Empathy development from birth to three: Advances in knowledge from 2000 to 2025.

The empathic abilities have never been examined in bipolar disorder patients, despite frequent observations of impaired social behavior. To examine the neuropsychological processes that underlie the affective and cognitive empathic ability in bipolar disorder, the authors compared affective and cognitive empathic abilities, as well as theory of mind and executive functions, of euthymic bipolar disorder patients and healthy comparison subjects. Significant deficits in cognitive empathy and theory of mind were observed, while affective empathy was elevated in bipolar disorder. Patients showed impaired cognitive flexibility (shifting and reversal learning) but intact planning behavior. Impaired cognitive empathy was related with performance in neurocognitive tasks of cognitive flexibility, suggesting that prefrontal cortical dysfunction may account for impaired cognitive empathy in bipolar disorder.

The enactment of learning to become a science teacher in online mode is an emotionally charged experience. We attend to the formation, maintenance and disruption of social bonds experienced by online preservice science teachers as they shared their emotional online learning experiences through blogs, or e-motion diaries, in reaction to videos of face-to-face lessons. A multi-theoretic framework drawing on microsociological perspectives of emotion informed our hermeneutic interpretations of students’ first-person accounts reported through an e-motion diary. These accounts were analyzed through our own database of emotion labels constructed from the synthesis of existing literature on emotion across a range of fields of inquiry. Preservice science teachers felt included in the face-to-face group as they watched videos of classroom transactions. The strength of these feelings of social solidarity were dependent on the quality of the video recording. E-motion diaries provided a resource for interactions focused on shared emotional experiences leading to formation of social bonds and the alleviation of feelings of fear, trepidation and anxiety about becoming science teachers. We offer implications to inform practitioners who wish to improve feelings of inclusion amongst their online learners in science education.

Personality homophily affects male social bonding in wild Assamese macaques, Macaca assamensis

A deficit in affective rather than cognitive empathy is thought to be central to psychopathic traits. However, empirical evidence for empathy deficits in adolescents with psychopathic traits is limited. We investigated the concurrent and prospective effects of psychopathic traits on affective and cognitive trait empathy in late adolescence. A community sample of 107 males and 126 females who were approximately 16-year olds at Time 1 participated in four annual waves. Sex-specific classes of adolescents' psychopathic traits were created using Latent Class Analyses. Subsequently, we investigated class differences in level and development of empathy. For both sexes, Latent Class Analyses produced two classes: one class with low and one with moderate levels of psychopathic traits. Consistent with our hypothesis, for both sexes, adolescents with moderate levels of psychopathic traits reported lower mean levels of affective empathy than adolescents with low levels of psychopathic traits. In addition, female adolescents with moderate psychopathic traits reported lower mean levels of cognitive empathy. Male adolescents showed a trend in this direction. No differences between classes were found in development of empathy, which increased over years. This is the first study to show that male and female adolescents with higher levels of psychopathic traits have lower levels of affective empathy not only concurrently but also prospectively over a 3-year period. Females additionally showed a similar pattern on cognitive empathy. In this community sample, developmental results suggest that adolescents with higher levels of psychopathic traits have relative rather than absolute empathy deficits.

Empathy is integral to effective civil discourse because it enables people to understand others’ perspectives (cognitive) and feel concern toward others’ feelings (affective). Although no studies have empirically investigated agricultural communications students’ empathy development, scholars in other disciplines have identified improvisational role-play exercises as effective means to develop students’ empathy skills. Therefore, we sought to determine how paired role-play discussions affected agricultural communications students’ empathy development when compared to class-wide discussions during the course of one semester using a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group research design. The pretest-posttest survey instrument included Reniers et al.’s (2011) Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy. Using Kolb’s (1981) experiential learning cycle as a guide, we developed study materials (i.e., lectures, case studies, readings, discussion exercises) focused on relevant skills needed to meet industry demands (i.e., brand assimilation, consumer engagement, public relations, content marketing) and implemented the materials during four class periods. We only facilitated active experimentation through role-play with students in the treatment group. After analyzing the data from 53 usable pretest-posttest responses using a mixed design repeated measures ANOVA, we found that paired role-play discussions and class-wide discussions, both focused on recognizing and affirming opposing perspectives, statistically significantly improved students’ cognitive empathy and total empathy, but not affective empathy. Therefore, we recommend instructors facilitate the type of discussion that would suit their teaching style, classroom dynamic, and students’ learning style best. If an improvement in affective empathy is also desired, then adapting the materials to include a focus on emotion contagion is necessary.

