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Responding to the Emotions of Others: Dissociating Forms of Empathy Through the Study of Typical and Psychiatric Populations
Abstract
Empathy is a lay term that is becoming increasingly viewed as a unitary function within the field of cognitive neuroscience. In this paper, a selective review of the empathy literature is provided. It is argued from this literature that empathy is not a unitary system but rather a loose collection of partially dissociable neurocognitive systems. In particular, three main divisions can be made: cognitive empathy (or Theory of Mind), motor empathy, and emotional empathy. The two main psychiatric disorders associated with empathic dysfunction are considered: autism and psychopathy. It is argued that individuals with autism show difficulties with cognitive and motor empathy but less clear difficulties with respect to emotional empathy. In contrast, individuals with psychopathy show clear difficulties with a specific form of emotional empathy but no indications of impairment with cognitive and motor empathy.
... In multidimensional models influenced by studies conducted in developmental psychopathology and neuropsychology, affective, cognitive and behavioral empathy were differentiated. The affective component refers to an emotional response and a capacity to share others' emotions appropriately, while the cognitive component concerns the ability to understand others' emotions or distress, by taking others' perspective and decoding socioemotional cues in social situations; the behavioral component is displayed through prosocial actions (e.g., Barbot et al., 2022;Blair, 2005;Cuff et al., 2016;Davis, 1983;Decety, 2015;Dvash & Shamay-Tsoory, 2014;Eisenberg & Fabes, 1990;Eisenberg, 2005;Nader-Grosbois & Simon, 2023). In the literature, cognitive empathy is often quasi-synonymous with affective ToM (e.g., Blair, 2005;Nader-Grosbois & Simon, 2023). ...
... The affective component refers to an emotional response and a capacity to share others' emotions appropriately, while the cognitive component concerns the ability to understand others' emotions or distress, by taking others' perspective and decoding socioemotional cues in social situations; the behavioral component is displayed through prosocial actions (e.g., Barbot et al., 2022;Blair, 2005;Cuff et al., 2016;Davis, 1983;Decety, 2015;Dvash & Shamay-Tsoory, 2014;Eisenberg & Fabes, 1990;Eisenberg, 2005;Nader-Grosbois & Simon, 2023). In the literature, cognitive empathy is often quasi-synonymous with affective ToM (e.g., Blair, 2005;Nader-Grosbois & Simon, 2023). The distinction between affective and cognitive empathy was supported by behavioral and neuroimaging studies (e.g., Decety & Cowell, 2014;Decety, et al., 2018;Dvash & Shamay-Tsoory, 2014). ...
... This study therefore focused on the validation of a French adaptation of the GEM. The differentiation of empathy components is very important to examine at preschool and elementary school age, specific characteristics of typically developing (TD) children and of atypically developing children, notably those presenting externalized or internalized behavior disorders or autism spectrum disorders (ASD) or intellectual disabilities (Blair, 2005;Nader-Grosbois & Simon, 2023;Simon & Nader-Grosbois, 2023a). ...
This study aimed to validate a French adaptation of the Griffith Empathy Measure (GEM-vf). Belgian mothers of 516 children from 3 to 12 years old completed the French versions of the GEM, the Empathy Questionnaire (EmQue-vf), the Theory of Mind Inventory-1 (ToMI-1-vf) and the Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC-vf). The Theory of Mind Task Battery was administered to the children. A principal component analysis showed a two-factor structure in GEM-vf: affective and cognitive empathy. Internal consistency was good. The GEM-vf scores varied depending on age. Affective empathy was higher in girls. In terms of convergent validity, positive and significant correlations were obtained between total, affective and cognitive empathy scores in GEM-vf and scores in ToM skills and in emotion regulation. The three scores in GEM-vf were negatively and significantly correlated with emotion dysregulation. In a subsample of 299 children from 3 to 6 years old, positive and significant correlations were found between scores for total and affective empathy in GEM-vf and for attention to others’ feelings and prosocial actions in EmQue-vf. Cognitive empathy scores in GEM-vf were significantly related to those for prosocial actions in EmQue-vf. The GEM-vf presents good reliability and validity and could be useful to assess typically and atypically developing children in research and clinical practice.
... Empathy is a term which refers to an individual's affective response to the experiences of another individual, as well as the understanding of another's mental state (Smith, 2006) including their desires, beliefs, or intentions. Empathy has two key types, namely, emotional (sometimes referred to as affective) empathy and cognitive empathy (Blair, 2005). Emotional empathy refers to the sharing of another's emotion or experiencing an affective response to another individual's emotional state (Smith, 2006). ...
... Emotional empathy refers to the sharing of another's emotion or experiencing an affective response to another individual's emotional state (Smith, 2006). Cognitive empathy is defined as the understanding of another's feelings -including having the ability to take the perspective of another individual (Blair, 2005). Individuals are often impaired in their cognitive empathy but have spared or a surfeit in emotional empathy. ...
Despite an increasing number of studies which examine the interplay between autism and offending mechanisms, there has been a lack of research investigating the interplay between autism and stalking. It was anticipated that findings from this investigation would inform future interventions with individuals with autism who stalk. This secondary data analysis research used a qualitative case study approach to explore the experiences of an individual with a High Functioning Autism (HFA) diagnosis, who had been convicted of stalking. Interview data was analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to gain a rich understanding of stalking behaviour from the perspective of the individual and to identify the key issues associated with Criminal Justice Service interventions. The following superordinate themes were identified; 'What she means to me', 'Problematic, but unstoppable'' and 'Life after prison'. A key implication of the findings was that autistic traits can play a contextual role within stalking behaviour. Future recommendations of a specifically tailored treatment approach recognising and considering autism-related responsivity issues are discussed.
... In developmental psychopathology and neuropsychology, as intricate links between ToM and empathy have been postulated, recent studies have begun the investigation of links between affective and cognitive ToM and the three dimensions of empathy. Affective empathy corresponds to an automatic emotional response and an ability to share other people's emotions, while cognitive empathy refers to the capacity to adequately understand other people's distress or emotions by decoding their socio-emotional cues and taking their perspective in social situations; behavioral empathy is shown through prosocial actions (e.g., [27,[43][44][45][46][47]. In the literature, cognitive empathy and affective ToM are often considered quasi-synonymous by some authors (e.g., [44]). ...
... Affective empathy corresponds to an automatic emotional response and an ability to share other people's emotions, while cognitive empathy refers to the capacity to adequately understand other people's distress or emotions by decoding their socio-emotional cues and taking their perspective in social situations; behavioral empathy is shown through prosocial actions (e.g., [27,[43][44][45][46][47]. In the literature, cognitive empathy and affective ToM are often considered quasi-synonymous by some authors (e.g., [44]). Recently, the ToM Battery has been used to examine relationships between ToM and empathy profiles in TD children [47]. ...
These studies tested the psychometric properties of the French version of the Theory of Mind (ToM) Task Battery (vf) in typically developing (TD) children and intellectually disabled (ID) children. The Battery was administered to 649 TD children (2 ½ to 12 years old) in Study 1 and 155 ID (4 ½ to 14 ½ years old) in Study 2. Their mothers completed questionnaires: in both studies, the Theory of Mind Inventory (ToMI-1-vf); in Study 1, the Griffith Empathy Measure (GEM-vf) and the Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC-vf); and in Study 2, the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation (SCBE-vf). The Battery showed good internal consistency in both groups. Positive links with age and differences between age groups were identified in their performances. Convergent validity was confirmed by positive correlations between TD children’s scores in the Battery and in ToMI1-vf, in empathy, in emotion regulation, and by a negative correlation with emotion dysregulation. In ID children, their scores in the Battery were positively linked with those in ToMI-1-vf, in some scales of SCEB-vf, and had a low level of internalizing problems. This Battery presents good psychometric qualities and could be useful for explicit assessment of ToM in TD and ID children in future research and intervention.
... По мнению R.J. Blair, к поведенческим аддикциям, в том числе употреблению ПАВ, приводят невозможность адекватной переработки поступающей аффективной информации наряду с неумением совладать с эмоциями при низкой социальной компетентности и повышенном стремлении к удовлетворению потребностей [51]. K. Lyons-Ruth, L.E. ...
... Некоторыми авторами стремление к саморазрушению оценивается как феномен неосознанной психологической зависимости [69], в непосредственно межличностных отношениях со стремлением к расколу границ в системе «Я-Другой», наряду с собственно отклоняющимися поведенческими расстройствами, связанными по факту насилия в отношении системы «Я». Для других изучение концепта саморазрушающегося поведения несовершеннолетних проистекает из понимания действий в рамках ответного реагирования на социальные изменения, затрагивающие жизнедеятельность на уровне микро-и макросоциума (переходные этапы развития, психотравмирующие ситуации и т.д.) [45,51,54]. Однако, некоторые исследователи [70] исходят из позиции, что аутоагрессивный вариант самодеструкции не что иное, как один из подтипов проявления агрессии. ...
