Empathy Personal Distress Research Articles

Predictors of vicarious traumatization and quality of life among supervisees: testing moderation and mediation

ABSTRACT We replicated and extended previous research to address the fragmented and simplistic understanding of the risk and protective factors of vicarious traumatization (VT) and quality of life (QoL) among supervisees. Mindfulness did not moderate the relationship between personal distress empathy (PDE) and VT; however, it uniquely predicted VT and the physical and psychological domains of QoL. The supervisory working alliance (SWA) mediated the relationship between PDE and VT, and the SWA and VT mediated the relationship between PDE and all four QoL domains. Strengths, limitations, and implications for theory, practice, and research are discussed.

The Association between Entrepreneurial Perceived Behavioral Control, Personality, Empathy, and Assertiveness in a Romanian Sample of Nascent Entrepreneurs

In today’s global context, entrepreneurship is recognized as the engine of sustainable economic growth, competitiveness and employment in the economy of any nation. In order to improve the measures aimed at encouraging the creation of new businesses, an enhanced understanding of the drivers of nascent entrepreneurship seems essential. Drawing on planned behavior theory and the approach of entrepreneurial perceived behavioral control (PBC) as a motivational antecedent in starting a new business, the current study seeks to understand how the personal characteristics of the entrepreneurs influence entrepreneurial PBC. Three types of characteristics were assessed in a sample of 212 Romanian nascent entrepreneurs: personality traits (Big Five model), empathy, and assertiveness. The hierarchical multilinear regression analysis, in which entrepreneurial PBC was treated as a dependent variable, showed that the model with the highest explanatory power for the variance of results of entrepreneurial PBC included characteristics from all three levels: personality traits—Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness; empathy—personal distress and perspective-taking; and adaptive assertiveness. Additionally, the findings showed that adaptive assertiveness provides an effect over and above personality factors and empathy on the entrepreneurial PBC. The practical implications of these findings indicate that to enhance the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education programs, components aiming to enhance internal personal resources of entrepreneurs (such as assertive communication skills) should be added.

Therapist Experience, Personal Therapy, and Distressing States of Mind: Regulation and Resonance as Dialectics of Therapeutic Empathy

The current study is based on the notion of an empathic dialectic, marked by states of emotional resonance and regulation, which has been described by contemporary theories of therapeutic empathy and empirically supported by research on non-therapists. We operationalized emotional resonance as personal distress empathy, and we sought to examine how activities promoting self-regulation impact the association between personal distress empathy, and other facets of poor self-regulation. This was accomplished through an online study, which administered several self-report instruments to a sample of 158 non-therapists and 139 therapists of various levels of experience, collecting participants’ demographic information, attachment status, level of shame-proneness, the fear of invalidity, and personal distress empathy. We examined the impact of several moderators on the paths from attachment anxiety, shame-proneness, and the fear of invalidity to personal distress empathy; and, thus, on the indirect effect between attachment anxiety and personal distress empathy. For our first hypothesis, we expected therapist status to significantly moderate the paths in this proposed meditation. For our second hypothesis, we anticipated personal therapy sessions would significantly moderate this meditation. For our third hypothesis, we expected that both personal therapy and therapist experience level would moderate this mediation. Most notably, our results indicated that the fear of invalidity explained the association between attachment anxiety and personal distress empathy, and this mediation was stronger among non-therapists when compared to therapists. Yet, personal therapy did not similarly impact the relationships among these variables. Implications for future research are discussed.

