Prosocial Behavior and Empathy

Objectives: This study sought to determine the mediating effect of altruism behavior in the relationship between cognitive and emotional empathy of adolescents affecting psychological well-being. In order to improve adolescents’ psychological well-being, which is a time when they experience rapid changes emotionally and physically, useful information on factors that affect psychological well-being can be provided.Methods: The subjects of the study were 282 teenagers aged 16 to 18 living across the country (136 men and 146 women) through online survey companies. Adolescents responded to questions on empathy, altruism, and psychological well-being. The collected data used Pearson's right-rate correlation analysis and structural equation models using SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 23.0 programs. After that, the statistical significance of the mediating effect was confirmed using the direct and indirect effect verification and bootstrapping method between variables.Results: The main findings are as follows. First, analysis of the correlation between research variables revealed a static correlation between emotional empathy and altruism behavior, altruism behavior and cognitive empathy, and psychological well-being and altruism. Next, as a result of examining the structural path between research variables, cognitive empathy and emotional empathy showed a significant correlation with altruistic behavior, and altruistic behavior showed a significant correlation with psychological wellbeing. Finally, cognitive empathy and emotional empathy influenced psychological well-being through altruistic behavior.Conclusion: Adolescents’ cognitive and emotional empathy affect psychological well-being through altruistic behavior. These results indicate that both cognitive and emotional empathy are not only helpful to others, but also play an important role in one’s own psychological adaptation and well-being. Adolescents not only express sympathy and empathy, but also pay attention to others’ feelings, which can become a factor that can actually lead to actions for others; furthermore, such actions can improve the happiness of individual adolescents. These findings revealed efforts to understand and sympathize with others is meaningful to enhance the happiness of ordinary adolescents in public education sites where competition is overheated, and happiness is reduced.

Empathy and social cognition among adolescents have been mainly studied in recent years. There are several reasons that adolescence and social cognition are being studied. Adolescents find themselves fully facing the external world and equipped with social cognitive skills, including emotional and cognitive empathy, along with the theory of mind acquired at home or school. Now, they must interact with others with diverse views, thoughts, and emotions from society. One of the fundamental components of social cognition among adolescents is described as empathy. Archival techniques are used in this review paper. This paper explores the connection between empathy and social cognition in adolescent development and how emotional and cognitive empathy influence social cognitive skills. It also investigates the changes in brain regions to social cognition and empathy among adolescents. Identifying this relationship reveals that emotional and cognitive empathy are both indispensable in the construct of social cognition during the adolescence period. The findings of the study point to the need for assessing the different components of empathy in psychopathological conditions among adolescents, which is marked by difficulties in emotional identification and expression. Developing a typical training program that improves social cognitive skills may help adolescents track their behavior in every aspect.

This study draws on diverse research results from investigating the relationship between experiences with nonhuman animal abuse and empathy. We examined whether 108 men with a history of animal abuse showed differences between cognitive (perspective-taking) and affective (emotional) empathy. The effects related to three levels (never, once, multiple times) of witnessing the killing of animals and witnessing the torture of animals. Individuals who witnessed abuse were higher in cognitive empathy than affective empathy. This supports previous findings for a “dissociation hypothesis,” which suggests exposure to animal abuse may mediate between emotional and cognitive empathy. Therefore, it may be beneficial for an individual to have the ability to detach cognitive from emotional empathy—particularly those in careers related to animal welfare and veterinary care. An absence of emotional empathy may also lead to a callous or dismissive attitude to people in need. We sought an appropriate balance of the two.

Empathy is the crux of User centric design. User will be satisfied only when designer is capable of understanding the user needs in-toto. To understand the user completely, designer must have at least average cognitive and emotional empathy. Deficit in any one of the empathy in designer, will make him to empathize the user in wrong way. Thus there is need to test the cognitive empathy and emotional empathy of the designer by using Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale. This test will help to identify the empathy of the designer. Low cognitive and emotional empathy level needs specific training. This paper is focused only on the need for testing cognitive and emotional empathy so that designer will be fortified and overcome his deficit, for comprehensively understanding of the user.

ABSTRACTDespite advances in the conceptualisation of facial mimicry, its role in the processing of social information is a matter of debate. In the present study, we investigated the relationship between mimicry and cognitive and emotional empathy. To assess mimicry, facial electromyography was recorded for 70 participants while they completed the Multifaceted Empathy Test, which presents complex context-embedded emotional expressions. As predicted, inter-individual differences in emotional and cognitive empathy were associated with the level of facial mimicry. For positive emotions, the intensity of the mimicry response scaled with the level of state emotional empathy. Mimicry was stronger for the emotional empathy task compared to the cognitive empathy task. The specific empathy condition could be successfully detected from facial muscle activity at the level of single individuals using machine learning techniques. These results support the view that mimicry occurs depending on the social context as a tool to affiliate and it is involved in cognitive as well as emotional empathy.

