type B personality patients (1.12 ± 0.05 versus 1.15 ± 0.10). The handgrip test and cold pressor test results were statistically insignificant.

CONCLUSION

Compared to the type B personality patients, which exhibited an increase in both parasympathetic and sympathetic reactivity, the type A personality patients exhibited a reduction in resting cardiovascular parameters and resting autonomic tone. Consequently, in order to stratify the participants' risk of future illness, we recommend employing non-invasive procedures, such as cardiovascular reflex tests, as a screening technique.

Kin relationality and ecological belonging: a cultural psychology of Indigenous transcendence

In this article, we consider prosociality through the lens of an Indigenous "ethics of belonging" and its two constitutive concepts: kin relationality and ecological belonging. Kin relationality predicates that all living beings and phenomena share a familial identity of interdependence, mutuality, and organization. Within the value system of ecological belonging, an individual's identity is constituted in relation to the natural environment, centered on the sentiments of responsibility and reverence for Nature. We detail how Indigenous perspectives upon prosociality differ from Western scientific accounts in terms of the motives, scope, and rewards of altruistic action. Grounded in this understanding, we then profile three self-transcendent states, compassion, gratitude, and awe, and their similarities across Indigenous and Western approaches, and how kin relationality and ecological belonging give rise to cultural variations. We consider convergent insights across Indigenous and Western science concerning the role of ritual and narrative and the cultural cultivation of kin relationality and ecological belonging. We conclude by highlighting how these two core concepts might guide future inquiry in cultural psychology.

Assessment of help value affects reciprocation in Norway rats

Wild-type Norway rats reciprocate help received in a well-replicated experimental food-giving task, but the criteria to appraise the received help's value are unclear. We tested whether quality or quantity of received help is more important when deciding to return help, and whether partner familiarity and own current need affect this evaluation. We experimentally varied recipients of help's hunger state, and familiar or unfamiliar partners provided either higher caloric food (enhanced quantity; carrots) or food higher in protein and fat (enhanced quality; cheese). Reciprocation of received help was our criterion for the rats' value assessment. Familiarity, food type and hunger state interacted and affected help returned by rats. Rats returned less help to familiar partners than to unfamiliar partners. With unfamiliar partners, rats returned more help to partners that had donated preferred food (cheese) than to partners that had donated less preferred food (carrots), and they returned help earlier if they were satiated and had received cheese. With familiar partners, food-deprived rats that had received cheese returned more help than satiated rats that had received carrots. Our results suggest that Norway rats assess the received help's value based on its quality, their current need and partner familiarity before reciprocating received help.

Empathy is not so perfect! -For a descriptive and wide conception of empathy

Physician empathy is considered essential for good clinical care. Empirical evidence shows that it correlates with better patient satisfaction, compliance, and clinical outcomes. These data have nevertheless been criticized because of a lack of consistency and reliability. In this paper, we claim that these issues partly stem from the widespread idealization of empathy: we mistakenly assume that physician empathy always contributes to good care. This has prevented us from agreeing on a definition of empathy, from understanding the effects of its different components and from exploring its limits. This is problematic because physicians' ignorance of the risks of empathy and of strategies to manage them can impact their work and wellbeing negatively. To address this problem, we explore the effects of the potential components of empathy and argue that it should be conceived as a purely descriptive and wide term. We end by discussing implications for medical education.

Moral Foundations, Himpathy, and Punishment Following Organizational Sexual Misconduct Allegations

We build on deontic justice and moral foundations theories to shed light on responses to sexual misconduct at work by proposing a model that explains why some third parties punish accusing victims and support alleged perpetrators. We theorize that when third parties are given conflicting he-said, she-said information, they intuitively evaluate organizational injustice based on moral values. We further theorize that binding moral foundations (loyalty, authority, purity) give rise to sympathy toward men accused of sexual misconduct and anger toward female accusers. Across five studies (total n = 5,413) utilizing archival, field, and vignette designs, we examined third-party responses to sexual misconduct accusations ranging in severity across several industries. Third-party endorsement of binding moral foundations was linked to increased perpetrator-directed sympathy and victim-directed anger (Studies 1–4). These emotions jointly mediated the relationship between binding values and credibility perceptions of the accusing victim and the alleged perpetrator (Studies 2 and 3). Moreover, victim credibility was negatively associated with social sanctions and punishment severity levied toward the accusing victim, and perpetrator credibility was negatively associated with the same punishment outcomes for the alleged perpetrator (Studies 3 and 4). In Study 5, we found that managers framing the accusing victim as disloyal exacerbated negative judgments and emotions toward the victim and positive judgments and emotions toward the perpetrator for individuals who highly ascribe to binding moral foundations. We discuss the theoretical contributions and practical implications of moral concerns on third parties’ emotions, judgments, and motivations to punish actors involved in sexual misconduct allegations.

Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1652 .