The Relationships among Clinician Self-Report of Empathy, Mindfulness, and Therapeutic Alliance

The current study explored the potential benefits of clinician mindfulness within the therapeutic relationship by investigating the mediating effects of self-reported empathy on the relationship between mindfulness and clinician-reported therapeutic alliance. This study sampled from licensed clinicians though professional psychology list serves (n = 96; 89% doctoral level psychologists) actively working in a clinician’s role. Participants completed an online survey battery assessing trait mindfulness, clinician empathy, and therapeutic alliance. A mediation model correlational analysis utilizing PROCESS bootstrapping analysis software macro was used. It was found that personal distress empathy partially mediated the relationship between clinician mindfulness and therapeutic alliance. Results indicated that clinicians who reported higher amounts of mindfulness are less likely to experience negative emotions when their clients experience negative emotions, thus potentially reducing the likelihood of experiencing emotional contagion, which in turn is related to higher levels of perceived therapeutic alliance. The findings of this study, if confirmed in future ecological research, may indicate that mindfulness may serve as a protective factor of experiencing client’s negative emotions, thus facilitating therapeutic alliance and effectiveness.

The Effect of Social Observational Learning, Empathy and Catastrophizing in Chronic Pain Patients During Acute Pain Induction.

In this study, we were interested in determining whether we could alter a pain response in a chronic pain patient population by exposing participants to different videos prior to inducing acute pain. This observational case series study required participants to report their pain level during the cold pressor task after viewing an instruction video. Recruitment and testing took place in a tertiary care multidisciplinary pain center. Forty adults with chronic pain participated in the study and completed the cold pressor test. Prior to testing, questionnaires measuring pain, empathy, and catastrophic thinking were completed and participants were randomized to view an instructional video where an actress either demonstrated pain behavior or a stoic response during the cold pressor test. Participants with higher levels of catastrophizing reported higher pain levels during the cold pressor test. Personal Distress Empathy measures of participants who viewed the pain catastrophizing video were significantly correlated with their final pain reports. Following the cold pressor task, participants' pain reports for their primary chronic pain sites were significantly reduced. These results support previous findings that people with chronic pain show the tendency toward increased acute pain experience if levels of catastrophizing and Personal Distress Empathy measures are higher. Participants reported attenuated chronic pain following induced pain, also in line with previous research suggesting a central endogenous inhibitory effect. Our findings shed light on the role of emotional and social components affecting the experience of pain in individuals with chronic pain.

Maternal thoughts of harm in response to infant crying: an experimental analysis.

Ninety-eight mothers of healthy firstborn infants 0 to 6months old were randomly assigned to listen to 10-min of infant crying or infant cooing while continuously rating subjective feelings of frustration. Participants completed pre-test measures of depressed mood, empathy, and trait anger and post-test measures of infant-related harm thoughts, negative and positive emotions, and urge to comfort and to flee. Twenty-three (23.5%) participants endorsed unwanted thoughts of active harm (e.g., throwing, yelling at, shaking the infant). Women in the cry condition were more likely than women in the coo condition to report thoughts of harm. Women in the cry condition who endorsed thoughts of harm reported higher frustration levels over the 10min of crying, higher levels of post-test negative emotions, and stronger urges to flee the infant but not stronger urges to comfort the infant. Trait anger and personal distress empathy predicted the occurrence of unwanted thoughts of infant harm, whereas negative mood did not. Unwanted, intrusive, infant-related thoughts of harm may be triggered by prolonged infant crying, are predicted by personal distress empathy and a tendency to experience anger, and are associated with higher frustration, negative emotions, and the urge to escape the infant.

Personality and Self-Forgiveness: The Roles of Shame, Guilt, Empathy and Conciliatory Behavior

The focus of this paper is on the somewhat neglected component of the forgiveness construct, self-forgiveness, and its relationship to shame, guilt, empathy, and conciliatory behavior. A section of a theoretical model of self-forgiveness, proposed by Hall and Fincham (2005), was compared with a new model, to ascertain the role these emotional and behavioral factors played in influencing self-forgiveness. Participants were 91 first-year undergraduate psychology students and a community sample of 59 who completed self-report measures of each variable. Structural equation modeling revealed that the Hall and Fincham model did not provide an adequate fit to the empirical data until the covariance between shame and guilt was incorporated into the model. Unlike their findings, shame-proneness and personal distress empathy, rather than guilt and other-oriented empathy, emerged as the key personality traits involved in inhibiting self-forgiveness. A new model emphasizing these findings is presented and implications for future research are discussed.