Concept Of Empathy Research Articles

How do laypeople define empathy?

ABSTRACT The term “empathy” is popular, yet fuzzy. How laypeople define it has not been investigated. In Study 1, we analyzed 99 participants’ free narratives describing their personal definition, and in Study 1 (N = 191) and Study 2 (N = 351), we asked participants to rate a list of specific behaviors and tendencies for how well each one matched their personal definition. Out of 10 coded components, perspective taking was mentioned most often and personal distress (anxious reactivity in emotional situations) was never mentioned. Item ratings revealed four Empathy Concept factors: Prosocial Emotional Response, Interpersonal Perceptiveness, Other Perspective, and Anxious Reactivity. Other Perspective and Prosocial Emotional Response were most highly endorsed while Anxious Reactivity showed the lowest endorsement. Individuals varied widely in their endorsements of the factors. These results demonstrate that laypeople hold a multifactorial set of definitions of empathy and differ widely from one another in which ones they endorse.

Envisioning the Experience of Others: Moral Imagination, Practical Wisdom and the Scope of Empathy

The concept of empathy has gained appeal in many educational initiatives in recent years, notably in the charitable sector, yet conceptual confusions endure and the challenges associated with educating for empathy tend not to receive the attention they deserve. This article strives to help clarify the concept of empathy for educative purposes by examining one such challenge—conceived as "narrow empathetic scope"—drawing on central ideas from neo-Aristotelian virtue theory. The article explores the ways in which moral imagination, as a precursor to empathy, may be uniquely able to assist with the cultivation of practical wisdom in children since it enables them to visualize contexts they have not yet encountered and broaden the moral lens through which they approach and assess their lived experience. The article will also present the Philosophy for Children model as an effective pedagogical method for cultivating the virtue of empathy through morally imaginative dialogue.

Comics as Covid-19 response

This article and accompanying comic strip/poster explore the narrative research affordances of comics in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We explore the concept of empathy from a self-conscious auto-ethnographic perspective, producing a co-designed one-page comic out of the experience. The comic depicts two middle-aged brothers in conversation with their mother and father on FaceTime. After initial confusion and mild struggle with the technology, the parents adjust to the communication situation and begin to enjoy communicating with their sons, who make light of the situation. The aim of the comic is to persuade readers that it is better to struggle with and accommodate to technology than to risk visiting elderly relatives who are particularly susceptible to COVID 19. Meanwhile, the reflection on the comic discusses the thought processes and materials that went into creating it and implications of those.

From the Sunken Place to the Shitty Place: The Film Get Out, Psychic Emancipation and Modern Race Relations From a Psychodynamic Clinical Perspective

Increasingly, as analysts and psychotherapists, we engage in racial encounters that challenge concepts of empathy, neutrality, and anonymity. This paper attempts to enter this dynamic space to uncover the utility of working within racial tensions for its inherent therapeutic value. Part of this challenge for the clinician, who often identifies and is identified as liberal, is to acknowledge the ubiquity of race as unconsciously structuralizing along with our defenses against this recognition. The intransigence of racism, as formed intrapsychically and discovered in our working functions as analysts and psychotherapists, when not actively challenged and reflected on will be explored. Attempts to explicate the indelible effects of race in the American clinician will be provided that goes beyond countertransference or enactments. Clinical examples and connections to modern cinema are utilized to provide a framework to advance our knowledge in working with racial material.

Reactualización, empatía e historia

La idea de reactualización es un concepto básico de la filosofía de la historia a partir de R. G. Collingwood. Esta idea es inseparable de los conceptos de empatía, mente y valores y sentimientos morales. Este es un estudio de esos conceptos desde los puntos de vista filosófico, psicológico e histórico. Mediante cuatro casos: el dar muerte, la visión médica del holocausto y, la experiencia de los manicomios y los sentimientos de los enfermos mentales se muestra el valor y los límites de la Idea de Reactualización.
 Palabras clave
 Reactualización, empatía, mente, sentimientos y valores morales, dar muerte, holocausto, manicomios.

Empathic Accuracy in Clinical Populations.

