College aantekeningen
Lectures Psychosocial Development and Problems theme 3 (empathy) and 4 (digital media)
- Instelling
- Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
All lectures theme 3 (empathy) and 4 (digital media)
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Lectures Psychosocial Development and ProblemsLecture 1 Empathy
Film clip 9/11 knowing what another feels; knowing why; feeling what another feels; feeling the same,
similar emotion and/or personal distress.
Empathy is not projecting your own feelings on the feelings of the other.
We are biased by our own experiences and perspectives in sharing emotions.
Defining empathy: empathy is the ability to understand and share in another’s emotional state.
Mentalizing, Theory of Mind and empathy
Mentalizing: attending to/understanding states of mind in oneself and others.
Mentalizing is a skill developed from birth, involving: self-awareness, introspection, reflectiveness,
metacognition, ToM (thinking about the state of minds/intentions/ideas/feelings of the other person),
empathy (about the feelings), emotional intelligence/attentiveness to feelings.
Empathy: a multi-component phenomenon
Affect & cognition
- Cognitive empathy: understanding other’s emotions/perspective taking
- Affective empathy: vicarious experience of other’s emotions
1. Pure empathy/affect match: feeling with…
2. Sympathy/empathic concern: feeling for…
3. Personal distress: feeling by…
Primitive empathy: motor mimicry and emotional contagion inborn aspect of empathy.
Trait & state empathy
Trait empathy: empathic tendencies (personality trait) we empathize most with people who look like
ourselves = in-group phenomenon (difficult empathizing with people outside ‘your’ group).
State empathy: empathic reactions in concrete situations (for example not in a war with the enemy).
Why study empathy?
To understand people, we need empathy to anticipate on what others will do.
- Empathy is a factor in everyday live connects people, enables collaboration, promotes prosocial
behavior as helping (more evidence than next aspect), inhibits unwanted behaviors.
- Empathy is a factor in clinical practice empathy problems are common in mental illness, therapist
empathy predicts treatment outcomes in mental and medical care.
- Empathy is a factor in forensic diagnostics lack of empathy is a diagnostic feature of psychopathy,
item in risk assessment instruments; item in ‘adolescentenstrafrecht’.
How do we know/feel what the other person feels? pay attention to the other person, check
assumptions, be unjudgmental.
Article Cuff et al. – Empathy: A Review of the Concept
43 definitions of empathy. 8 themes:
1. Empathy versus other concepts empathy, sympathy and personal distress
a. Empathy = compassion (other-related emotion, positive feelings (love), good health, approach
& prosocial motivation) and empathic distress (self-related emotion, negative feelings (stress),
poor health/burnout, withdrawal & non-social behavior)
b. Empathy = similar emotion, connection, feeling with; sympathy = feeling for the other person
c. Sympathy = empathic concern = compassion (all used for the same in research)
2. Cognitive and affective empathy empathy is the joint result of affective and cognitive processes
a. Cognitive empathy = rational understanding, ability to take someone’s perspective
b. Affective empathy = emotional connection, being able to feel what they feel
c. Related but different concepts; (1) different brain structures involved: cognitive empathy/ToM
involves temporal and prefrontal areas, affective empathy involves limbic and paralimbic
structures; (2) different (state and trait) measures of cognitive and affective empathy
d. Different ways of understanding another person’s feelings reading facial expressions,
memories, projection.
3. Is congruency necessary? Is it important that we have the same feelings as the other? Or can it be
roughly similar. Is true sharing even possible?
4. Is direct perception of the target necessary? We may infer emotionality through perspective taking;
we may experience empathy by verbal statements of a third party; we may empathize with fictional
persons.
5. Is the self-other distinction essential? Self-oriented other-oriented
a. Mature empathy = being aware that what you feel is the result of another person’s feelings
,6. Trait and state empathy
a. Modulating factors = person characteristics (genes, gender, self-regulation, motivation) and
social emotional context (familiarity/similarity, connection, hostility)
7. Empathic behavior empathy is not necessarily associated with helpful (empathic) behavior;
prosocial behaviors not always reflect empathy = aversive arousal reduction, punishment
avoidance, desire for praise and acceptance, manipulative purposes.
8. Automatic or controlled?
a. Arousal modes (Hoffman) = mimicry, classical conditioning, direct association (primitive
automatic processes) verbal mediation, role-taking (sophisticated controlled processes)
Summary: empathy is an emotional response (affective), dependent upon the interaction between trait
capacities and state influences. Empathic processes are automatically elicited but are also shaped by top-
down control processes. The resulting emotion is similar to one’s perception (directly experienced or
imagined) and understanding (cognitive empathy) of the stimulus emotion, with recognition that the
source of the emotion is not one’s own.
How do we measure empathy?
Article Van der Graaff et al. – Motor, affective and cognitive empathy in adolescence:
Interrelations between facial electromyography and self-reported trait and state measures
Trait empathy: self-report empathy questionnaire Interpersonal Reactivity Index assessed few months
earlier.
Empathic concern = affective empathy; perspective taking = cognitive empathy.
