Abstract
Social cognition allows humans to understand and predict other people’s behavior by inferring or sharing their emotions, intentions and beliefs. Few studies have investigated the impact of one’s own emotional state on understanding others. Here, we tested the effect of being in an angry state on empathy and theory of mind (ToM). In a between-groups design we manipulated anger status with different paradigms in three studies (autobiographical recall (N = 45), negative feedback (N = 49), frustration (N = 46)) and checked how this manipulation affected empathic accuracy and performance in the EmpaToM. All paradigms were successful in inducing mild anger. We did not find the expected effect of anger on empathy or ToM performance but observed small behavioral changes. Together, our results validate the use of three different anger induction paradigms and speak for rather weak behavioral effects of mild state anger on empathy and ToM.
Highlights
In everyday life, being angry is often associated with irrational decision making, with saying things one regrets later and with being unable or unwilling to understand or share another person’s point of view (“blinded by rage”)
We observed a significant main effect of valence on EA scores (F(1,43) = 49.81, p < .001, ηp2 = .54, 95% CI [.32, .67]), showing higher empathic accuracy for negative videos
A 2 x 2 x 2 (ToM requirement: theory of mind (ToM) vs. nonToM) mixed design ANOVA was run on all four outcome variables of the EmpaToM: affect rating, compassion rating, accuracy and confidence rating
Summary
In everyday life, being angry is often associated with irrational decision making, with saying things one regrets later and with being unable or unwilling to understand or share another person’s point of view (“blinded by rage”). Studies have found a negative correlation between empathy and anger expressions in children [1, 2], as well as impaired empathy in men with a history of legally relevant aggressive behavior [3] It is unclear if a person’s current state of anger affects understanding and sharing mental states of others. We addressed this question by experimentally manipulating anger status before testing participants’ social cognition in established empathy and theory of mind paradigms (empathic accuracy [4]; EmpaToM [5])
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