How do childhood abuse and neglect affect prosocial behavior? The mediating roles of different empathic components

Background

Childhood abuse and neglect are typically considered as two different forms of maltreatment. Previous international studies have found differential effects of abuse and neglect on prosocial behavior, but this and the mediating pathway underlying these associations have not been examined in a Chinese sample. Our study aims to examine the effects of childhood abuse and neglect on prosocial behavior in Chinese participants and test the unique mediating roles of different empathic components in these associations.

Methods

A total of 1,569 young adults (average age = 18.17 years) were recruited from a college that enrolls students from all provinces of China. Participants completed a series of questionnaires, including the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and Prosocial Tendencies Measure. Path analysis was conducted to determine the mediational relationships.

Results

Emotional neglect had significant direct effect on prosocial behavior (β = -0.108, p < 0.001), and could also impact prosocial behavior through the mediating roles of perspective-taking and empathic concern (effect size = -0.091 and -0.097 respectively, p < 0.001). Emotional abuse affected prosocial behavior only through personal distress (effect size = -0.072, p < 0.001). Physical abuse, sexual abuse and physical neglect have little effect on prosocial behavior and empathy.

Conclusion

Childhood abuse and neglect have distinct influences on prosocial behavior. Emotional abuse and emotional neglect affect prosocial behavior through distinct pathways. This conclusion could help to establish precise interventions for improving prosocial behavior in maltreated individuals.

Clients' Facial Expressions of Self-Compassion, Self-Criticism, and Self-Protection in Emotion-Focused Therapy Videos

Clients' facial expressions allow psychotherapists to gather more information about clients' emotional processing. This study aims to examine and investigate the facial Action Units (AUs) of self-compassion, self-criticism, and self-protection within real Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) sessions. For this purpose, we used the facial analysis software iMotions. Twelve video sessions were selected for the analysis based on specific criteria. For self-compassion, the following AUs were significant: AUs 4 (brow furrow), 15 (lip corner depressor), and the AU12_smile (lip corner puller). For self-criticism, iMotions identified the AUs 2 (outer brow raise), AU1 (inner brow raise), AU7 (lid tighten), AU12_smirk (unilateral lip corner puller), and AU43 (eye closure). Self-protection was combined using the occurrence of AUs 1 and 4 and AU12_smirk. Moreover, the findings support the significance of discerning self-compassion and self-protection as two different concepts.

How Parental Support Affects Latina Girls During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract. The current study focuses on a sample of low- to middle-income school-age Latina girls and their parents and examines how children’s distress proneness interacts with parental empathic accuracy and posttraumatic growth in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic to predict children’s empathy and prosocial behavior toward unknown others. Approximately 2–3 months into state-mandated stay-at-home orders, 55 parent–daughter dyads were recruited to participate in this four-session longitudinal study. To assess distress proneness, daughters (ages 8–13 years, 100% Latina) identified their degree of distress in response to pandemic-related stressors. Concurrently, their parents reported how they thought their children would respond to these same pandemic-related stressors, which assessed parental empathic accuracy. Parents also completed an adapted version of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory, which assessed perceived positive outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic. Upon study completion, a behavioral measure of children’s empathic and prosocial behaviors was collected. Parental empathic accuracy interacted with children’s distress proneness to positively predict children’s affective empathy, such that children’s distress proneness predicted affective empathy at high and mean, but not low, levels of parental empathic accuracy. In a separate analysis, parental posttraumatic growth interacted with children’s distress proneness to positively predict children’s altruistic sharing behavior, such that children’s distress proneness predicted altruistic sharing behavior only at high, but not mean or low, levels of parental posttraumatic growth. The results of this study highlight how positive parental socialization and understanding of children’s tendencies toward distress are associated with children’s empathic and prosocial behaviors, particularly during major global crises.

The association between acute stress & empathy: A systematic literature review

Empathy is a fundamental component of our social-emotional experience. Over the last decade, there has been increased interest in understanding the effects of acute stress on empathy. We provide a first comprehensive-and systematic-overview identifying emerging patterns and gaps in this literature. Regarding affective empathy, there is abundant evidence for stress contagion-the 'spillover' of stress from a stressed target to an unstressed perceiver. We highlight contextual factors that can facilitate and/or undermine these effects. Fewer studies have investigated the effects of acute stress on affective empathy, revealing a nuanced picture, some evidence suggests acute stress can block contagion of other's emotions; but again contextual differences need to be considered. Regarding cognitive empathy, most studies find no conclusive effects for simplistic measures of emotion recognition; however, studies using more complex empathy tasks find that acute stress might affect cognitive empathy differentially for men and women. This review provides an important first step towards understanding how acute stress can impact social-togetherness, and aims to aid future research by highlighting (in)congruencies and outstanding questions.