The study of the role of chemical addictions in the emergence of self-harming dangerous behavior in adolescence has been the subject of research by psychiatrists for more than a decade. Various types of destruction and the use of psychoactive substances are in the sphere of close attention of the medical and psychological communities, given the significant impact of the abovementioned behavioral disorders not only on the life of a particular family, but also their tangible negative impact on social functioning. Minors, as one of the most vulnerable categories, are actively involved in various forms of risky illegal behavior. The article presents the results of studying the information resources of the electronic scientific library elibrary.ru, electronic catalog of Russian dissertations (http://diss.rsl.ru /), the Scientific Center for Mental Health of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, the PubMed database of the National Center for Biotechnological Information. About 300 literary sources and scientific publications were identified, and over 200 materials, mostly containing duplicater information, were excluded from the study. The literature review examines the opinions of domestic and foreign researchers regarding the formation of chemical addictive and self-destructive behavior in minors.
... Further, several effect sizes for their meta-analysis evaluating social anxiety and cognitive empathy were measured via theory of mind (ToM) assessments. Although ToM is sometimes equated with cognitive empathy (Blair, 2005), it involves the ability to recognize that others have mental states different from their own and make predictions about their thoughts and intentions, whereas cognitive empathy is concerned specifically with others' emotions (see Cerniglia et al., 2019 for review of overlap and distinctions among these constructs). Including these other constructs can potentially obscure the "true relation" between social anxiety and empathy. ...
... Therefore, the first aim of our meta-analytic review is to evaluate the relations between clinical anxiety and empathy. Because empathy has been conceptualized in the literature both as a general and multidimensional construct (Blair, 2005), we assessed the relations of anxiety with each empathy constructs separately. Thus, we conducted three meta-analyses assessing anxiety with general empathy (i.e., combined cognitive and affective empathy or conceptualizations that do not differentiate the two), cognitive empathy, and affective empathy. ...
... All these experiments were carried out on people with ASD (for a review, see [15]), demonstrating that they have impairments of ToM. Even after the age of four, an age from which the corresponding ability for first-order tasks is normally developed [23,24], children with ASD can have difficulties accomplishing such tasks. This has led to the thesis that individuals with ASD lack the ToM [14,16]. ...
... Although the facial expressiveness in autistic individuals implies that they do react to other people's emotions, the authors concluded that it may be challenging for them to appropriate this response. This is crucial because affective empathy is not just an emotional response to another's emotion but an appropriate emotional response triggered by the other person's emotion [23,40]. 2. The second study measured facial electromyography (EMG), which is considered an index of sensorimotor contagion [41], following the presentation of emotional (happy and fearful) facial expressions and the presentation of audiovisual emotion pairs [42]. ...
Since the first description by Leo Kanner, individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been attributed a reduced empathy. However, it has not yet been clarified how empathy is specifically impaired in autism. Typically, scholars distinguish between the affective and the cognitive dimensions of empathy. The latter largely overlaps with the concept of the theory of mind (ToM), according to which we need internal inferences or simulations for gaining access to the hidden mental states of others. Since a deficit in ToM is a widely accepted explanation for difficulties of individuals with ASD in social interactions, limitations in cognitive empathy are accordingly assumed. Regarding affective empathy, there are contradictory results using various methods, showing an impaired affective empathy. The main aim of the paper is to present ASD primarily as a disorder of shared interpersonal and interaffective experiences and thus of affective empathy by means of a phenomenological analysis considering empirical studies. In this framework, a deficit of the ToM is accepted but criticized as a central explanatory approach for ASD since (1) it assumes a fundamental inaccessibility of other people, which does not correspond to our everyday social situations, and (2) it manifests developmentally long after the first signs of ASD, which means that its deficit cannot explain the basic autistic difficulties in social interactions.
... Empathy, defined broadly as 'an emotional reaction in an observer to the affective state of another individual' (Blair, 2005), is understood to be multidimensional, comprising of at least two components: affective empathy (AffEmp) and cognitive empathy (CogEmp) (Davis, 1983;Dvash & Shamay-Tsoory, 2014;Eisenberg & Miller, 1987;Mazza et al., 2014;Zaki et al., 2008). While research suggests autistic people show differences in their ability to empathise (Baron-Cohen et al., 1997, 1985, 2001Capps et al., 1993;Happé, 1994;Harrison et al., 2022;Hill & Frith, 2003;Jones et al., 2010;Leppanen et al., 2018;Magnée et al., 2007;Mazza et al., 2014;Rogers et al., 2007), evidence that autistic people lack theory of mind (ToM), a component of CogEmp, appears more universally accepted. ...
Empathy deficits in autism, particularly cognitive empathy, have been a long-held, but much debated assumption. An alternative perspective challenging this deficit model is the ‘double empathy problem’, proposing that empathy difficulties are bidirectional between autistic and non-autistic people. Despite this view gaining popularity, there has been limited research examining whether non-autistic people can empathise accurately, cognitively and affectively with autistic people. Addressing this gap, 81 adults from the general population, divided into groups based on how likely they are to share personality traits common in autistic people, were examined using an empathic accuracy task, modified to include autistic and non-autistic narrators and combined with a body mapping tool. Results showed participants had significantly lower empathic accuracy scores when viewing autobiographical accounts of emotional events from autistic narrators, compared to non-autistic narrators, especially for happy and sad emotions. However, participants also experienced significantly higher intensity in the body when viewing autistic narrators compared to non-autistic narrators, especially for anger and fear emotions. These findings support the double empathy problem and have strong implications for therapeutic and interpersonal relationships with autistic people.
Lay Abstract
The assumption that autistic people lack empathy, particularly imagining how others feel, has been much debated and is now being challenged by an alternative view: the ‘double empathy problem’. This suggests that non-autistic people may find it equally difficult to imagine how autistic people feel. Although this perspective is gaining popularity, research testing whether non-autistic people can accurately imagine and feel an autistic person’s emotions is still limited. Our study used video clips of autistic and non-autistic people recounting emotional events to test if participants from the general population could: track the intensity of the narrators’ emotions; name and feel the same emotion; match where the narrator felt the emotion and indicate how intensely they felt the emotion using a body map. Our results show that participants found it significantly harder to track autistic narrators’ emotions compared to non-autistic narrator’s emotions, especially when viewing clips of narrators feeling happy and sad. We also found that participants felt emotions more intensely in the body when viewing clips of autistic narrators compared to non-autistic narrators, especially when describing anger and fear. These findings support the double empathy problem and have strong implications for therapeutic and interpersonal relationships with autistic people.
... Proponents of sensorimotor simulation accounts hold that as we perceive another person's smile, we engage in a partial simulation or reproduction of the smile in our sensorimotor system. This process involves the reactivation of related concepts, feelings and autonomic and behavioral changes (for a review see [32]) and enhances one's capacity to respond emphatically [33] and recognize others' emotions based on nuanced meanings of their facial expressions [15,[34][35][36][37]. Such claims are supported by evidence showing that when people are blocked in their ability to simulate smiles with their facial muscles [30,36,38], or when their face representation in the sensorimotor cortex is disrupted by brain stimulation [39][40][41], their ability to correctly identify or judge emotional expressions of others is significantly impaired. ...
Spontaneous smiles in response to politicians can serve as an implicit barometer for gauging electorate preferences. However, it is unclear whether a subtle Duchenne smile–an authentic expression involving the coactivation of the zygomaticus major (ZM) and orbicularis oculi (OO) muscles–would be elicited while reading about a favored politician smiling, indicating a more positive disposition and political endorsement. From an embodied simulation perspective, we investigated whether written descriptions of a politician’s smile would trigger morphologically different smiles in readers depending on shared or opposing political orientation. In a controlled reading task in the laboratory, participants were presented with subject-verb phrases describing left and right-wing politicians smiling or frowning. Concurrently, their facial muscular reactions were measured via electromyography (EMG) recording at three facial muscles: the ZM and OO, coactive during Duchenne smiles, and the corrugator supercilii (CS) involved in frowning. We found that participants responded with a Duchenne smile detected at the ZM and OO facial muscles when exposed to portrayals of smiling politicians of same political orientation and reported more positive emotions towards these latter. In contrast, when reading about outgroup politicians smiling, there was a weaker activation of the ZM muscle and no activation of the OO muscle, suggesting a weak non-Duchenne smile, while emotions reported towards outgroup politicians were significantly more negative. Also, a more enhanced frown response in the CS was found for ingroup compared to outgroup politicians’ frown expressions. Present findings suggest that a politician’s smile may go a long way to influence electorates through both non-verbal and verbal pathways. They add another layer to our understanding of how language and social information shape embodied effects in a highly nuanced manner. Implications for verbal communication in the political context are discussed.