Empathy, broadly defined as the ability to understand the other and to share others’ emotions, motivates prosocial behavior and underlies successful interpersonal relations. Dysfunctions in this ability may cause fundamental difficulties in social communication. Empathy has been measured in various ways, from self-report questionnaires to laboratory objective performance tests. Empathic accuracy (EA), i.e., the ability to accurately empathize, is measured using more complex and ecological paradigms, such as asking participants to infer filmed interactions, or having people narrate personal emotional stories then assessing the correspondence between the perceiver and the target of empathy as the criteria for empathic ability. This measure is particularly useful in the study of clinical populations, where deconstructing the multifaceted concept of empathy may contribute to a more complete understanding of specific clinical profiles. This paper presents a scoping review of the literature on EA in clinical populations, and on EA and clinical traits and states in nonclinical or high-risk populations. Following an exhaustive literature search, 34 studies were found eligible to be included in this review. The largest category was studies focused on EA in people with schizophrenia (31%; 11 papers), followed by studies focused on EA in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and autistic traits in a nonclinical population (22%; 8 papers). Studies were also found on EA and depression tendencies, psychopathy, social anxiety, behavior disorders, and personality disorders, and a few other clinical conditions. The included studies varied on research aims, designs, sample sizes, and male:female ratios. The overall synthesized results suggest that EA is reduced in schizophrenia and ASD. In other clinical populations, the number of studies was very limited. We urge researchers to further examine EA in these less-studied populations. The review reveals a general underrepresentation of female participants in studies on EA in clinical populations. We suggest that future research address understudied clinical populations, such as those diagnosed with psychopathy. Subject, target, and situational variables should also be considered, with special attention to gender differences (and similarities), the association between EA abilities and adaptive functioning, and the study of individuals with clinical conditions as targets, not just observers, in EA tasks.

Do I feel or do I know? Neuroimaging meta-analyses on the multiple facets of empathy

Empathy is a multidimensional construct including affective and cognitive components while maintaining the distinction between one-self and others. Our meta-analyses focused on shared and distinct networks underlying cognitive (taking somebody else's perspective in emotional/painful situations) and affective (self-referentially feeling somebody else's emotions/pain) empathy for various states including painful and emotional situations. Furthermore, a comparison with direct pain experience was carried out.For cognitive empathy, consistent activation in the anterior dorsal medial frontal gyrus (dmPFG) and the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) occurred. For affective empathy, convergent activation of the posterior dmPFG and the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) was found. Consistent activation of the anterior insula (AI), the anterior dmPFG and the SMG was observed for empathy for pain, while convergent recruitment of the temporo-parietal junction, precuneus, posterior dmPFG, and the IFG was revealed in the meta-analysis across empathy for emotion experiments. The AI and the dmPFG/mid-cingulate cortex (MCC) showed overlapping as well as distinct neural activation for pain processing and empathy for pain.Taken together, we were able to show difference in the meta-analytic networks across cognitive and affective empathy as well as for pain and empathy processing. Based on the current results, distinct functions along the midline structures of the brain during empathy processing are apparent. Our data are lending further support for a multidimensional concept of empathy.

The therapy of ego boundary disorders focusing special attention on structural empathy

ABSTRACT The ability to fully comprehend the mental experience of those suffering from psychotic symptoms can sometimes elude the empathic capabilities of therapists. Even the most experienced psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists have difficulty in dealing with, and understanding the strangeness of the symptoms and their full significance to those affected. Particularly the phenomenon of ego boundary disorders is difficult to compare with other comprehensible experiences due to the extreme level of alienation. Here, an attempt will be made to understand the disorders using psychological and philosophical models, and to reveal the problem in a way that makes a beneficial psychotherapeutic relationship possible. The empathic approach should not restrict itself to just understanding meanings, but must take into account the structural changes. An assessment oriented only on the surface of the symptoms runs the risk of disregarding the full scope of the disorder of those affected. It takes quite fundamental considerations to internal human structures and the concept of empathy in order to cope with the extent of the disorder.

Od empatii do sprawczości. Jak kształtować wrażliwość młodzieży we współczesnej szkole?