Preschoolers face new challenges in their social life: the development of social and emotional abilities in order to have positive relationships with peers and adults. Empathy, the ability to share and understand the emotions of others, contributes to this socio-emotional adjustment. This exploratory study examines mothers and fathers' perceptions of their child's empathy and individual factors, such as age, gender, and personality, which are related to cognitive and affective empathy in 63 typically developing preschoolers. Links between children's individual characteristics (empathy and personality) and their social adjustment on the one hand and risk of developing internalized vs. externalized behaviors on the other were also investigated. Parents completed four questionnaires about their child's empathy, personality, and social (mal)adjustment. The results showed that mothers and fathers perceived their children's cognitive and affective empathy, attention to others' feelings, and social actions (such as helping), in the same way, except for emotion contagion. Gender differences appeared specifically for some components of empathy: girls were said to pay more attention to others' emotions while boys had better cognitive empathy. Moreover, children's empathy as perceived by mothers or fathers was positively linked with their age, and with personality factors (extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, and openness to experience). Cognitive empathy and personality were found to be partly related to higher social skills and lower externalized and internalized behaviors. The results nuanced specific links between cognitive and affective empathy and social adjustment as well as behavior problems at preschool age. These results may have some implications for future research and prevention in childhood.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this article is to deepen the knowledge of the significance of developing empathy in the upbringing of young people. This issue concerns various contexts, in which specific patterns and other cultural factors may negatively affect this process. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The primary focus of the study was to investigate the relationship between the development of cognitive empathy among the younger generations and their sociocultural environment. The research approach included a comparative analysis that utilized qualitative data collected through ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Polish regions of Masovia and Podlasie. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The considerations involved several sequential stages, beginning with the presentation of theoretical underpinnings and followed by the examination and explanation of the results of the qualitative research. The final stage entails the construction of postulates and the derivation of conclusions. RESEARCH RESULTS: The comparative study demonstrates the fact that there is a need to con- duct further research on the significance of the social and cultural factors that influence adolescents’ and children’s cognitive empathy development. These phenomena not only play an important role in building peer relationships, but they also influence the quality of relationships formed later in adult life. CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS AND APPLICABLE VALUE OF RESEARCH: It is crucial to attain a more comprehensive understanding of the cultural and social factors that inhibit the development of cognitive empathy and morality in young people. Studies indicate that fostering cognitive empathy can diminish the inclination toward aggression and violence within peer groups. It is imperative to continue investigating the origins of peer violence across diverse cultural settings. Consequently, there is a pressing need to undertake further research at both the local and global scales.

The relationship between cognitive failures and empathy

Oxytocin receptor and vasopressin receptor 1a genes are respectively associated with emotional and cognitive empathy

P.1.a.027 Second-to-fourth digit ratio is associated with cognitive empathy in men depending on common polymorphism in the oxytocin receptor gene

Individual differences in local gray matter density are associated with differences in affective and cognitive empathy

As a vital ability for everyday communication and survival in a socical environment, empathy, including affective empathy and cognitive empathy, plays a crucial role in helping individuals feel, understand and share the emotional state of others. Affective empathy was defined as sharing experiences of emotional states perceived in others, including emotional contagion and affective perspective taking; cognitive empathy involves the ability to engage in the cognitive processes of adopting another′s psychological point of view as well as understanding other′s affective and cognitive mental states, similar to Theory of Mind (ToM). Given that empathy provides the foundation of motivation and emotion in individual moral development, it can be used in clinical practice to optimize the medical treatment by promoting patient–physician communication, reducing patients′ anxiety and distress. Thus, it is full of social significance and clinical meaning to comprehensively and deeply explore the biological basis of empathy. To get a better understanding of empathy, this paper will review relevant research on empathy and list the possible influential factors that may affect one′s empathy. First, based on the evidence from neuroimaging study on both healthy individuals and patients with brain lesions, we summarized the neural basis of affective empathy and cognitive empathy. These findings indicate that affective empathy involves specific brain areas, such as insula, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). In contrast, ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is specific to cognitive empathy. Second, we expatiated the factors related to endocrine system that may influence individuals′ empathy and their related behaviors. Whereas oxytocin facilitates the response of empathy, testerone weakens it. In addition, fetal testosterone would influence the development of individual empathy. Third, the development of empathy can also be affected by the genetic polymorphism of oxytocin receptor (OXTR), zinc finger protein 804A (ZNF804A), serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR), and D4 dopamine receptor (DRD4). With the development of a child, the influences of environmental factors, such as characteristics of family members, parenting styles, and schooling, on empathy cannot be ignored. Taken all these possible factors into account, a theoretical framework for understanding empathy is proposed, which comprehensively reveals the biological basis of empathy and how it can be affected by genetics, environment, endocrine, and brain. Furthermore, we discussed the shortcomings of previous studies on empathy, mainly due to the small sample size and/or the isolation of influential factors from the whole theoretical framework. Finally, we emphasized that further investigations on empathy should focus on longitudinal studies with large sample size, and make efforts to reveal the interactions of the influential factors (e.g. genetics, environment, endocrine and brain). More importantly, experimental findings of empathy research should be well explained and translated to the social and clinical applications, as the improvement of empathy can be used in promoting social harmony and enhancing clinical treatment.