... These varying neurochemical responses translate into differences in social cognition, a multidimensional construct encompassing both cognitive and emotional subcomponents (Bernhardt and Singer, 2012;Decety and Jackson, 2004). While the cognitive component includes recognizing and understanding emotions as well as perspective-taking, the emotional component comprises subjectively experiencing and empathizing with the emotions of others (Blair, 2005;Walter, 2012). Intact social-cognitive functions are crucial for understanding and adapting to the behaviour of others, facilitating effective interactions (Adolphs, 2009;Homer et al., 2008). ...
Methamphetamine (METH, “Crystal Meth”) and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, “Ecstasy”) share structural-chemical similarities but have distinct psychotropic profiles due to specific neurochemical actions. Previous research has suggested that their impact on social cognitive functions and social behaviour may differ significantly, however, direct comparisons of METH and MDMA users regarding social cognition and interaction are lacking. Performances in cognitive and emotional empathy (Multifaceted Empathy Test) and emotion sensitivity (Face Morphing Task), as well as aggressive social behaviour (Competitive Reaction Time Task) were assessed in samples of n=40 chronic METH users, n=39 chronic MDMA users and n=86 stimulant-naïve controls (total N=165). Self-reports and hair samples were used to obtain subjective and objective estimates of substance use patterns. METH users displayed diminished cognitive and emotional empathy towards positive stimuli, elevated punitive social behaviour regardless of provocation, and self-reported heightened trait anger relative to controls. MDMA users diverged from the control group only by exhibiting a distinct rise in punitive behaviour when faced with provocation. Correlation analyses indicated that both higher hair concentrations of MDMA and METH may be associated with reduced cognitive empathy. Moreover, greater lifetime MDMA use correlated with increased punitive behaviour among MDMA users. Our findings confirm elevated aggression and empathy deficits in chronic METH users, while chronic MDMA users only displayed more impulsive aggression. Dose-response correlations indicate that some of these deficits might be a consequence of use. Specifically, the dopaminergic mechanism of METH might be responsible for social-cognitive deficits.
... Empathy is described by Decety and Jackson 7 as the capacity to identify, experience, and understand the emotional states of others. Importantly, although empathy is usually evoked in real-time in response to another person's emotions or in response to socio-emotional stimuli, it may also happen retrospectively, in response to verbal statements of a third party 8 , or with stimuli involving an imaginary or fictional person 7,[9][10][11] . ...
People consume alcohol for multiple reasons. Negative motives are often associated with alcohol-related problems. These problems might be explained by negative effects of high alcohol consumption on empathy. Past studies have associated alcohol use disorder (AUD) with reduced cognitive and affective empathy. Few studies have focused on non-clinical samples and considered behavioral empathy. We examined the links between alcohol consumption and multiple aspects of empathy, and if these links were moderated by negative drinking motives. We collected online data of 520 unselected individuals. All completed the AUD Identification Test (AUDIT) and a Drinking Motives Questionnaire. Affective and cognitive empathy were assessed using the Empathy Quotient. Behavioral empathy was assessed by asking participants how likely they would help the person in each of 24 scenarios involving pain. Helping others in pain was positively predicted by affective and cognitive empathy. Higher AUDIT scores were associated with helping others less, particularly among participants who scored higher on drinking to cope with negative affect. People who drink more and do so to cope with negative affect appear to have less behavioral empathy. This supports the view that negative drinking motives contribute to AUD risk.
... Emotional recognition pertains to the capacity to recognize, comprehend, and react correctly to one's own and other people's emotions. This capacity plays a crucial role in social functioning and forms an integral aspect of empathy, a trait notably deficient in individuals with psychopathy [3]. ...
The ability to recognize and understand emotions plays a fundamental role in human social interaction and is essential for effective communication and interpersonal relationships. Psychopathy, a personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior and impaired empathy, holds significant relevance in understanding criminal behavior, societal impact, and the implications of psychopathic traits on social functioning. In the intricate interplay between psychopathic traits and emotion recognition, prior research has highlighted the profound role of emotional processing in an individual's social functioning and development, alongside the considerable impact of psychopathic traits on these facets of life. To develop further into this complex relationship, this paper synthesizes existing research findings while elucidating current research gaps. These studies collectively revealed the diminished accuracy and efficiency in the emotional processing capabilities of high psychopathic individuals, as well as the emergence of atypical automatic emotional responses and subjective selection of emotional information in their interactions with emotional stimuli. Additionally, this review emphasizes the critical role played by primary psychopathic traits in shaping abnormal attention patterns, particularly the tendency of highly psychopathic individuals to divert their attention away from crucial emotion-carrying cues, such as the eyes of facial stimuli, especially when confronted with negative emotional expressions. The present review also recognizes certain limitations, mainly arising from sample size, self-report assessments, and the lack of comparison between clinical and nonclinical populations with high psychopathic traits. To address these constraints and further enrich people’s comprehension, future research should focus on conducting longitudinal studies within high-risk populations.
... En el TC, la toma de decisiones presenta un patrón basado en el cálculo de la recompensa a obtener, sin tener en cuenta el posible castigo o efecto adverso de su elección En el TC la ausencia de empatía (EM) ha sido descrita como un factor vinculado al incremento del comportamiento violento (Decety et al., 2013;Frick & Kemp, 2020). En general, los estudios de EM describen 3 sub-tipos: EM cognitiva con la cual se comprenden los estados mentales de los demás, EM afectiva que permite al individuo experimentar los sentimientos de los otros (Berluti et al., 2023;Blair, 2005); y por último, estaría la EM motora que permite imitar y coordinar de manera automática nuestras expresiones faciales, vocalización y postura con otros individuos, En los sujetos con TC, la insensibilidad emocional (IE) hace referencia a la disminución de la capacidad para experimentar sentimientos de culpa, incremento de la indiferencia, pobre EM ( Por otro lado, el deterioro en la toma de decisiones (TD), se manifiesta a través de múltiples tipos de conductas antisociales, como la agresión a otros sujetos, sin importar las consecuencias que esto pueda generar (Yang et al., 2015). La TD requiere seleccionar adecuadamente la mejor opción ante entornos cambiantes para que el sujeto pueda adaptarse mediante la correcta asimilación de los reforzadores, el análisis de las consecuencias negativas o positivas y la identificación del error en la predicción de los posibles resultados, siendo este un proceso crucial en la persistencia o no de la conducta en el individuo, con lo cual busca maximizar la ganancia, reduciendo a su vez el castigo ...
The deficits in empathy, emotional insensitivity, and decision-making constitute the core of symptoms defining conduct disorder. Although several studies have established some correlates between brain connectivity and symptoms separately, there has been little effort to systematize such information. The current systematic review aimed to describe the findings obtained through analyzing brain connectivity networks by functional magnetic resonance imaging associated with alterations in empathy, emotional insensitivity, and decision-making in subjects with conduct disorder. A systematic search was carried out for original studies published in Medline (PubMed), Scopus, Scielo, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Nature. Articles published between 2000 and 2022 were included; a qualitative synthesis was obtained with the six selected articles at the end of the process. The findings show altered brain connectivity patterns in brain regions associated with empathy and insensitivity in subjects with conduct disorder.
... En el TC, la toma de decisiones presenta un patrón basado en el cálculo de la recompensa a obtener, sin tener en cuenta el posible castigo o efecto adverso de su elección En el TC la ausencia de empatía (EM) ha sido descrita como un factor vinculado al incremento del comportamiento violento (Decety et al., 2013;Frick & Kemp, 2020). En general, los estudios de EM describen 3 sub-tipos: EM cognitiva con la cual se comprenden los estados mentales de los demás, EM afectiva que permite al individuo experimentar los sentimientos de los otros (Berluti et al., 2023;Blair, 2005); y por último, estaría la EM motora que permite imitar y coordinar de manera automática nuestras expresiones faciales, vocalización y postura con otros individuos, En los sujetos con TC, la insensibilidad emocional (IE) hace referencia a la disminución de la capacidad para experimentar sentimientos de culpa, incremento de la indiferencia, pobre EM ( Por otro lado, el deterioro en la toma de decisiones (TD), se manifiesta a través de múltiples tipos de conductas antisociales, como la agresión a otros sujetos, sin importar las consecuencias que esto pueda generar (Yang et al., 2015). La TD requiere seleccionar adecuadamente la mejor opción ante entornos cambiantes para que el sujeto pueda adaptarse mediante la correcta asimilación de los reforzadores, el análisis de las consecuencias negativas o positivas y la identificación del error en la predicción de los posibles resultados, siendo este un proceso crucial en la persistencia o no de la conducta en el individuo, con lo cual busca maximizar la ganancia, reduciendo a su vez el castigo ...