Celem artykułu Od empatii do sprawczości. Jak kształtować wrażliwość młodzieży we współczesnej szkole? jest refleksja nad kondycją współczesnej „polityki wrażliwości”, u podstaw której znajduje myślenie o człowieku połączone ze znanym przekonaniem, że: „nic, co ludzkie, nie jest nam obce”.
 Tematyka rozważań koncentruje się na potrzebie kształcenia (rozwijania) wrażliwości humanistycznej młodzieży (szkolnej i akademickiej), żyjącej w globalnym świecie. Wrażliwość traktowana jest jako: 1) naczelne zadanie szkolnej edukacji polonistycznej, 2) ważna wartość i potrzebna kompetencja społeczno-kulturowa.
 Ukazany został związek między pojęciem empatii a bardziej pojemną kategorią wrażliwości. Rozważania teoretyczne „oświetlono” propozycjami działań, skierowanych szczególnie na praktyczną realizację tematów współcześnie „niemodnych”, tj.: starości, choroby, cierpienia, samotności. Uchwycony został także paradoks świata XXI wieku, zdominowanego przez konsumpcjonizm i wygodę, w którym spotkanie z drugim człowiekiem (w duchu empatii i wrażliwości) może dostarczyć młodym ludziom wiele – wymiernych korzyści osobistych.

The Analysis of the Concept of Empathy Skill in Postgraduate Social Studies Theses

The skill of empathy is mentioned among the basic skills included in the Social Studies Course Teaching Program of the Ministry of National Education. The social studies course is one of the most important courses in which students are made to acquire the information, skills and values which are required to become an effective citizen. Communication has an important place in the achievement of these goals. Empathy is very important in the establishment of effective communication. For this reason, the study aimed to examine the concept of empathy, one of the basic skills included in the Social Studies Course Teaching Program. Afterwards, in the study, it was also aimed to reveal if the students taking postgraduate education in universities in Turkey investigated into the skill of empathy included in the social studies course teaching program in terms of carious variables. For this purpose, the master’s and doctoral theses written under the heading of empathy in the field of Social Studies Education at universities in Turkey between the years of 2000 and 2019 and recorded at the official website of the Higher Education Council National Thesis Center were examined. A total of 17 theses were reached. The data of the study was evaluated in tems of the publication year of the thesis, the gender of the researcher, the university where it was published, the sample groups, the methods of investigation and the subjects of investigation. In the study, the document analysis technique, one of the qualitative research methods, was used.

Can empathy be taught to caregivers?

The concepts of empathy and care are the subject of numerous publications that testify to a surge in interest in the subject. What are the possibilities of teaching empathy to medical and nursing students? A proposed definition and a literature review can be developed to identify the effects of empathy in care and the opportunities for teaching empathy to students and practicing professionals.

Conduites de harcèlement et de cyber-harcèlement chez les adolescents : interrelations et spécificités, place de l’empathie et actions de prise en charge

Background and objectiveThe aim of this study is to examine bullying and cyberbullying among adolescents. Clinical and methodological issues are discussed with the view to nuance some scientific results and common reactions linked to these behaviors. Then, definitions and delimitations of these behaviors are discussed, notably the interrelations and specificities between them. In a next step, the concept of empathy and its implication in bullying and cyberbullying are questioned regarding bullies. Conclusion and implications: some specific and multi-level cognitive-behavioral actions are described to intervene with bullies, victims the peer group and the school environment.

Essential and Neglected: Transforming Classroom Learning through Relationship

ABSTRACTFeatures of the academic context of social work education threaten the loss of traditional educational attention to relational capacity, an indispensable condition for all forms of social work practice and thus a necessary priority for professional education. We argue that the development of relational capacity should occur in classroom as well as in field settings. We propose a conceptual framework for relational classroom teaching that draws on theories of attachment, concepts of empathy and positive regard, relational-cultural theory, recent neuroscience research, and interpersonal neurobiology. Finally, we identify constituent core relational classroom practices that support the development of these competencies.