What is Sympathy? Understanding the Structure of Other-Oriented Emotions

Sympathy (empathic concern) is mainly understood as a feeling for another and is often contrasted with empathy-a feeling with another. However, it is not clear what feeling for another means and what emotions sympathy involves. Since empirical data suggests that sympathy plays an important role in our social lives and is more closely connected to helping behavior than empathy, we need a more detailed account. In this paper, I argue that sympathy is not a particular emotion but a type of emotional experience: those that have another person as focus. I explain what this means and show that this sheds light on why sympathy, rather than empathy, directly motivates altruistic actions.

The relationship between maternal and infant empathy: The mediating role of responsive parenting

Individual empathy emerges during infancy, and its development is influenced by family environmental factors such as parental characteristics and parenting style. In this study, we examined how maternal empathy was related to infant empathy and the mediating role of responsive parenting in this relationship using situational observation and scale measurement data. Thirty-three infants aged 11-30 months (M = 20.18, SD = 5.18) and their mothers (all from middle-income Chinese families) participated in simulated distress scenarios and structured mother-infant interaction sessions. These paradigms are widely used to study infant empathy and responsive parenting. The maternal empathy levels were measured using the Adult Empathy Scale (E-scale). The results indicate that (1) by their second year, infants largely acquire the capacity for other-oriented empathy and display significantly greater levels of empathy toward their mothers than toward strangers; (2) maternal empathy is significantly and positively correlated with responsive parenting and infant empathy, responsive parenting is significantly and positively correlated with infant empathy; and (3) responsive parenting fully mediates the effect of maternal empathy on infant empathy. These findings indicate that maternal empathy level can be enhanced to improve the quality of parent-child interaction, thereby promoting infant empathy development.

Sympathy-Empathy and the Radicalization of Young People

BACKGROUND

The sympathy-empathy (SE) system is commonly considered a key faculty implied in prosocial behaviors, and SE deficits (also called callous-unemotional traits, CUTs) are associated with nonprosocial and even violent behaviors. Thus, the first intuitive considerations considered a lack of SE among young people who undergo radicalization. Yet, their identification with a cause, their underlying feelings of injustice and grievance, and the other ways in which they may help communities, suggest that they may actually have a lot of empathy, even an excess of it. As a consequence, the links between SE and radicalization remain to be specified. This critical review aims to discuss whether and how SE is associated with developmental trajectories that lead young people to radicalization.

METHOD

We first recall the most recent findings about SE development, based on an interdisciplinary perspective informed by social neuroscience. Then, we review sociological and psychological studies that address radicalization. We will critically examine the intersections between SE and radicalization, including neuroscientific bases and anthropologic modulation of SE by social factors involved in radicalization.

RESULTS

This critical review indicates that the SE model should clearly distinguish between sympathy and empathy within the SE system. Using this model, we identified three possible trajectories in young radicalized individuals. In individuals with SE deficit, the legitimization of violence is enough to engage in radicalization. Concerning individuals with normal SE, we hypothesize two trajectories. First, based on SE inhibition/desensitization, individuals can temporarily join youths who lack empathy. Second, based on an SE dissociation, combining emotional sympathy increases for the in-group and cognitive empathy decreases toward the out-group.

CONCLUSIONS

While confirming that a lack of empathy can favor radicalization, the counterintuitive hypothesis of a favorable SE development trajectory also needs to be considered to better specify the cognitive and affective aspects of this complex phenomenon.

The Effects of the Creator’s Situation on Creativity Evaluation: The Rater’s Cognitive Empathy and Affective Empathy Matter in Rating Creative Works

Successful intelligence theory suggests that creativity is necessary for personal achievement outside of intelligence. Unlike intelligence, creativity can develop in a supportive environment. People should consider the situation of disadvantaged groups, which are characterized by low personal achievement and a bad growth environment in creativity evaluation from a caring perspective. This study focuses on the effect of the creator’s situation on creative evaluation and the role of the rater’s empathy (i.e., cognitive empathy and affective empathy) and sympathy in creative evaluation. Four pairs of creator’s situations (by age, physical state, family situation, and economic state) were designed to represent people with disadvantages or advantages. A between-subject design was used with 590 undergraduate students randomly assigned to eight sub-conditions. The participants were asked to assess three products in eight situations. The rater’s empathy and sympathy in creativity evaluation were explored in the overall disadvantage (N = 300) and advantage (N = 290) conditions. The results showed that the participants only provided significantly higher ratings to the creative product made by a child. Cognitive empathy only predicted a creative rating under disadvantaged conditions, and affective empathy negatively moderated this effect. Affective empathy only predicted a creative rating under advantage conditions, and cognitive empathy positively moderated this effect. Affective empathy only predicted a creative rating under advantage conditions, and cognitive empathy positively moderated this effect. The possible mechanisms of the effect and implications for the establishment of a supportive environment for creativity and creativity teaching practice were discussed.