The deficits in empathy, emotional insensitivity, and decision-making constitute the core of symptoms defining conduct disorder. Although several studies have established some correlates between brain connectivity and symptoms separately, there has been little effort to systematize such information. The current systematic review aimed to describe the findings obtained through analyzing brain connectivity networks by functional magnetic resonance imaging associated with alterations in empathy, emotional insensitivity, and decision-making in subjects with conduct disorder. A systematic search was carried out for original studies published in Medline (PubMed), Scopus, Scielo, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Nature. Articles published between 2000 and 2022 were included; a qualitative synthesis was obtained with the six selected articles at the end of the process. The findings show altered brain connectivity patterns in brain regions associated with empathy and insensitivity in subjects with conduct disorder.
... Empathy The empathy module assessed both affective (e.g., emotional responses to another person's experiences) and cognitive (e.g., engaging in perspective-taking attempts) aspects of empathy (Blair, 2005). These module items were adapted from the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davies, 1983) and its perspective-taking, empathic concern, and fantasy subscales. ...
Our emotions can be influenced by many factors, including our engagement with visual art. Further, as our emotional experiences may help us develop psychological resources, they have important implications for our overall well-being and ill-being. Research into the emotions experienced when viewing art, however, has focused on individual emotions separately rather than on global patterns of experienced emotions. The present research used latent class analysis to identify patterns of emotional experiences during art museum visits and sought to investigate whether people experiencing each emotional pattern differed in their well-being and ill-being across five domains—psychological distress, empathy, meaning, positive self-regard, and social connection. A sample of 613 visitors to three art museums completed a survey of their visit experiences, including their emotional experiences and their experiences across the five domains of well-being and ill-being. The analyses resulted in three latent classes—one characterized by above average positive emotions, one characterized by above average negative emotions, and the third characterized by very high levels of negative emotions. Overall, the positive emotion class showed greater well-being and lower ill-being than the two negative emotion classes, with the two negative emotion classes differing only in psychological distress.
... In this way, the link between extreme empathy and the vulnerability to develop internalizing symptoms, maybe understood through the lens of affective or cognitive empathy. Several studies have demonstrated that the affective dimension of empathy, which underlies personal distress, represents a risk factor for the development of different internalizing problems (Blair, 2005;Gambin & Sharp, 2016Gawronski & Privette, 1997;Schreiter et al., 2013;Shu et al., 2017;Silton & Fogel, 2010;Thoma et al., 2011;Tone & Tully, 2014;Zahn-Waxler et al., 1991). In adults and youths, some research also points to the link between the personal distress and anxiety, depression and guilt (e.g., O'Connor et al., 2002O'Connor et al., , 2012Schreiter et al., 2013;Thoma et al., 2011;Zahn-Waxler & Van Hulle, 2012). ...
Concern for others’ welfare is part of normative development. However, some children respond to others’ distress with concern and helpful approaches, while others respond with suspicion, hostility, indifference. Although the literature around empathy has increased over the years, there isn’t a consensus over its associations with prosociality and internalizing or externalizing problems. A sample of 199 children (50.8% girls) between 10 and 15 years (M=12.05; SD=0.98), reported on their empathy and social behaviours using the QACE – Questionnaire to Assess Affective and Cognitive Empathy (Zoll & Enz, 2010) and the SDQ – Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997) respectively. Our results indicate that girls were more prosocial and empathic, but also presented higher levels of internalizing problems, compared to boys. Affective but not cognitive empathy was related with internalizing problems. Cognitive empathy was significantly related with prosocial behaviour. No significant relations between empathy and externalizing behaviours were found.
... Studies have shown that, on the contrary, children and adolescents with externalizing problems and high CU traits usually present with a blunted response to others' distress and negative emotions [55][56][57] and show impairments in affective empathy [58,59], while they present seemingly intact cognitive empathy (mainly assessed as perspectivetaking skills or theory of mind) [46,60,61]. However, not all of the available findings point in the same direction. ...
Empathy is crucial to the development of socio-emotional skills in youth and empathy development is central to understanding and subtyping youth with externalizing problems. This study explored for the first time the psychometric properties of the Measure of Empathy in Early Childhood (MEEC) in a sample of 652 Italian children aged 6 to 8 years. The gender invariance of MEEC scores and their associations with other measures of empathy and prosocial behavior, and children’s externalizing problems and callous-unemotional (CU) traits were also evaluated. Results indicated that with some modifications, a 5-factor structure of the Italian version of MEEC scores fitted the data and was invariant across gender. Results further supported the reliability and validity of MEEC total and subscale scores. Practical implications of these results are discussed.
... and in the present study (Cronbach's α = .95). As Theory of Mind is sometimes considered as cognitive empathy in the literature (e.g., Blair, 2005;Farrant et al., 2012), it was verified that the item concerning affective mental states in ToMI-vf (My child understands that when a person frowns, they're feeling something different than when they smile) was different from those of EmQue-vf to avoid overinflation of validity. ...
At preschool age, children need to develop socio‐emotional skills, including empathy, in order to adapt their response during social interactions with peers and adults in various contexts. When preschoolers face difficulties in their social interactions, it is relevant to assess their empathy in order to know whether a specific preventive intervention is needed. This study aimed to adapt and validate the French version of the Empathy Questionnaire (EmQue‐vf), which was completed by Belgian mothers of 307 children aged from 2 to 6 years. Mothers also completed the Griffith Empathy Measure (GEM‐vf), Theory of Mind Inventory (ToMI1‐vf) and Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC‐vf). A CFA confirmed a three‐factor structure for EmQue‐vf, including 14 items loading onto three factors: (1) Emotion Contagion, (2) Attention to Others’ Feelings, and (3) Prosocial Actions. This structure was confirmed for the boys’ and girls’ samples treated separately, as well as for the overall sample. Internal consistency ranged from acceptable for Emotion Contagion to good for Attention to Others’ Feelings and Prosocial Actions. In terms of concurrent criterion validity with GEM‐vf, the three factors of EmQue‐vf correlated positively with the affective empathy score and only the Prosocial Actions scale was positively linked with the cognitive empathy score. In terms of construct validity, Pearson's correlations showed a positive link between age and Prosocial Actions. Moreover, the three EmQue‐vf subscales were linked positively to Theory of Mind and emotion regulation scores. A negative link was obtained between Prosocial Actions and emotion dysregulation scores. In conclusion, EmQue‐vf presents good psychometric qualities. It will be a useful in future research and interventions involving French‐speaking children with and without developmental disorders.
... Affective empathy involves the ability to feel or experience the emotions of others, which may be based in part upon the ability to mentally represent the mind of others. Although the two parts of empathy are related, they appear to arise from distinct neurocognitive processes (Blair, 2005;Shamay-Tsoory, 2009). ...
The horror genre portrays some of the most graphic and violent scenes in media. How and why some people find enjoyment in such a graphic genre is an age-old question. One hypothesis is that people lower in prosocial traits such as empathy and compassion are more likely to enjoy horror. We found evidence against this hypothesis across three studies. Study 1 demonstrated that enjoyment of horror movies was unrelated to affective empathy, negatively associated with coldheartedness, and positively associated with cognitive empathy. A preregistered follow-up study found that measures of empathy and coldheartedness were unrelated to how many horror movies a participant had seen. In Study 3, enjoyment of horror movies was unrelated to the amount of money a participant decided to donate to a less fortunate participant. These findings contradict beliefs from the public about horror fans possessing lower levels of prosocial traits such as empathy and compassion. They also put into question findings from older studies about the relationship between empathy and enjoyment of horror media.
... Individuals meeting criteria for psychopathy are characterized by interpersonal and affective dysfunction, including conning and manipulative behavior, pathological lying, a lack of empathy, guilt, and remorse, and an impulsive, irresponsible lifestyle associated with severe antisocial behavior [1]. Affective or emotional deficits associated with psychopathy include impaired affective empathy [2][3][4], lower emotional intelligence [5,6], and reduced perception of others in pain [7,8]. Furthermore, individuals with elevated psychopathic traits have been characterized by impaired processing of fearful facial expressions [9][10][11][12], poor accommodation of aversive conditioning [13][14][15][16], and reduced fear-potentiated startle [17][18][19]. ...