The effect of educational intervention on enhancing the empathy among nursing students

We conducted a quasi-experimental study with a non-equivalent group design and incorporated empathy training, pre- and post-training empathy measurements of participants in a private nursing college (N=64). Empathy scores were measured using the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (2001) and the educational intervention used was Wlodkowski and Ginsberg's Motivational Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching (1995). Descriptive analysis and paired T-test were used to determine the effect of intervention applied. The study found increased mean score for both control and experimental group during post-intervention as compared to pre-intervention mean score. The result indicates the effectiveness of educational intervention in enhancing empathy among nursing students in the experimental group.

Greek nurses’ perceptions on empathy and empathic care in the Intensive Care Unit

BackgroundEmpathy is a fundamental component of nursing practice impacting positively on the therapeutic process. Understanding the concepts of empathy and empathic care in the context of Intensive Care Units is essential for providing better care in high challenging environments. However, research on empathy in the ICU is scarce and mostly quantitative. ObjectivesTo explore how ICU nurses perceive the concepts of empathy and empathic care. Design and settingA descriptive qualitative research design was applied using an inductive content analysis approach. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nineteen ICU nurses in two hospitals in Greece. FindingsData analysis revealed three main themes namely: “To become one of them”, “Empathic Care” and “Integration of empathic care in practice”. Findings corroborated the affective, cognitive and behavioral components of empathy. Nurses underlined that understaffing, increased workload and professional burnout impeded empathic care. ConclusionEmpathy and empathic care in the ICU were perceived as closely related to patients’ outcomes and quality care. Empathic care was arduous due to organisational issues. Despite that, ICU nurses appeared to promote empathic care in practice and sought ways to enhance it.

The empathy continuum: An evidenced-based teaching model derived from an integrative review of contemporary nursing literature.

This paper has twoaims : first, to explain the concept of empathy derived from an integrative review of contemporary nursing literature; and second, to profile a new conceptual model that can be used to inform the teaching of empathy. Empathy is fundamental to therapeutic communication and integral to quality patient care. However, the lack of agreement on the definition or conceptualisation of empathy in the nursing literature can make teaching and evaluating this skill challenging and inconsistent. Integrative review of literature. Publications from January 2000 to July 2018 in Ovid Medline, Scopus, CINAHLPlus, PsycINFO, and PubMed. As no integrative review checklists are currently available, a PRISMA checklist was adapted to guide this review. A two-stage approach was used to explore the concept of empathy. Key definitions and attributes of empathy were identified from 11 primary studies and tabulated to allow for display and comparison. Next, the definitions and attributes of empathy drawn from a purposeful sample of 18 nursing education studies were examined, tabulated and summarised. Finally, the two samples were integrated and synthesised to form a cohesive summary, which was then illustrated with teaching and learning exemplars. Despite the lack of consensus on the definitions of empathy evident in the literature, recurring attributes and elements of empathy were evident, leading to the development of a new empathy model. Patterns of consistency in the attributes of empathy that emerged from the review provided the basis for a new conceptual model, termed "The Empathy Continuum." Each of the stages in the Empathy Continuum can be used to teach learners the meaning, attributes and application of empathy in practice. The model will be relevant to nurse educators as well as educators from other disciplines.

Исследование эмпатии: критический анализ и новые перспективы

The purpose of this work is to critically analyze the current state of empathy research as well as to discuss some new lines of research. The relevance of addressing the concept of empathy can be explained in the following manner: if we assume that empathy is associated with helping behavior (some researchers of empathy tend in favor of this interpretation), then in the actual situation associated with the processes of globalization as a whole (interaction with members of other cultures), as well as with a high level of migration processes, researchers are faced with a challenge of finding the factors which promote empathic reactions towards the members of other cultures. On the other hand, the concept of empathy, introduced into psychology in 1909 by E. Titchener, has a rather long history in science, but as far as the literature analysis suggests, researchers differ significantly not only in their understanding and definitions of this phenomenon, or in their explanations tof he mechanisms of empathy, but also in methods of its measurement. Although the possibility of consensus is not considered, however, reflection regarding empathy and methods of its measurement is seen as necessary. This paper outlines some perspectives on empathy research, in particular, in the context of intergroup relations.

