Empathic Accuracy, Mindfulness, and Facial Emotion Recognition: An Experimental Study

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Empathic accuracy, i.e., the degree to which one is able to accurately infer the emotions of others, may be acutely malleable. We examined this idea by testing the immediate effect of a brief mindfulness intervention or facial emotion recognition training. Methods: Participants were English- or Dutch-speaking psychology students who were assigned to one of three brief intervention conditions (all instructions given in English): (1) verbal instructions for practicing awareness of their body (mindfulness, n = 23); (2) verbal and visual instructions regarding the detection of visual cues for anger, fear, sadness, and happiness (facial emotion recognition training, n = 23); or (3) a verbal, neutral didactic lecture on mindfulness (control, n = 23). Subsequently, participants completed a Dutch-language empathic accuracy task. Results: There was no significant overall difference in empathic accuracy between the three participant subgroups, suggesting no effect of the two target interventions. Nonetheless, even though empathic accuracy appeared unaltered by facial emotion recognition training among participants who understood Dutch well, it was better after this intervention than after the control intervention among participants with a relatively limited understanding of Dutch. Limitations: The study used a small convenience sample. The control condition was listening to a lecture on mindfulness. Empathic accuracy was not assessed at baseline. Moreover, we did not formally assess language understanding, as we did not predict its presumed impact a priori. Conclusions: A better study design is needed to find out whether facial emotion recognition training can help improve empathic accuracy when the understanding of verbal cues is limited.