Studies have reported positive associations between youth psychopathy scores and measures of 'fearlessness'. However, prior studies modified fearlessness items to be age appropriate, shifting from assessing hypothetical, extreme forms of physical risk-taking (e.g., flying an airplane) to normative risk-taking (e.g., riding bicycles downhill). We hypothesize that associations between youth psychopathy scores and alternative forms of sensation seeking (i.e., Disinhibition) have been conflated under a false fearlessness label. We tested this hypothesis among incarcerated male adolescents , investigating whether youth psychopathy scores were significantly associated with two different forms of sensation seeking: Disinhibition and Thrill and Adventure Seeking (TAS). Youth psychopathic traits were assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV), Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD), Child Psychopathy Scale (CPS), Inventory of Callous and Unemotional Traits (ICU), and Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI). Disinhibition and fearlessness (i.e., TAS) were assessed using an unmodified version of the Zuckerman Sensation Seeking Scales (SSS). Consistent with hypotheses, youth psychopathy scores were associated with higher Disinhibition and lower TAS scores. Our results contribute to a growing body of literature suggesting that psychopathic traits, including among adolescents, are not concomitant with physical risk-taking and descriptions of psychopathy including fearlessness distort a precise understanding of psychopathy's core features.
... More specifically, the cognitive-affective theory of empathy treats empathy as a bi-dimensional construct-cognitive and affective. Cognitive empathy, known as the theory of mind, refers to the ability to understand and recognize others' feelings and thoughts (Davis, 1983), whereas affective empathy, known as emotional contagion and sharing, is the capacity of an individual to vicariously feel others' emotional states (Blair, 2005). ...
Empathy is an important aspect of human interaction that helps individuals form meaningful relationships and connect with others. Although levels of empathy have been measured using paper–pencil tests, there are no tools to identify the different types of empathy. The current study aimed to develop and validate the Virtual Reality Empathy Test (VRET), which was designed to identify adolescent empathy types. The types of empathy were developed based on three pairs of dimensions (cognitive versus affective empathy, positive versus negative empathy, and majority versus minority empathy). VRET consists of three virtual scenarios that include positive and negative situations (e.g., winning a gold medal or losing in the first round of a badminton tournament). As each scenario progressed, the participants were asked to answer 13 questions during the first and second scenarios, and eight questions during the third scenario. The VRET was administered to 90 South Korean high school students. Hypothesized differences between existing empathy scales and VRET results were found, indicating a high convergent and discriminant validity. VRET, as a unique test of empathy type, can be a valuable tool to assist adolescents in developing a balanced sense of empathy.
... Violent patients with personality disorder, primarily antisocial personality disorder, perform similarly to healthy controls on first-and second-order ToM tests [18]. Given that people with psychopathic characteristics do not have deficits in ToM [19], it is concluded that aggression in antisocial personality disorder with or without psychopathic characteristics does not appear to be associated with experimental or clinically established deficits in ToM. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate whether there are differences in measures of both cognitive and affective empathy in a sample of patients with schizophrenia, patients with schizophrenia who have committed a violent offence and patients with antisocial personality disorder. ...
A paucity of cognitive and affective features of empathy can be correlated with violent behavior. We aimed to identify differences in empathy among four groups in a sample of 100 male participants: (1) 27 violent offenders with schizophrenia, (2) 23 nonviolent patients with schizophrenia, (3) 25 patients with antisocial personality disorder, and (4) 25 subjects from the general population, who formed the control group. Schizophrenia symptoms were quantified with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. Empathy was measured with the empathy quotient. Theory of mind was evaluated using (a) the first-order false-belief task, (b) the hinting task, (c) the faux pas recognition test and (d) the “reading the mind in the eyes” test (revised). Differences noted among the groups were age (controls were younger) and educational status (antisocials were less educated). The empathy quotient scoring (p < 0.001) and theory-of-mind tests (p < 0.001) were distinct between the control group and the three other groups of participants, but not among the three patient groups. Patients with antisocial personality disorder, violent psychotic offenders and psychotic nonviolent patients show no remarkable differences in affective or cognitive empathy tests, but they all present deficits in empathy and theory of mind when compared to controls.
... Many studies have been conducted on the cognitive and affective components of empathy [2]. The "cognitive component" of empathy is evaluating another person's emotions, which relates to theory of the mind [3,4]. Perspective-taking and reading facial expressions are both cognitive evaluative aspects of empathy [5]. ...
The facial feedback hypothesis states that feedback from cutaneous and muscular afferents affects our emotion. Based on the facial feedback hypothesis, the purpose of this study was to determine whether enhancing negative emotion by activating a facial muscle (corrugator supercilii) increases the intensity of cognitive and emotional components of empathic pain. We also assessed whether the muscle contraction changed the pupil size, which would indicate a higher level of arousal. Forty-eight individuals completed 40 muscular contraction and relaxation trials while looking at images of five male and five female patients with neutral and painful facial expressions, respectively. Participants were asked to rate (1) how much pain the patient was in, and (2) how unpleasant their own feelings were. We also examined their facial muscle activities and changes in pupil size. No significant differences in pain or unpleasantness ratings were detected for the neutral face between the two conditions; however, the pain and unpleasantness ratings for the painful face were considerably higher in the contraction than relaxation condition. The pupils were considerably larger in the contraction than relaxation condition for both the painful and neutral faces. Our findings indicate that, by strengthening the corrugator supercilii, facial feedback can affect both the cognitive evaluative and affective sharing aspects of empathic pain.
... Empathy consists of cognitive and emotional components. Cognitive empathy refers to an individual's ability to adopt others' perspectives, understand others' emotional experiences, and identify these emotional experiences (Blair, 2005). Emotional empathy refers to an individual's emotional response to others' emotional experiences, such as sensitivity to others' emotions and sharing others' emotional experiences (Reniers et al., 2011). ...
Objective
This study aims to explore the impact of primary school teachers’ empathy and efficacy for inclusive practice on the relationship between trait mindfulness and inclusive educational attitudes.
Methods
A total of 606 primary school teachers were tested using the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, Interpersonal Response Index Scale, Teacher Self-efficacy for Inclusive Practice Scale, and Teachers’ Multidimensional Attitudes toward Inclusive Education Scale.
Results
Primary school teachers’ trait mindfulness is significantly positively correlated with inclusive educational attitudes. Primary school teachers’ trait mindfulness has an indirect impact on inclusive education attitudes through empathy, and primary school teachers’ trait mindfulness has an indirect impact on inclusive education attitudes through teacher efficacy for inclusive practice. In addition, empathy and teacher efficacy for inclusive practice play a sequential mediating role between primary school teachers’ trait mindfulness and inclusive education attitudes.
Conclusion
This empirical study reveals that empathy and efficacy for inclusive practice play a sequential mediating role between primary school teachers’ trait mindfulness and inclusive education attitudes. On one hand, this research contributes to enriching the outcomes in the field of inclusive education for primary school teachers, providing a theoretical foundation for the study of their inclusive education attitudes. On the other hand, the study offers a detailed explanation of the psychological mechanisms behind the impact of mindfulness traits on the inclusive education attitude of primary school teachers, guiding schools in implementing mindfulness-based intervention programs.
... Jean Decety distingue l'empathie émotionnelle comme « capacité de partager l'état affectif d'au-trui » de l'empathie cognitive qui « permet de se mettre consciemment dans l'esprit de l'autre pour tenter de comprendre ce qu'il pense ou ressent » et ajoute que le composant motivationnel « correspond au souci de l'autre et reflète la motivation à se préoccuper du bien-être d'autrui » (Decety). Du point de vue des neurosciences cognitives, l'empathie est ainsi le plus souvent envisagée comme étant cognitive (ou prise de perspective) et affective (ou émotionnelle), celle-ci impliquant la capacité à ressentir les émotions d'autrui, celle-là consistant à comprendre le monde du point de vue d'un autre (Blair 2005). ...