Attachment Insecurity and Altruistic Behavior among Chinese Adolescents: Mediating Effect of Different Dimensions of Empathy

Although Western studies showed that attachment insecurity was negatively related to adolescent altruistic behavior, few studies have investigated this issue among Chinese adolescents, and little is known about the mechanisms underlying the impact of attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety on adolescent altruistic behaviors. This study investigated the mediating role of different dimensions of empathy (empathic concern, perspective taking, and personal distress) on the association of attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety with altruistic behavior among Chinese adolescents. A total of 1005 7th and 8th grade Chinese students (M_age = 12.86 years, SD = 0.69) from three middle schools in Chengdu, China completed measures of attachment insecurity, interpersonal reactivity index, and altruistic behavior. Results indicated that attachment avoidance, not attachment anxiety, negatively predicted adolescent altruistic behavior among Chinese adolescents. Moreover, higher attachment avoidance predicted less empathic concern and perspective taking, which in turn predicted less altruistic behavior, while higher attachment anxiety predicted more empathic concern and personal distress, which further predicted more and less altruistic behavior, respectively. These findings highlight the importance of promoting adolescent empathic concern and perspective taking and reducing personal distress to strengthen adolescent altruistic behavior.

The association between ballroom dance training and empathic concern: Behavioral and brain evidence

Dance is unique in that it is a sport and an art simultaneously. Beyond improving sensorimotor functions, dance training could benefit high-level emotional and cognitive functions. Duo dances also confer the possibility for dancers to develop the abilities to recognize, understand, and share the thoughts and feelings of their dance partners during the long-term dance training. To test this possibility, we collected high-resolution structural and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data from 43 expert-level ballroom dancers (a model of long-term exposure to duo dance training) and 40 age-matched and sex-matched nondancers, and measured their empathic ability using a self-report trait empathy scale. We found that ballroom dancers showed higher scores of empathic concern (EC) than controls. The EC scores were positively correlated with years with dance partners but negatively correlated with the number of dance partners for ballroom dancers. These behavioral results were supported by the structural and functional MRI data. Structurally, we observed that the gray matter volumes in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and EC scores were positively correlated. Functionally, the connectivity between ACC and occipital gyrus was positively correlated with both EC scores and years with dance partners. In addition, the relationship between years with dance partners and EC scores was indirect-only mediated by the ACC-occipital gyrus functional connectivity. Therefore, our findings provided solid evidence for the close link between long-term ballroom dance training and empathy, which deepens our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying this phenomenon.

The human fear paradox: Affective origins of cooperative care

Already as infants humans are more fearful than our closest living primate relatives, the chimpanzees. Yet heightened fearfulness is mostly considered maladaptive, as it is thought to increase the risk of developing anxiety and depression. How can this human fear paradox be explained? The fearful ape hypothesis presented herein stipulates that, in the context of cooperative caregiving and provisioning unique to human great ape group life, heightened fearfulness was adaptive. This is because from early in ontogeny fearfulness expressed and perceived enhanced care-based responding and provisioning from, while concurrently increasing cooperation with, mothers and others. This explanation is based on a synthesis of existing research with human infants and children, demonstrating a link between fearfulness, greater sensitivity to and accuracy in detecting fear in others, and enhanced levels of cooperative behaviors. These insights critically advance current evolutionary theories of human cooperation by adding an early-developing affective component to the human cooperative makeup. Moreover, the current proposal has important cultural, societal, and health implications, as it challenges the predominant view in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies that commonly construe fearfulness as a maladaptive trait, potentially ignoring its evolutionary adaptive functions.

Bridging the empathy gap: or not? Reactions to ingroup and outgroup facial expressions

Prior research suggests that group membership impacts behavioral and self-reported responses to others’ facial expressions of emotion. In this paper, we examine how the mere labelling of a face as an ingroup or outgroup member affects facial mimicry (Study 1) and judgments of genuineness (Study 2). In addition, we test whether the effects of group membership on facial mimicry and perceived genuineness are moderated by the presence of tears (Study 1) and the motivation to cooperate (Study 2). Results from both studies revealed group-specific biases in facial mimicry and judgments of genuineness. However, introducing cooperative goals abolished differences in judgments of genuineness of facial expressions displayed by ingroup and outgroup members. Together, the findings provide insights into how intergroup biases in emotion perception operate and how they can be reduced by introducing cooperative goals.

Autistic Traits and Empathy for Others' Pain Among the General Population: Test of the Mediating Effects of First-Hand Pain Sensitivity

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by reduced pain empathy-a process that is grounded in first-hand pain perception. Because autistic traits are continuously distributed in the general population, we hypothesized that first-hand pain sensitivity would mediate the link between autistic traits and pain empathy. After controlling for alexithymia, higher autistic traits were associated with lower cognitive and emotional empathy in response to others' pain, as well as lower sensitivity to cold and heat pain (higher cold pain tolerance and lower laser heat pain-intensity ratings). Importantly, pain sensitivity fully mediated the link between autistic traits and pain empathy. These findings highlight the role of atypical first-hand pain sensitivity in the lack of pain empathy observed in people with high autistic traits or ASD.