Introduction In spite of well-documented empathy impairments in substance use disorders and significant overlap in neurobiological and cognitive functioning with behavioral addictions such as gambling disorder (GD), little is known about empathy impairments in GD. The aim of this study was thus to investigate cognitive and emotional empathy and its association with cognitive functioning in GD. Methods Twenty-five treatment-seeking individuals diagnosed with GD, 25 recently detoxified patients diagnosed with alcohol use disorder (AUD), and 25 healthy controls (HCs) were assessed using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (self-report measure), and the Multifaceted Empathy Test (behavioral measure) to assess cognitive and emotional empathy, along with three clinical and three cognitive measures. Results The GD group scored lower on self-report empathy compared to the AUD group. Additionally, using the behavioral measure, the GD group exhibited lower cognitive empathy compared to HCs but intact emotional empathy. The AUD group, on the other hand, showed higher emotional empathy compared to HCs but intact cognitive empathy. The GD group did not differ from HCs on cognitive measures, but they outperformed the AUD group on the cognitive flexibility task. Specific correlations between cognitive and empathy measures were observed in both clinical groups. Conclusion The behavioral empathy results showed a dissociation between cognitive and emotional empathy impairments in the two different types of addiction, suggesting distinct foci for therapeutic interventions.

Empathy is crucial for successful interpersonal interactions, and it is impaired in many psychiatric and neurological disorders. Action-perception matching, or action simulation mechanisms, has been suggested to facilitate empathy by supporting the simulation of perceived experience in others. However, this remains unclear, and the involvement of the action simulation circuit in cognitive empathy (the ability to adopt another’s perspective) vs emotional empathy (the capacity to share and react affectively to another’s emotional experience) has not been quantitatively compared. Presently, healthy adults completed a classic cognitive empathy task (false belief), an emotional empathy task and an action simulation button-pressing task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Conjunction analyses revealed common recruitment of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), thought to be critical for action-perception matching, during both action simulation and emotional, but not cognitive, empathy. Furthermore, activation was significantly greater in action simulation regions in the left IFG during emotional vs cognitive empathy, and activity in this region was positively correlated with mean feeling ratings during the emotional empathy task. These findings provide evidence for greater involvement of action simulation mechanisms in emotional than cognitive empathy. Thus, the action simulation circuit may be an important target for delineating the pathophysiology of disorders featuring emotional empathy impairments.

Relative deprivation is one of the factors that influences the development of personality and behavior. However, it is still unclear whether and how relative deprivation decreases the prosocial behavior in adolescents. This study aimed to examine the association between relative deprivation and adolescent prosocial behavior and the role of emotion regulation strategies and empathy in modifying this association. The present study included 609 secondary school students (M = 15.42 years, SD = 0.653) in Fujian Province, China. All participants completed the Relative Deprivation Questionnaire, Emotion Regulation Scale, the Basic Empathy Scale, and Prosocial Behavior Scale. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS 25.0 and Mplus 7.4. Relative deprivation was negatively correlated with cognitive reappraisal, but positively correlated with expressive suppression. Cognitive reappraisal was positively correlated with empathy and prosocial behavior, but expressive suppression was not. Empathy was positively correlated with prosocial behavior. Relative deprivation decreased prosocial behavior through (a) cognitive reappraisal, (b) empathy, and (c) chain mediation of cognitive reappraisal and empathy. No significant mediating effect of expressive suppression was found. The results indicate that relative deprivation decreases adolescent prosocial behavior, and that cognitive reappraisal and empathy are the potential psychological mechanisms that affect the association between relative deprivation and adolescent prosocial behavior.

Purpose: This study aimed to develop and evaluate the effects of an empathy education program for undergraduate nursing students. Methods: The study employed a non-equivalent control group pretest-posttest design. A total of 46 nursing students were voluntarily recruited by convenience sampling from senior nursing students from the nursing department of K college in I city, Korea. Participants were divided into two groups, an experimental group of 23 and a control group of 23. The experimental intervention (empathy education program) was conducted from April 19 to May 6, 2016 and consisted of 150-minute sessions, twice a week, for 3 weeks for a total of 15 hours. Results: Participants demonstrated improvements in perspective taking in cognitive empathy, improved empathic concern in emotional empathy, and improved communicative empathy. Analysis of reflective writings identified four theme clusters regarding communicative empathy: improvement of empathic expression, experiencing comfort and healing, improvement of interpersonal relationships, and experience of conflict resolution. Improved interpersonal ability and caring were also identified. Conclusion: The empathy education program improved cognitive, emotional and communicative empathy, and interpersonal skills and care, which are all necessary qualities for nurses.