Abstract: Milan Kundera’s novels are characterised by a strong intellectualisation of the narrative choices, which includes a very significant essayistic and (self-)reflexive component. The complex composition, irony, and polyphony encourage a slow approach on the part of the reader engaged in a cognitive quest. A recurrent textual strategy in Kundera’s novels is to introduce a narrator into the world of fiction. The functioning of narrative empathy and the different representations of affective states are analysed in the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being through the prism of cognitive literary studies and reception theory. Some narratological devices and approaches are also used to discuss the narrative functions of empathy. Representations of feelings from the spectrum of empathy and reflections on the concept of compassion are integrated into the novelistic fable. They become leitmotifs, capable of stimulating a response in the reader and of triggering affective empathy towards the characters. The reader’s cognitive empathy is activated by the mediation of the narrator in this novel, which also thematises the manifestations of empathy and compassion by inserting them into the main storyline. Tomas’s empathetic treatment of his partner Tereza functions as a turning point, revealing the existential ambiguity of personal choices. The narrator-mediator constructs the reader’s mental image of the implied author and performs a function of activating cognitive empathy in the model reader. The extradiegetic voice provides metanarrative comments and contributes to the participatory involvement of the reader. Keywords: Milan Kundera; narrative empathy; novel; irony; reception
... the ability to consciously place oneself in the mind of another and imagine what that person is thinking or feeling. Cognitive empathy can exist in the absence of affective or motivational empathy (Blair, 2006) and is the ability to understand the experience of others by recognizing and imagining their reality (Cuff et al, 2016). ...
Empathy is core to what makes us human and early childhood is considered an important period for nurturing empathy. A recent quantitative study has found nature preschools to be effective in the context of fostering empathy in young children (Ernst et al., 2022). While these results are promising, more research is needed, particularly to understand how nature preschools foster the development of empathy in the children they serve, hence the study at hand. The purpose of this study was to explore nature preschool teachers’ experiences of empathy development in young children in the context of nature preschools and to develop a grounded theory-based conceptual model to explain the findings. Following data analysis using the grounded theory coding paradigm, a core phenomenon emerged: the school culture of nature preschools that is nature-based, childled, and rooted in community, which is embedded within the context of the natural setting of the preschool that offers opportunities to foster empathy. The causal condition identified was the role of the teacher who uses the strategy of an ongoing approach to empathy development, which resulted in the consequence of children’s unique expressions of empathy. This model contributes to our understanding of how empathy is developed in early childhood in the context of nature preschools, from the perspective of nature preschool teachers, and offers insight to improve professional practice. Implications are discussed in light of the study’s limitations.
... The word empathy emerged in 1909 by the union of two Greek roots, em and pathos (feeling into) but having Greek Linguistic ancestry, the word empathy is now, called a "recent intellectual heritage". 1,2 In the past, it has sometimes been used synonymously with sympathy. 3 Literature defines clinical empathy as an ability to understand the patient's situation, feelings and perspective and communicate that understanding to the patient. ...
Objective: This study explored the factors influencing the development of empathy in a dentist-patient relationship. Design: An exploratory qualitative study. Place and duration of the study: Khyber Medical University KPK, Pakistan October 2019 to April 2020.was conducted during 2019-2020 Methodology: This exploratory qualitative study was conducted during 2019-2020. It was conducted on 12 dental surgeons, recruited from four major dental clinical specialties. A purposive sampling technique was used. In-depth interviews were conducted through a semi-structured format. The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim and analyzed, using the thematic analysis framework. Results: Three themes were extracted from data. 1) Institutionalization of empathy, indicating a need for incorporating empathy in undergraduate and postgraduate dental curriculum, 2) Barriers in the path of empathetic attitude, including a variety of factors hampering the development of empathy in a dentist-patient relationship and 3) Cultivating a Culture of empathy for better health care provision, indicating a need for changing the collective attitude of all health care professionals, administrative staff, and students. The participants of the study observed that development of empathy in a dentist-patient relationship includes a wide range of factors, ranging from curricular, personal, social, organizational, and cultural. These factors elaborate that empathy is a multidimensional phenomenon with roots deeply entrenched in professional and personal domains.
... Empathy is a core aspect of human interactions and social behaviors [1,2], and its development is profoundly impacted by experiential and environmental factors during the first two decades of life. Distinctions between different aspects of empathy have been debated [3][4][5][6][7], but there is overall agreement that its primary components are affective (sharing others' emotions/ feelings and attitudes) and cognitive (processing and interpreting others' emotions/feelings) [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. These components may be supported by distinct networks of interconnected brain regions [20][21][22][23][24] that undergo significant reorganization during development, particularly in periods of heightened maturation such as adolescence. ...
Empathy is at the core of our social world, yet multidomain factors that affect its development in socially sensitive periods, such as adolescence, are incompletely understood. To address this gap, this study investigated associations between social, environmental and mental health factors, and their temporal changes, on adolescent empathetic behaviors/emotions and, for comparison, callous unemotional (CU) traits and behaviors, in the early longitudinal Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development sample (baseline: n = 11062; 2-year follow-up: n = 9832, median age = 119 and 144 months, respectively). Caregiver affection towards the youth, liking school, having a close friend, and importance of religious beliefs/spirituality in the youth’s life were consistently positively correlated with empathetic behaviors/emotions across assessments (p<0.001, Cohen’s f = ~0.10). Positive family dynamics and cohesion, living in a neighborhood that shared the family’s values, but also parent history of substance use and (aggregated) internalizing problems were additionally positively associated with one or more empathetic behaviors at follow-up (p<0.001, f = ~0.10). In contrast, externalizing problems, anxiety, depression, fear of social situations, and being withdrawn were negatively associated with empathetic behaviors and positively associated with CU traits and behaviors (p<0.001, f = ~0.1–0.44). The latter were also correlated with being cyberbullied and/or discriminated against, anhedonia, and impulsivity, and their interactions with externalizing and internalizing issues. Significant positive temporal correlations of behaviors at the two assessments indicated positive (early) developmental empathetic behavior trajectories, and negative CU traits’ trajectories. Negative changes in mental health adversely moderated positive trajectories and facilitated negative ones. These findings highlight that adolescent empathetic behaviors/emotions are positively related to multidomain protective social environmental factors, but simultaneously adversely associated with risk factors in the same domains, as well as bully victimization, discrimination, and mental health problems. Risk factors instead facilitate the development of CU traits and behaviors.
... A empatia é comumente definida como um constructo multidimensional, envolvido no estabelecimento e desenvolvimento das relações entre as pessoas. Os aspectos cognitivos da empatia estão relacionados à habilidade de raciocinar sobre a perspectiva de outro indivíduo e os aspectos afetivos dizem respeito às emoções mobilizadas em si ao perceber estados mentais nos outros (Blair, 2006). Inicialmente, os estudos sobre ToM e empatia buscavam investigar seu processo de desenvolvimento durante a infância (Wellman & Liu, 2004) ou tinham seu foco voltado para a compreensão de déficits existentes em populações clínicas (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001). ...
Resumo Teoria da mente e empatia são habilidades sociocognitivas implicadas na compreensão do mundo social e elaboração de respostas em contextos sociais. Entretanto, é preciso ainda avançar na precisão como as pesquisas apresentam esses constructos e as relações entre eles. O objetivo deste estudo foi realizar uma revisão de escopo a respeito das relações conceituais apontadas entre teoria da mente e empatia em pesquisas que investigam diferenças socioindividuais em adultos típicos, bem como organizar essas produções em função de categorias temáticas. Foram analisados 62 artigos, sendo observados cinco diferentes modelos de articulações conceituais entre teoria da mente e empatia e três núcleos de produção temática, ligados ao comportamento social, às variações fisiológicas na vida cotidiana, e, às variações cognitivas, afetivas e sociais. Discutem-se também avanços e limitações nessa área, apontando-se tanto para uma profícua produção como para a necessidade de se avançar na construção de parâmetros mais precisos nessa área.
... Adolescents with elevated empathic skills tend to exhibit more altruistic and prosocial behavior, while those with reduced levels are more prone to aggression [69,70]. Studies have shown that individuals with LPE, especially young children, often exhibit deficits in the cognitive aspect of empathy [68,71]. However, research focusing on adults with psychopathy and youths displaying Callous-Unemotional (CU) traits has more clearly revealed deficits in affective empathy [72,73]. ...
Introduction:
Conduct disorder (CD) is characterized by repetitive and persistent antisocial behaviors, being among the most frequently reported reasons of referral in youth. CD is a highly heterogeneous disorder, with possible specifiers defined according to age at onset, Limited Prosocial Emotions (LPE) otherwise known as Callous-Unemotional (CU) traits, Emotional Dysregulation (ED), and patterns of comorbidity, each with its own specific developmental trajectories.
Areas covered:
The authors review the evidence from published literature on the clinical presentations, diagnostic procedures, psychotherapeutic and psychoeducational approaches, and pharmacological interventions from RCT and naturalistic studies in youth. Evidence from studies including youths with LPE/CU traits, ED and aggression are also reviewed, as response moderators.