State empathy evoked in laboratory setting
Materials: sadness inducing film clip; measures: self-reports, facial electromyography (EMG) = facial
mimicry, behavior expression of empathy/sympathy.
Self-report after film exposure
Affective empathy: what did the protagonist feel (how strong)? What did you feel yourself that moment
(how strong)?
Cognitive attribution: why?
1. Irrelevant observations
2. Even characteristics
3. Person characteristics (emotion recognition)
4. Associations with own experiences
5. Observing inner feelings
6. Perspective taking
Affective ToM: Animated-shapes-task
Article Schwenk et al. – Empathy in children with autism and conduct disorder: group-specific profiles
and developmental aspects
ToM: reading the mind in the eyes test.
Conclusion: empathy is a multi-component phenomenon
Methods and measures
Self- and other-report questionnaires = trait
Empathy-inducing film clips/stories = state
Emotion recognition/perspective taking tasks = trait and state
Response measures brain activity, autonomic nervous system activity, motor mimicry/empathic
expression, self-reports.
Lecture 2 Empathy development and moral behavior
Mimicry & primitive empathy
We are born imitators, baby’s already have the tendency to mimic their caretakers. This is not unique for
humans, also in animals. This is the basis for empathy development. Facial imitation of facial emotional
expressions. We keep doing this through life. Elementary emotions are automatically transferred to the
other person.
Arousal modes (Hoffman, 2000)
3 mechanisms in preverbal years: mimicry (innate), classical conditioning (association inner sensations/
feelings to externals stimulus/events; verbal labels) and direct association (understand and feel what
another person feels) = primitive automatic processes.
Adolescence: verbal mediation and role-taking (we keep practicing, we keep better at taking the others
perspective) = sophisticated controlled processes.
, Motor mimicry plays an important role in the development of empathy in the preverbal years and
beyond.
Facial mimicry
Facial electromyography (EMG) studies with healthy adults.
Angry faces: associated with increased activity in corrugator supercilia (eyebrow) muscle.
Happy faces: associated with increased activity in zygomaticus major (cheek) muscle.
You can only examine if it is negative or positive, not what the person exactly feels.
Dynamic expressions
Dynamic angry versus happy expressions based on FACS (short films). Happy face = increase in cheek
muscle, the eyebrow relaxes. Angry face = increase in eyebrow muscle, cheek muscle increases later
(it’s funny to see).
EMG studies with students
- Facial mimicry is rapidly evoked
- Also without conscious awareness
- Difficult to suppress (hard not to move your face, automatic response)
- High empathic persons are more responsive
- Facial mimicry contributes to emotional contagion
Those who mimic more, experience more empathy/the same feelings not too many studies and
mixed results.
Motor, affective and cognitive empathy in adolescence: Interrelations between facial
electromyography and self-reported trait and state empathy
Facial EMG reflects: facial mimicry, behavioral expression of empathy/sympathy.
Amygdala is very sensitive to faces (direct and indirect pathways).
Slow cortical pathways. Human mirror neuron system (MNS). STS (biological motion); Parietal (IPL) &
Frontal (IFG) MNS; Fusiform gyrus (face processing); Amygdala (emotion processing).
Attachment and empathy
Empathy and attachment depend both on empathic sensitivity of the caregiver (know what the child
needs). Infants who experience their caregiver is constantly responsive to their needs will feel safe, gain
confidence and trust. Parental care is rewarding, stimulates oxytocin release which intensifies bonding
and reduces stress. Stress impairs emotion regulation and the development of empathy.
Attachment, empathy and regulation if one is impaired it will influence the other concepts. The child
needs to take over at a certain age = needs a good example from parents.
Still face experiment: stress when the mother doesn’t respond. Research: we like people more who
mirror us. It’s difficult to connect with people who don’t have any expression, it can be stressful
somehow. Mirroring is a way to have contact with another person.
Article Stern & Cassidy: Empathy from infancy to adolescence: An attachment perspective on
the development of individual differences
The sensitivity of the parents is very important for the development of attachment and empathy. IWM:
how to interact with other people, with parents as example. Parent-child discourse: more terms for
emotions, a rich discourse. Emotional & self-regulatory capacities: emotion understanding, effortful
control, emotion regulation, how to cope with the world around you (parent as an example).
Neurobiological programming: stress-response-system, ANS.
Empathy development
Hoffman’s (2000) developmental model
Newborns: reactive cry
First year: egocentric empathic distress (how you want to be comforted yourself)
Second year: quasi-egocentric empathic distress (someone or something else to comfort, like you want
to be comforted with yourself, e.g. a doll or your mother)
Third year: veridical empathic distress (think about how the other child would want to be comforted =
other persons perspective in a primitive way)
Self-oriented Other-oriented
ToM: Sally Ann test a test to see if the child can take the perspective of the other person.
Childhood/adolescence empathy still develops.
Neurobiological correlates
- Affective empathy relies on subcortical limbic and paralimbic structures (early)
- Cognitive empathy relies more on cortical structures (late temporal/prefrontal)
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