Significant Measures of Gaze and Pupil Movement for Evaluating Empathy between Viewers and Digital Content

The success of digital content depends largely on whether viewers empathize with stories and narratives. Researchers have investigated the elements that may elicit empathy from viewers. Empathic response involves affective and cognitive processes and is expressed through multiple verbal and nonverbal modalities. Specifically, eye movements communicate emotions and intentions and may reflect an empathic status. This study explores feature changes in eye movements when a viewer empathizes with the video’s content. Seven feature variables of eye movements (change of pupil diameter, peak pupil dilation, very short, mid, over long fixation duration, saccadic amplitude, and saccadic count) were extracted from 47 participants who viewed eight videos (four empathic videos and four non-empathic videos) distributed in a two-dimensional emotion axis (arousal and valence). The results showed that viewers’ saccadic amplitude and peak pupil dilation in the eigenvalues of eye movements increased in the empathic condition. The fixation time and pupil size change showed limited significance, and whether there were asymmetric pupil responses between the left and right pupils remained inconclusive. Our investigation suggests that saccadic amplitude and peak pupil dilation are reliable measures for recognizing whether viewers empathize with content. The findings provide physiological evidence based on eye movements that both affective and cognitive processes accompany empathy during media consumption.

Empathy in Human-Robot Interaction: Designing for Social Robots

For a service robot to serve travelers at an airport or for a social robot to live with a human partner at home, it is vital for robots to possess the ability to empathize with human partners and express congruent emotions accordingly. We conducted a systematic review of the literature regarding empathy in interpersonal, virtual agents, and social robots research with inclusion criteria to analyze empirical studies in a peer-reviewed journal, conference proceeding, or a thesis. Based on the review, we define empathy for human–robot interaction (HRI) as the robot’s (observer) capability and process to recognize the human’s (target) emotional state, thoughts, and situation, and produce affective or cognitive responses to elicit a positive perception of humans. We reviewed all prominent empathy theories and established a conceptual framework that illuminates critical components to consider when designing an empathic robot, including the empathy process, outcome, and the observer and target characteristics. This model is complemented by empirical research involving empathic virtual agents and social robots. We suggest critical factors such as domain dependency, multi-modality, and empathy modulation to consider when designing, engineering, and researching empathic social robots.

How cognitive and emotional empathy relate to rational thinking: empirical evidence and meta-analysis

Empathy is frequently described in opposition to rationality. Yet in two studies, we demonstrate that the relationship between rationality and empathy is nuanced and likely context dependent. Study 1 reports correlational data from two American samples and Study 2 presents a meta-analysis of existing literature (k = 22). We demonstrate that various types of cognitive empathy (perspective-taking, emotion recognition, and fantasy) are positively correlated with self-reported rationality, but unrelated to rational performance. In contrast, types of emotional empathy (empathic concern, personal distress, and emotion contagion) are generally negatively correlated with performance measures of rationality, but their relationships with self-reported rationality are divergent. Although these results do not settle the debate on empathy and rationality, they challenge the opposing domains hypothesis and provide tentative support for a dual-process model of empathy. Overall, these results indicate that the relationship between rationality and empathy differs depending upon how rationality and empathy are measured.

Cognitive and Affective Empathy Relate Differentially to Emotion Regulation

The constructs of empathy (i.e., understanding and/or sharing another's emotion) and emotion regulation (i.e., the processes by which one manages emotions) have largely been studied in relative isolation of one another. To better understand the interrelationships between their various component processes, this manuscript reports two studies that examined the relationship between empathy and emotion regulation using a combination of self-report and task measures. In study 1 (N = 137), trait cognitive empathy and affective empathy were found to share divergent relationships with self-reported emotion dysregulation. Trait emotion dysregulation was negatively related to cognitive empathy but did not show a significant relationship with affective empathy. In the second study (N = 92), the magnitude of emotion interference effects (i.e., the extent to which inhibitory control was impacted by emotional relative to neutral stimuli) in variants of a Go/NoGo and Stroop task were used as proxy measures of implicit emotion regulation abilities. Trait cognitive and affective empathy were differentially related to both task metrics. Higher affective empathy was associated with increased emotional interference in the Emotional Go/NoGo task; no such relationship was observed for trait cognitive empathy. In the Emotional Stroop task, higher cognitive empathy was associated with reduced emotional interference; no such relationship was observed for affective empathy. Together, these studies demonstrate that greater cognitive empathy was broadly associated with improved emotion regulation abilities, while greater affective empathy was typically associated with increased difficulties with emotion regulation. These findings point to the need for assessing the different components of empathy in psychopathological conditions marked by difficulties in emotion regulation.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-021-00062-w.

