What is compassion? (socio-affective)
–> brain areas
=social emotion elicited by witnessing the suffering of others & is rather associated with feelings of concern & warmth, linked to the motivation to help/prosociality
–> reward & affiliation-related areas: ventral striatum (VS), nucleus accumbens, VTA, mOFC & subgenual anterior cingulate (sgACC)
What is empathy? (socio-affective)
–> brain areas
= process of sharing feelings –> resonating with someone else’s feelings, regardless of valence (positive/negative), but with the explicit knowledge that the other person is the origin of this emotion
- -> shared network hypothesis
- -> anterior insula (AI) & anterior middle cingulate cortex (aMCC)
What is empathic distress?
alternative outcome of empathy, may be detrimental to the experiencer as well as to the suffering other
What is ToM? (socio-cognitive)
–> brain areas
= cognitive empathy
-process of inferring & reasoning about beliefs, thoughts or emotions of others
–> ventral temporoparietal junction (TPJ), superior temporal sulcus (STS), temporal poles (TP), mPFC & PCC
What does a failure of self-other distinction result in?
–> egocentricity bias
= tendency to project one’s own emotional or mental state on someone else
What does a failure of self-other distinction result in?
–> altercentricity bias
=influence of others’ states on judgments about oneself
What does a failure of self-other distinction result in?
–> cognitive egocentricity
occurs when the own knowledge about a situation influences the reasoning about what someone else thinks about the situation
What does a failure of self-other distinction result in?
–> emotional egocentricity
occurs when one’s own emotional state influences the judgment of someone else’s affective state
Beneficial effect of compassion (Precket et al., 2018)
- may counteract negative emotion elicited by experiencing others’ suffering through positive emotion generation –> ER strategy
- reappraisal down-regulates negative affect mainly via executive & cognitive control networks & compassion increases positive affect to buffer negative affect through the active generation of positive emotions via reward-related & affiliation-related brain circuitries
Negative effects of empathy (Bloom, 2016)
-can lead to what?
-spotlight?
-
=> can have negative effects, including exhaustion & burnout as well as diminished engagement with individuals in distress
- spotlight: makes salient the suffering of others
- identifiable victim effect
- ingroup bias
- can be exploited to motivate us to do things that do not help
- relationship between empathy & aggression –> can motivate us to become aggressive/ start a war etc.
Powell’s findings (2018): affective vs cognitive empathy abilities (high versus low) might have different negative consequences for own emotional wellbeing (e.g. depression) depending on particular ER capacities/strategies
- (1) cognitive empathy was negatively related to levels of depression, anxiety& stress
- (2) affective empathy was positively related to all three forms of affective distress
- marginal support for (3), there may be an optimal or normative level of empathy, neither too low nor too high, in predicting lower levels of distress.
- significant quadratic effect of cognitive empathy on stress was observed
- (4&5): higher levels of cognitive reappraisal were negatively associated & higher levels of expressive suppression would be positively associated, with increased distress
- some support for (6): for depression & anxiety, the detrimental effects of increased affective empathy were offset when people reported being more effective at cognitive reappraisal
- some support for (7): for anxiety & stress, the benefit of greater levels of cognitive empathy was absent in those who reported suppressing their emotions & this moderating effect was significantly larger on anxiety than depression (for anxiety, suppression was a significant moderator of the quadratic effect of cognitive empathy)
- (8) unpredicted: higher levels of suppression appeared to have a potentially beneficial effect on levels of depression & stress for those higher in affective empathy
Powell’s findings (2018)
–> Which strategy is particularly good for people higher in affective empathy?
–> Is suppression good for people higher in affective empathy?
- reappraisal is a particularly good strategy to avoid distressing outcomes
- suppression may also have some utility
Powell’s findings (2018)
–> Is suppression good for people higher in cognitive empathy?
suppression is consistently a bad regulation strategy & should be discouraged, in order to maximise benefit to psychological wellbeing
Cameron et al. (2019): Why do people often avoid empathy?
-findings
–> people robustly & strongly preferred to avoid empathizing with strangers
–> bc of cognitive costs (due to: effort, averson & felt inefficacy)
==> empathy does not seem to result automatically/ not a default