The genetic and environmental origins of emotional and cognitive empathy: Review and meta-analyses of twin studies

Results of previous studies have been inconsistent over the role of emotional and cognitive empathy in aggressive and antisocial behavior. The aim of this study is to clarify the specific nature of the empathic profiles associated with different types of amoral behavior (induced by impulsivity, frustration and brutality), measured through self-reports. The sample consists of male prisoners who have committed violent and non-violent types of offenses (robberies and thefts) and the control group with no criminal history (N=200). Results demonstrate that general amorality which combines all three types of amoral attitudes is negatively associated both with emotional and cognitive empathy, but the association with the emotional empathy is much stronger one. On the other hand, amorality induced by frustration (characterized by resentment, dark picture of reality which justifies personal Machiavellianism) is positively associated with cognitive empathy which might be used for manipulation. These results provide guidelines for empathy trainings for offenders, highlighting the significance of increasing emotional empathy

This thesis argued that empathy is a two-dimensional dispositional trait, dependent upon aspects of an individual’s socialisation and dispositional temperament; and as a pro-social emotion influenced by the nature and closeness of an individual’s relationship towards a specific peer. It focussed upon peer relationships across everyday interactions and bullying behaviours were assessed by the Participant Role Scale. Five studies were conducted. Study 1 investigated the development and the reliability of the Cognitive and Affective Empathy Scale for Younger Children (CAES-C) using test-retest methodology. There were two main factor loadings of empathy; one (affective) and two (cognitive). Girls scored higher levels of empathy than boys and were more cognitively empathetic to same gender peers. Study 2 measured bullies, bully-victims and non-bullying roles (victims, outsiders and defenders) empathy levels. It found that defenders had higher cognitive empathy levels than victim-bullies and combined bullying roles. Study 3 used an adaptation of the CAES-C with adolescents (CAES-C/A). Findings corresponded to Study One, with two main factors of affective and cognitive empathy. Studies 4 and 5 investigated the effectiveness of two anti-bullying interventions, an adaptation of the Support Group Method, and Circle Time, using the CAES-C/A as an outcome measure. It found girls had higher cognitive empathy towards same gender peers, as in Study 1 and more likely to have a greater understanding of another girls social and situational perceptions. Both interventions were effective in enhancing cognitive and developing affective empathy. However, results indicated especially in younger ages and for opposite gender peers that affective empathy was predominately a dispositional trait, dependent upon the emotionality and temperament of a specific individual; and cognitive empathy was a more fluid construct which had a greater chance of being heightened. In conclusion the CAES-C and CAES-C/A allowed a useful baseline measure of empathy.

Childhood disruptive behaviour has been linked to later antisocial and criminal behaviour. Emotion recognition and empathy impairments, thought to be caused by inattention to the eye region, are hypothesised to contribute to antisocial and criminal behaviour. This is the first study to simultaneously examine emotion recognition and empathy impairments, their relationship, and the mechanism behind these impairments, in children with disruptive behaviour. We hypothesised that children with disruptive behaviour would exhibit negative emotion recognition and cognitive and affective empathy impairments, but that these impairments would not be due to reduced attention to the eye region. We expected these emotion impairments to be driven by disruptive behaviour. We also expected a relationship between emotion recognition and cognitive empathy only. Ninety-two children with disruptive behaviour, who were participating in a police crime prevention programme and rated by their schoolteacher using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (DB; mean age 8.8 years, 80% male), took part. There was a comparison group of 58 typically developing children (TD; mean age 9.7 years, 78% male). All children completed emotion recognition and empathy tasks, both with concurrent eye tracking to assess social attention. Not only were DB children significantly impaired in negative emotion and neutral emotion recognition, and in cognitive and affective empathy compared to the TD children, but severity of disruptive behaviour also predicted intensity of emotion impairments. There were no differences in social attention to the eye region. Negative emotion recognition and empathy impairments are already present in an identifiable group of children displaying disruptive behaviour. These findings provide evidence to encourage the use of targeted interventions.

Many bystander training programs aim to build empathy and decrease false and often prejudicial beliefs about rape and its occurrence (i.e., rape myth acceptance) to encourage prosocial bystander intervention. However, little empirical research has examined the association between these constructs. The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of rape myth acceptance on the relation between both (a) the ability to experience and share the emotions of others (i.e., emotional empathy) and (b) the ability to understand the emotions of others (i.e., cognitive empathy), and bystander decision-making and intentions to intervention. In Study 1, 154 undergraduate men completed measures of empathy, rape myth acceptance, and bystander decision-making. Findings demonstrated that emotional empathy was associated with more perceived pros for intervention among men with low, but not high, levels of rape myth acceptance. In Study 2, 185 undergraduate men and 210 undergraduate women completed similar measures as in Study 1, with the addition of a measure on bystander intentions to intervene. Results detected a conditional indirect effect of emotional and cognitive empathy on bystander intentions to intervene via the perception that there are more pros than cons to intervention. Findings suggest that empathic individuals may weigh helping a potential victim (i.e., pro) over hurting their own self-image (i.e., con). However, this process is inhibited among men who endorse greater rape myths, likely because they are inhibited from intervening at various steps of the decision-making model. Collectively, these results highlight the importance of targeting both empathy and rape myth acceptance to encourage prosocial bystander intervention.

Emotional and cognitive empathy in patients with non-epileptic seizures