Interpersonal Consequences of Deceptive Expressions of Sadness

Emotional expressions evoke predictable responses from observers; displays of sadness are commonly met with sympathy and help from others. Accordingly, people may be motivated to feign emotions to elicit a desired response. In the absence of suspicion, we predicted that emotional and behavioral responses to genuine (vs. deceptive) expressers would be guided by empirically valid cues of sadness authenticity. Consistent with this hypothesis, untrained observers (total N = 1,300) reported less sympathy and offered less help to deceptive (vs. genuine) expressers of sadness. This effect was replicated using both posed, low-stakes, laboratory-created stimuli, and spontaneous, real, high-stakes emotional appeals to the public. Furthermore, lens models suggest that sympathy reactions were guided by difficult-to-fake facial actions associated with sadness. Results suggest that naive observers use empirically valid cues to deception to coordinate social interactions, providing novel evidence that people are sensitive to subtle cues to deception.

Children with developmental dyslexia show elevated parasympathetic nervous system activity at rest and greater cardiac deceleration during an empathy task

Reading difficulties are the hallmark feature of dyslexia, but less is known about other areas of functioning. Previously, we found children with dyslexia exhibited heightened emotional reactivity, which correlated with better social skills. Whether emotional differences in dyslexia extend to the parasympathetic nervous system-an autonomic branch critical for attention, social engagement, and empathy-is unknown. Here, we measured autonomic nervous system activity in 24 children with dyslexia and 24 children without dyslexia, aged 7 - 12, at rest and during a film-based empathy task. At rest, children with dyslexia had higher respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) than those without dyslexia. Cardiac deceleration during the empathy task was greater in dyslexia and correlated with higher resting RSA across the sample. Children with dyslexia produced more facial expressions of concentration during film-viewing, suggesting greater engagement. These results suggest elevated resting parasympathetic activity and accentuated autonomic and behavioral responding to others' emotions in dyslexia.

Parsing Associations Between Dimensions of Empathy and Reactive and Proactive Aggression

The broad dimension of empathy has been shown to underlie various forms of psychopathology, most extensively studied for the externalizing spectrum of psychopathology. However, associations between subdimensions of empathy and functions of aggression remain unclear. The current study (N = 409) aimed to investigate common and specific associations between a higher-order model of aggression, comprising reactive aggression (RA) and proactive aggression (PA) factors with an overarching general aggression factor, and item-level factor analytically derived dimensions of empathy: affective/self-oriented empathy and cognitive/other-oriented empathy. Results demonstrated specific and opposing associations between dimensions of empathy and the general aggression factor, such that affective/self-oriented empathy was positively associated, and cognitive/other-oriented empathy was negatively associated with general aggression. Affective/self-oriented empathy was positively associated with RA, whereas cognitive/other-oriented empathy was negatively associated with RA and PA. Results confirm the importance of considering the multidimensionality of empathy and aggression and suggest both common and distinct pathways from empathy to aggression.

Gender differences in COVID‐19 ‐related stress and relationships with life satisfaction among financial advisors

This study examines gender differences in COVID‐19‐related stress and the relationship between COVID‐19‐related stress and life satisfaction in a large sample of financial advisors in the United States (n = 499). Compared to men, women reported greater increases in work‐related stress since the onset of COVID‐19, higher levels of stress from managing family responsibilities, and more stress from witnessing the impact of COVID‐19 on their clients (i.e., empathetic stress). Using an integrative model of top‐down and bottom‐up influences on life satisfaction, COVID‐19‐related stress predicted life satisfaction among women but not men. Consistent with integrative models of both bottom‐up and top‐down influences on satisfaction assessment, trait affect was found to predict life satisfaction. Implications of the unequal stress of COVID‐19 on men and women within the financial planning profession are discussed.

Development of functional network architecture explains changes in children's altruistically motivated helping

Childhood is marked by profound changes in prosocial behaviour. The underlying motivational mechanisms remain poorly understood. We investigated the development of altruistically motivated helping in middle childhood and the neurocognitive and -affective mechanisms driving this development. One-hundred and twenty seven 6-12 year-old children performed a novel gustatory costly helping task designed to measure altruistic motivations of helping behaviour. Neurocognitive and -affective mechanisms including emotion regulation, emotional clarity and attentional reorienting were assessed experimentally through an extensive task-battery while functional brain activity and connectivity were measured during an empathy for taste paradigm and during rest. Altruistically motivated helping increased with age. Out of all mechanisms probed for, only emotional clarity increased with age and accounted for altruistically motivated helping. This was associated with greater functional integration of the empathy-related network with fronto-parietal brain regions at rest. We isolate a highly specific neuroaffective mechanism as the crucial driver of altruistically motivated helping during child development.