Empathy is the ability to generate emotional responses (i.e., cognitive empathy) and to make cognitive inferences (i.e., affective empathy) to other people's emotions. Empirical evidence suggests that patients with bipolar disorder (BD) exhibit impairment in cognitive empathy, but findings on affective empathy are inconsistent. Few studies have examined the neural mechanisms of cognitive and affective empathy in patients with BD. In this study, we examined the empathy-related resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in BD patients. Thirty-seven patients with BD and 42 healthy controls completed the self-report Questionnaires of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE), the Yoni behavioural task, and resting-sate fMRI brain scans. Group comparison of empathic ability was conducted. The interactions between group and empathic ability on seed-based whole brain rsFC were examined. BD patients scored lower on the Online Simulation subscale of the QCAE and showed positive correlations between cognitive empathy and the rsFC of the dorsal Medial Prefrontal Cortex (dmPFC) with the lingual gyrus. The correlations between cognitive empathy and the rsFC of the temporal-parietal junction (TPJ) with the fusiform gyrus, the cerebellum and the parahippocampus were weaker in BD patients than that in healthy controls. These findings highlight the underlying neural mechanisms of empathy impairments in BD patients.

Event Abstract Back to Event Anatomical differences in empathy related brain areas: A voxel-based morphometry study Robert Eres1*, Jean Decety2, 3, Winnifred Louis1 and Pascal Molenberghs1 1 The University of Queensland, School of Psychology, Australia 2 The University of Chicago, Department of Psychology, United States 3 The University of Chicago, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, United States Understanding empathy from a neuroscientific perspective has taken precedence recently with several fMRI studies associating different brain regions with different components of empathy. A recent meta-analysis across 40 fMRI studies revealed that affective empathy (vicariously sharing others emotions) is most often associated with activity in the insula, whereas cognitive empathy (reasoning about others emotions) is most often associated with activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and adjacent dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dACC/dmPFC; Fan et al., 2011). To date, however, it remains unclear whether individual differences in brain morphometry in these regions underlie different capabilities in affective and cognitive empathy. In order to test this hypothesis, we used voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to analyse grey matter density using scores from an established empathy measure (Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy; QCAE) as regressors. One hundred and seventy-six participants completed the QCAE and underwent MRI in order to acquire a high-resolution, three-dimensional T1-weighted image. A factor analysis of the questionnaire scores revealed two distinct factors of empathy, affective and cognitive, which confirmed the validity of the QCAE. VBM results revealed grey matter density differences associated with the different constructs of empathy, whereby, higher scores of affective empathy were related to greater grey matter density in the insula and higher scores of cognitive empathy were related to greater grey matter density in the dACC/dmPFC. Taken together, the results shown here provide validation for empathy being a multi-component construct, suggesting that affective and cognitive empathy are differentially represented in brain morphometry. Keywords: Empathy, MRI, voxel-based morphometry, affective empathy, cognitive empathy Conference: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Emotional and Social Processes Citation: Eres R, Decety J, Louis W and Molenberghs P (2015). Anatomical differences in empathy related brain areas: A voxel-based morphometry study. Conference Abstract: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00187 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 19 Feb 2015; Published Online: 24 Apr 2015. * Correspondence: Mr. Robert Eres, The University of Queensland, School of Psychology, Brisbane, Australia, r.eres@uq.edu.au Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Robert Eres Jean Decety Winnifred Louis Pascal Molenberghs Google Robert Eres Jean Decety Winnifred Louis Pascal Molenberghs Google Scholar Robert Eres Jean Decety Winnifred Louis Pascal Molenberghs PubMed Robert Eres Jean Decety Winnifred Louis Pascal Molenberghs Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

ART EDUCATION AND THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF AFFECTIVE AND COGNITIVE EMPATHY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD By Luke Meeken, BFA A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art Education at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2013. Major Director: Dr. Sara Wilson McKay, Art Education Chair, School of the Arts This study constructs a theoretical framework for exploring the relationship between art education practice and the development of empathy in early childhood. In this study, I construct a schema for the experience of empathy in kindergarten-aged students, derived from the work of Martin Hoffman, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Vittorio Gallese, which acknowledges both the affective and cognitive dimensions of the experience of empathy. This schema is examined within the context of aesthetic and artistic experience, as distinguished from each other by John Dewey. I articulate several ways that art education’s cultivation of subtle aesthetic perception may encourage affective empathy, and its cultivation of imaginative cognition may encourage cognitive empathy. Suggestions are made for projects and practice in the early childhood classroom.