Measurable predictors of hermeneutic empathy: relationship focus and emotional intelligence

In modern scientific literature today, two areas of study of empathy have emerged: empathy as compassion and an emotional response to the situation of the Other and empathy as a “tool of knowledge”. The widespread use of this concept in advisory practice prompts to clarify and concretize this important concept. The author clarifies the Rogerian concept of empathy, which is widespread in Russian psychology. The paper presents a pilot study of two groups of psychology students, one of which is attuned to relationships as an important criterion for the effectiveness of counselling, the other group considers the client's motivation to be significant. The study of emotional empathy and emotional intelligence confirmed the hypothesis that students who are attuned to relationships will have lower emotional empathy, while emotional intelligence as an indirect indicator of hermeneutic empathy is higher, and vice versa in the second group. The study showed the statistical significance of these differences on some scales and on the manifestation of emotional empathy. The paper proposes a substantiation for this phenomenon. Also, the ability for hermeneutic empathy as another way of non-verbal communication can be indirectly confirmed by the diagnosis of emotional intelligence.

Event concept of EMPATHY in English juvenile fantasy prose

The article deals with the research of lingual cognitive and pragmatic aspects of empathy in juvenile fantasy prose. It reveals the nature of empathy from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, linguistic emotiology, and pragmalinguistics. The properties of empathy verbalization in juvenile fantasy prose are researched, namely the lexical and grammatical means of verbalization of the corresponding concepts and empathic illocutionary types of psychological support in discursive contexts of the English juvenile fantasy prose. The implementation of both pragmatic and lingual cognitive research findings in the light of cognitive-discursive paradigm revealed the basis of empathy conceptualization and the multifaceted empathic context. The interpretation of empathy meaning is performed by means of schematic cognitive mapping, as well as via establishing the correlation of empathy determinants in discursive contexts which present the communicative strategy of empathy. The componential analysis of definitions of various affective and cognitive states and processes connected with empathy, such as compassion, understanding, sympathy etc., as well as their antonyms, and determination of weight, status and hierarchy of the corresponding semes in vocabulary definitions, showed that generally accepted and empirically proved division of empathy into affective and cognitive is reflected in the language. The analyses revealed affective (feeling, sympathy, sorrow) cognitive (knowledge, ability, understanding) semes in the definitions of empathy types attributing them to either affective or cognitive group. Types of empathy, which belong to the same affective or cognitive group, are not equal in the degree of empathy manifestation. The factor or driving force for upgrading (or downgrading) to a different level is action. While partly addressing social functioning, empathy is turned to cognition and emotion, thus being framed as a social psychological event concept. As an event concept empathy emerges in consciousness and in verbal behavior under the influence of human activity in a certain communicative-pragmatic situation, arising in a variety of constituents of the cognitive and affective parcels of the domain of empathy and unfolding in two scripts which reflect its active and passive manifestations.

Enhancement of empathy in children through interventions

This is a quasi-experimental study; a four-month intervention-program designed to boost the empathetic attitude in public school students of Pakistan. The empathy towards bullying was assessed in experimental (199) and control (184) groups. The study had three phases. In the first phase the students were engaged in different activities to foster empathy which established that empathetic score of students increased and the score of bullying tendencies decreased after the use of interventions. The activity began with a story, followed by a group discussion, highlighting the different aspects of human feelings, emotions and behaviors, alongside encouraging children to give their feedback. In the second phase 98 students were selected from treated group, boys (N= 53) and girls (N= 45). Six more interventions were applied including reciting stories, question-answer sessions related to stories, followed by asking about the lessons students learnt from these stories. These conversations ended on brief lectures of trainers about empathy guided by the researcher during the training of trainers. After completion of this session, in the third phae, for qualitative assessment selected students from treated group were asked to write a story about empathy. The study found that the boys and girls grasped the concept of empathy differently. For boys described empathy as being helpful while girls as a means of getting happiness; but both did not associate empathy with kindness. Also, the boys believed that parents are the first to notice changes in their personality while girls think its their teachers. Moreover, for adopting the attitude of empathy, unlike boys, girls showed more collective rather than personalized approach.