Synchrony with distress in affective empathy and compassion

Sensitivity to suffering of others is a core factor in social cohesion and evolutionary success. The emergence of such sensitivity may occur via two neuro-functional mechanisms. One is sharing the pain and distress of others, which relies on affective empathy. The other involves a caring concern for others' wellbeing, termed compassion. Both affective empathy and compassion are triggered by cues of pain and distress, exhibited by suffering targets. Yet, the mechanisms underlying distress processing in empathy and compassion are not clear. In the current research, we investigated synchrony with a target's distress, as a putative mechanism for continuous processing of distress cues. Participants viewed a video of a target in distress when given two different instructions: they were asked to continuously rate their distress in the affective empathy condition, or their feelings of care in the compassion condition. We used these dynamic ratings as well as participants' autonomic and facial responses to assess multi-channel synchrony with the target's self-rated distress fluctuations. Dynamic ratings and facial corrugator responses were significantly positively synchronized with the target's distress. For the corrugator responses, synchrony with the target was more pronounced than synchrony with participants' own ratings. Autonomic responses exhibited negative synchrony with the target's distress. Synchrony was higher in the affective empathy than in the compassion condition, across channels. These results point to the key role of subjective and physiological synchrony with the target's distress in empathic sharing of negative experiences. They also highlight the attenuation of embodied resonance with distress in compassionate experiences.

Higher socioeconomic status does not predict decreased prosocial behavior in a field experiment

Does higher socioeconomic status predict decreased prosocial behavior? Methodological issues such as the reliance of survey studies on self-reported measures of prosociality, the insufficient control of relative incentives in experiments, and the use of non-random samples, have prevented researchers from ruling out that there is a negative association between socioeconomic status (SES) and prosociality. Here, we present results from a field experiment on the willingness of unaware individuals of different SES to undertake an effortful prosocial task-returning a misdelivered letter. Specifically, using the rental or sale value of homes as indicators of SES, we randomly selected households of high and low SES and misdelivered envelopes to them. Despite controlling for numerous covariates and performing a series of ancillary tests, we fail to find any evidence that higher SES predicts decreased prosocial behavior. Instead, we find that misdelivered letters are substantially more likely to be returned from high rather than low SES households.

Anger and Sadness as Moral Signals

Three studies examined the relationship between emotions and moral judgment from an interpersonal perspective. In Studies 1 and 2, participants justified their decisions in sacrificial dilemmas to an imagined interlocutor. Linguistic analyses revealed that Don’t Sacrifice justifications contained more anger-related language than sadness-related language, whereas Sacrifice justifications contained roughly equal proportions of anger and sadness language. In Study 3, participants made character inferences about an actor who chose to/refused to sacrifice one person to save multiple people. We manipulated the actor’s ratio of anger to sadness. Participants rated the Don’t Sacrifice actor more negatively when they displayed high anger relative to sadness but rated the Sacrifice actor negatively whenever they exhibited high anger (independent of sadness). These data highlight novel ways in which actors and observers use emotions to complement the substance of a moral argument.

Socio-cognitive training impacts emotional and perceptual self-salience but not self-other distinction

Training to inhibit imitative tendencies has been shown to reduce self-other interferences in both automatic imitation and perspective taking, suggesting that an enhancement of self-other distinction is transferrable from the motor to the cognitive domain. This study examined whether socio-cognitive training specifically enhances self-other distinction, or rather modulates self-salience, that is, the relative attentional priority of information pertaining to the self-perspective over information pertaining to the other person's perspective. Across two experiments, participants trained on one day to either imitate, inhibit imitation, inhibit control stimuli, or they were imitated. On the following day they completed a visuo-tactile affective perspective-taking paradigm measuring both self-other distinction and emotional self-salience, and a shape matching paradigm measuring perceptual self-salience. Results indicate no significant or consistent impact of training on self-other distinction performance, but reveal an increased emotional and perceptual self-salience following training to inhibit imitative tendencies. Together, these findings raise the question whether socio-cognitive training improves performance via enhanced self-other distinction, and invite to consider self-salience as a complementary angle to explain the past, present, and future findings on self-other distinction.

Compassionate goals, prosocial emotions, and prosocial behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important for people to engage in prosocial behaviours to support one another. The aim of this research is to answer a key question: in a social crisis, what motivates Americans to help others? Guided by research on appraisal theories and ecosystem theory, we examined the role of compassionate goals and prosocial emotions in promoting prosocial behaviours towards either out-group or in-group members. Study 1 (N = 943) was conducted in February 2020, before the widespread transmission of COVID-19 began in the United States. Results show that people with high compassionate goals are more likely to experience sympathy, which in turn makes them more willing to help people suffering from COVID-19 in China. Study 2 (N = 1,009) was conducted with a nationally representative sample after COVID-19 became more prevalent in the United States. Although people with high compassionate goals still experience more sympathy and solidarity, sympathy does not predict donation intention. Instead, solidarity mediates the relationship between compassionate goals and donation intention. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