Expert opinion:
Due to its clinical heterogeneity, relevant subtypes of CD should be carefully characterized to gain reliable information on prognosis and treatments. Thus, disentangling this broad category in subtypes is crucial as a first step in diagnosis. Psychosocial interventions are the first option, possibly improving LPE/CU traits and ED, especially if implemented early during development. Instead, limited information, based on low-quality studies, supports pharmacological options. Second-generation antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and stimulants are first-line medications, according to different target symptoms, such as aggression and emotional reactivity. Developmental pathways including ADHD suggest a specific role of psychostimulants.
... Por sua vez, a empatia pode ser definida como uma resposta emocional que se origina da condição emocional de outrem e que está em consonância com o estado ou situação emocional do outro (Feshbach, 1987 Alguns autores argumentam que ambas compartilham mecanismos análogos (Preston & De Wall, 2002) e outros compreendem que a teoria da mente é uma pré-condição para que a empatia se desenvolva (Feshbach, 1987). Para outros, ainda, ambas as habilidades são diferentes (Blair, 2005). No entanto, embora a correlação entre empatia e teoria da mente tenha sido investigada anteriormente (e.g., Souza & Pavarini, 2010), as evidências sobre as correlações entre essas duas habilidades e a exposição a jogos digitais ainda são escassas, em particular, quando são considerados os estudos envolvendo crianças em idade escolar (Scienza, 2017 (2001). ...
In the last decade, the number of new digital games of various genres has grown a lot, eminently after the creation of game management platforms and after the dissemination of eSports. Digital games, beyond their entertainment purpose, are already used in schools, hospitals, and psychotherapeutic environments as rehabilitation tools and to promote cognitive and behavioral skills. Studies evaluating the impact of this form of media on users have conducted since the popularization of the first games in the 70s. However, the evidence that games can mediate interpersonal relationships, as well as promote or inhibit prosocial and empathic behaviors is still recent. The focus of previous studies was the possible associations with increased aggressive behavior and desensitization to violence. And although most consumers of digital games are young people and adults, the “digital natives” born in this century have immediate access to interactive media. For this reason, many researchers have recently investigated the way in which children and adolescents are affected by these media. In particular, more studies investigating the impact of games on sociocognitive and social skills should be conducted. Following this direction, the present work aimed to investigate a possible relationship between exposure to three categories of digital games (Neutral, Prosocial and Competitive) and prosocial behavior. A second goal was to test possible moderating effects of empathy and theory of mind skills on this relation. Fifty-seven children (9 to 12 years old) participated and were randomly distributed into three groups: G1 = neutral game; G2 = competitive game, G3 = prosocial game. Each group played a different type of video game. Prior to playing the games, all participants were assessed by a social cognition task (Faux Pas Task) and an empathy scale (Bryant's Empathy Scale for Children and Adolescents). Following that and on another day, each participant was invited to play, for 20 minutes, the digital game representative of their category group. Finally, right after playing the game, children were invited to participate in an adapted version of the Dictator's Game that involves the sharing of resources. Games of all categories had a pre-selection stage and were evaluated by 18 judges that were either Psychology undergraduate/ graduate students or university students from a game development outreach group. One game for each category was selected. Analyses did not reveal a significant gender or age effect on empathy scores, theory of mind scores and number of donated stickers. However, a significant age effect (i.e., school year) was found for the number of stickers shared, with older children sharing more stickers than younger ones. Nonetheless, there was a trend toward a significant moderating effect of empathy and theory of mind scores on the relationship between game category and number of stickers shared by the participants. More specifically, playing a prossocial, neutral or competitive videogame for 20 minutes does not necessarily impact the predisposition of children to engage on prossocial behavior. It is possible, nevertheless, that more empathic children with a more developed theory of mind may have an increased predisposition to share stickers compared to other children. Future studies should explore further whether these variables (empathy and theory of mind) or other variables can, in fact, explain part of the variation in prosocial behavior after exposure to different types of digital games. However, the present work contributes to the advancement of this line of research in Brazil as it is the first study to investigate possible effects of three different types of digital game on prosocial behavior in school-age children. The results suggest a promising direction of investigation that should be better explored by researchers in Brazil.
Background/objectives
Survivors of pediatric brain tumors (SPBT) experience significant social challenges, including fewer friends and greater isolation than peers. Difficulties in face processing and visual social attention have been implicated in these outcomes. This study evaluated facial expression recognition (FER), social attention, and their associations with social impairments in SPBT.
Methods
SPBT ( N = 54; ages 7–16) at least 2 years post treatment completed a measure of FER, while parents completed measures of social impairment. A subset ( N = 30) completed a social attention assessment that recorded eye gaze patterns while watching videos depicting pairs of children engaged in joint play. Social Prioritization scores were calculated, with higher scores indicating more face looking. Correlations and regression analyses evaluated associations between variables, while a path analysis modeling tool (PROCESS) evaluated the indirect effects of Social Prioritization on social impairments through emotion‐specific FER.
Results
Poorer recognition of angry and sad facial expressions was significantly correlated with greater social impairment. Social Prioritization was positively correlated with angry FER but no other emotions. Social Prioritization had significant indirect effects on social impairments through angry FER.
Conclusion
Findings suggest interventions aimed at improving recognition of specific emotions may mitigate social impairments in SPBT. Further, reduced social attention (i.e., diminished face looking) could be a factor in reduced face processing ability, which may result in social impairments. Longitudinal research is needed to elucidate temporal associations between social attention, face processing, and social impairments.
If you the reader thought that earlier chapters in this book were iconoclastic, wait till you read this one! Here we look at the changing relationships between top managers, middle-mangers, and staff and their overall changing relations with service users and outside partners. This chapter challenges much of the way management as a function has been thought about in public services.
This paper studies the behavioral responses of employees who are endowed with empathic abilities to different institutional designs of incentive pay. Empathic abilities motivate altruistic behavior by sensing the other's feelings toward oneself. In performance contests, empathic individuals withhold effort, most (less) strongly when facing a non‐empathic (empathic) contestant. Effort levels of both non‐empathic and empathic individuals increase with a higher probability that the contestant is of their own type. By developing a theoretical model, our analysis contributes to understanding observed individual behavior in experiments and corresponding econometric evidence. With direct merit pay, effort choices only depend on the signaling quality of the performance measure. Individuals with stronger empathic abilities may shy away from performance contests to, instead, receive merit pay. If gender governs empathic abilities, setting incentives by performance contests cannot simultaneously ensure equal pay and equal opportunities.
Empathy provides a cognitive and emotional bridge that connects individuals and promotes prosocial behavior. People empathize with others via two complementary perceptual routes: Cognitive Empathy or the ability to accurately recognize and understand others' emotional states, and Affective Empathy or the ability to 'feel with' others. This Element reviews past and current research on both cognitive and affective empathy, focusing on behavioral, as well as neuroscientific research. It highlights a recent shift towards more dynamic and complex stimuli which may capture better the nature of real social interaction. It expands on why context is crucial when perceiving others' emotional state, and discusses gender differences, biases affecting our understanding of others, and perception of others in clinical conditions. Lastly, it highlights proposed future directions in the field.
I present the literature pro and con the concept of ‘killing inhibitions’ in humans and animals as formulated by students of preindustrial warfare such as Turney-High, Quincy Wright, and Keeley; (human) ethologists and primatologists such as Lorenz, Tinbergen, Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Sommer, Vogel, Ghilglieri, and Wrangham; students of contemporary military psychology/psychiatry and combat motivation such as Grossman, Bourke, Gabriel, and Shalit; and neuroscientists such as Koenigs et al. and Miller et al.
The processing of emotional expressions is fundamental for normal socialization and interaction. Reduced responsiveness to the expressions of sadness and fear has been implicated in the development of psychopathy (R. J. R. Blair, 1995). The current study investigates the ability of adult psychopathic individuals to process vocal affect. Psychopathic and nonpsychopathic adults, defined by the Hare Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (PCL-R; R. D. Hare, 1991), were presented with neutral words spoken with intonations conveying happiness, disgust, anger, sadness, and fear and were asked to identify the emotion of the speaker on the basis of prosody. The results indicated that psychopathic inmates were particularly impaired in the recognition of fearful vocal affect. These results are interpreted with reference to the low-fear and violence inhibition mechanism models of psychopathy.