Infant Emotional Mimicry of Strangers: Associations with Parent Emotional Mimicry, Parent-Infant Mutual Attention, and Parent Dispositional Affective Empathy

Emotional mimicry, the tendency to automatically and spontaneously reproduce others’ facial expressions, characterizes human social interactions from infancy onwards. Yet, little is known about the factors modulating its development in the first year of life. This study investigated infant emotional mimicry and its association with parent emotional mimicry, parent-infant mutual attention, and parent dispositional affective empathy. One hundred and seventeen parent-infant dyads (51 six-month-olds, 66 twelve-month-olds) were observed during video presentation of strangers’ happy, sad, angry, and fearful faces. Infant and parent emotional mimicry (i.e., facial expressions valence-congruent to the video) and their mutual attention (i.e., simultaneous gaze at one another) were systematically coded second-by-second. Parent empathy was assessed via self-report. Path models indicated that infant mimicry of happy stimuli was positively and independently associated with parent mimicry and affective empathy, while infant mimicry of sad stimuli was related to longer parent-infant mutual attention. Findings provide new insights into infants’ and parents’ coordination of mimicry and attention during triadic contexts of interactions, endorsing the social-affiliative function of mimicry already present in infancy: emotional mimicry occurs as an automatic parent-infant shared behavior and early manifestation of empathy only when strangers’ emotional displays are positive, and thus perceived as affiliative.

Strategic Regulation of Empathy

Empathy is an integral part of socioemotional well-being, but recent research has highlighted some of its downsides. Here we examine literature that establishes when, how much, and what aspects of empathy promote specific outcomes. After reviewing a theoretical framework that characterizes empathy as a suite of separable components, we examine evidence showing how dissociations of these components affect important socioemotional outcomes and describe emerging evidence suggesting that these components can be independently and deliberately regulated. Finally, we advocate for an approach to a multicomponent view of empathy that accounts for the interrelations among components. This perspective advances scientific conceptualization of empathy and offers suggestions for tailoring empathy to help people realize their social, emotional, and occupational goals.

Effects of Age on Emotion Regulation, Emotional Empathy, and Prosocial Behavior

OBJECTIVES

The degree to which older adults experience emotional empathy and show subsequent prosocial behavior versus experience personal distress in response to another's distress remains unclear.

METHOD

Young (n = 40; 17-29 years) and older (n = 39; 61-82 years) adults watched videos of individuals expressing pain or no pain. Pain mimicry was recorded using facial electromyography. Participants were then asked if they would spend the remaining time helping the experimenter. Self-reported tendency to suppress or reappraise emotion was assessed, as well as trait and state emotional empathy and personal distress.

RESULTS

Pain mimicry was associated with reduced trait suppression in older adults. In both age groups, greater emotional empathy, averaged across video condition, was associated with increased helping. In addition, relative to young adults, older adults reported more personal distress and emotional reactivity in response to the videos but were just as willing to help. They also put more effort into helping.

DISCUSSION

These findings contribute to clarification of mixed previous evidence regarding the experience of emotional empathy in young versus older adulthood. We discuss the importance of considering additional subcomponents of empathy such as emotion regulation, while also accounting for the relevance of the empathy induction to each age group.

Effects of acute alcohol consumption on emotion recognition in high and low trait aggressive drinkers

BACKGROUND

Research suggests that acute alcohol consumption impairs processing of emotional faces. As emotion processing plays a key role in effective social interaction, these impairments may be one mechanism by which alcohol changes social behaviour. This study investigated the effect of individual differences on this relationship by comparing emotion recognition performance after acute alcohol consumption in individuals with high and low trait aggression.

METHODS

Regular non-dependent drinkers, either high or low in trait aggression participated in a double-blind placebo-controlled experiment (N = 88, 50% high trait aggressive). Participants attended two sessions. In one they consumed an alcoholic drink (0.4 g/kg) and in the other they consumed a matched placebo. They then completed two computer-based tasks: one measured global and emotion-specific recognition performance across six primary emotions (anger, sadness, happiness, disgust, fear, surprise), the other measured processing bias of two ambiguously expressive faces (happy-angry/happy-sad).

RESULTS

There was evidence of poorer global emotion recognition after alcohol. In addition, there was evidence of poorer sensitivity to sadness and fear after alcohol. There was also evidence for a reduced bias towards happiness following alcohol and weak evidence for an increased bias towards sadness.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggest that alcohol impairs global emotion recognition. They also highlight a reduced ability to detect sadness and fearful facial expressions. As sadness and fear are cues of submission and distress (i.e. function to curtail aggression), failure to successfully detect these emotions when intoxicated may increase the likelihood of aggressive responding. This coupled with a reduced bias towards seeing happiness may collectively contribute to aggressive behaviour.