Research on passive avoidance learning has demonstrated reliable differences between psychopaths and controls when avoidance errors result in electric shock but not in loss of money (Schmauk, 1970). Using monetary punishments, Newman, Widom, and Nathan (1985) found that psychopathic delinquents performed more poorly than controls in an experimental paradigm employing monetary reward as well as the avoidance contingency. The present study was conducted to replicate and extend these findings using adult psychopaths and a computer controlled task. Sixty white male prisoners were assigned to groups using Hare's (1980) Psychopathy Checklist and administered a “go/no-go” discrimination task involving monetary incentives. One condition entailed competing reward and punishment contingencies; the other, two punishment contingencies. As predicted, psychopaths made significantly more passive avoidance errors than nonpsychopaths when the task contained competing goals (p < .05) but performed as well as controls when the subjects' only goal was avoiding punishment. Results corroborate earlier findings that psychopaths are relatively poor at learning to inhibit reward-seeking behavior that results in monetary punishment.
One of the major developments of the second year of human life is the emergence of the ability to pretend. A child's knowledge of a real situation is apparently contradicted and distorted by pretense. If, as generally assumed, the child is just beginning to construct a system for internally representing such knowledge, why is this system of representation not undermined by its use in both comprehending and producing pretense? In this article I present a theoretical analysis of the representational mechanism underlying this ability. This mechanism extends the power of the infant's existing capacity for (primary) representation, creating a capacity for metarepresentation. It is this, developing toward the end of infancy, that underlies the child's new abilities to pretend and to understand pretense in others. There is a striking isomorphism between the three fundamental forms of pretend play and three crucial logical properties of mental state expressions in language. This isomorphism points to a common underlying form of internal representation that is here called metarepresentation. A performance model, the decoupler, is outlined embodying ideas about how an infant might compute the complex function postulated to underlie pretend play. This model also reveals pretense as an early manifestation of the ability to understand mental states. Aspects of later preschool development, both normal and abnormal, are discussed in the light of the new model. This theory begins the task of characterizing the specific innate basis of our commonsense "theory of mind.".
Summary Ten able adults with autism or Asperger syndrome and 10 normal volunteers were PET scanned while watching animated sequences. The animations depicted two triangles moving about on a screen in three different conditions: moving randomly, moving in a goal-directed fashion (chasing, fighting), and moving interactively with implied intentions (coaxing, tricking). The last condition frequently elicited descriptions in terms of mental states that viewers attributed to the triangles (mentalizing). The autism group gave fewer and less accurate descriptions of these latter animations, but equally accurate descriptions of the other animations compared with controls. While viewing animations that elicited mentalizing, in contrast to randomly moving shapes, the normal group showed increased activation in a previously identified mentalizing network (medial prefrontal cortex, superior temporal sulcus at the temporoparietal junction and temporal poles). The autism group showed less activation than the normal group in all these regions. However, one additional region, extrastriate cortex, which was highly active when watching animations that elicited mentalizing, showed the same amount of increased activation in both groups. In the autism group this extrastriate region showed reduced functional connectivity with the superior temporal sulcus at the temporo-parietal junction, an area associated with the processing of biological motion as well as with mentalizing. This finding suggests a physiological cause for the mentalizing dysfunction in autism: a bottleneck in the interaction between higher order and lower order perceptual processes.
This paper considers neurocognitive models of aggression and relates them to explanations of the antisocial personality disorders. Two forms of aggression are distinguished: reactive aggression elicited in response to frustration/threat and goal directed, instrumental aggression. It is argued that different forms of neurocognitive model are necessary to explain the emergence of these different forms of aggression. Impairments in executive emotional systems (the somatic marker system or the social response reversal system) are related to reactive aggression shown by patients with “acquired sociopathy” due to orbitofrontal cortex lesions. Impairment in the capacity to form associations between emotional unconditioned stimuli, particularly distress cues, and conditioned stimuli (the violence inhibition mechanism model) is related to the instrumental aggression shown by persons with developmental psychopathy.
Previous work suggests that a range of mental states can be read from facial expressions, beyond the “basic emotions”. Experiment 1 tested this in more detail, by using a standardized method, and by testing the role of face parts (eyes vs. mouth vs. the whole face). Adult subjects were shown photographs of an actress posing 10 basic emotions (happy, sad, angry, afraid, etc.) and 10 complex mental states (scheme, admire, interest, thoughtfulness, etc.). For each mental state, each subject was shown the whole face, the eyes alone, or the mouth alone, and were given a forced choice of two mental state terms. Results indicated that: (1) Subjects show remarkable agreement in ascribing a wide range of mental states to facial expressions, (2) for the basic emotions, the whole face is more informative than either the eyes or the mouth, (3) for the complex mental states, seeing the eyes alone produced significantly better performance than seeing the mouth alone, and was as informative as the whole face. In Experiment 2, the eye-region effect was re-tested, this time using an actor's face, in order to test if this effect generalized across faces of different sex. Results were broadly similar to those found in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, adults with autism or Asperger Syndrome were testedusing the same procedure as Experiment1. Results showed a significant impairment relative to normal adults on the complex mental states, and this was most marked on the eyes-alone condition. The results from all three experiments are discussed in relation to the role or perception in the use of our everyday “theory of mind”, and the role of eye-contact in this.
Presents a theoretical analysis of the representational mechanism underlying a child's ability to pretend. This mechanism extends the power of the infant's existing capacity for (primary) representation, creating a capacity for "metarepresentation." It is this, developing toward the end of infancy, that underlies the child's new abilities to pretend and to understand pretense in others. There is a striking isomorphism between the 3 fundamental forms of pretend play and 3 crucial logical properties of mental state expressions in language. This isomorphism points to a common underlying form of internal representation that is here called metarepresentation. A performance model, the "decoupler," is outlined embodying ideas about how an infant might compute the complex function postulated to underlie pretend play. This model also reveals pretense as an early manifestation of the ability to understand mental states. Aspects of later preschool development, both normal and abnormal, are discussed in the light of the new model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Hypothesized that psychopaths seldom commit violent crimes colored by intense emotional arousal and that their victims are likely to be strangers. A detailed analysis was performed on the most serious of offenses committed by 55 psychopaths (Group P) and 46 nonpsychopaths (Group NP). Results are consistent with the prediction. Most of the murders by Group NP, but none of those by Group P, occurred during a domestic dispute or during a period of extreme arousal. Most of Group NP's victims were female and were known to them, whereas the opposite was true of Group P. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This study extended prior work showing abnormal affect–startle modulation in psychopaths. Male prisoners viewed specific categories of pleasant (erotic or thrilling) and unpleasant (victim or direct threat) slide pictures, along with neutral pictures. Acoustic startle probes were presented early (300 and 800 ms) and late (1,800, 3,000, and 4,500 ms) in the viewing interval. At later times, nonpsychopaths showed moderate and strong reflex potentiation for victim and threat scenes, respectively. For psychopaths, startle was inhibited during victim scenes and only weakly potentiated during threat. Psychopaths also showed more reliable blink inhibition across pleasant contents than nonpsychopaths and greater heart rate orienting to affective pictures overall. These results indicate a heightened aversion threshold in psychopaths. In addition, deficient reflex modulation at early times suggested a weakness in initial stimulus evaluation among psychopaths. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Two correlated factors have been identified in the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL), a valid and reliable instrument for the assessment of psychopathy in male prison populations. Factor 1 measures a selfish, remorseless, and exploitative use of others, and Factor 2 measures a chronically unstable and antisocial life-style. We examined the psychometric properties of the factor solutions and a variety of correlates of the two factors. Although the PCL can be considered a homogeneous scale on statistical grounds, the factors have distinct patterns of intercorrelations with other variables. Factor 1 is most closely correlated with the classic clinical description of the psychopathic personality. It is only marginally related to many self-report personality scales, to quality of family background, to criminal behavior, and to diagnoses of antisocial personality disorder. Factor 2 is strongly correlated with these latter variables and with scales related to socialization. We conclude that both factors measure important elements of psychopathy and that assessments based only on the presence of antisocial behavior or on scales related to socialization are inadequate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This paper aims to provide an understanding of the antisocial personality disorders (APDs; i.e. conduct disorder, antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy) that is informed by developmental cognitive neuroscience. These disorders must be understood in terms of both the information-processing impairments shown by afflicted individuals and the dysfunctional neural substrates that give rise to these impairments. Three broad conceptualizations of the causes of APDs are discussed. These are: (1) an impairment in executive functioning implicating prefrontal cortex; (2) an impairment in executive emotion’s processing implicating orbito-frontal cortex; (3) an impairment in emotion processing implicating the amygdala. The literature is discussed and it is concluded that: first, executive functioning impairments are not associated with the development of the APDs, although the individual’s executive functioning may interact with other impairments to effect prognosis; second, impairments of executive emotion processing may be implicated in the development of the APDs, though the evidence is equivocal and the lack of any detailed theory makes firm conclusions difficult; third, the development of the APDs is associated with an impairment in emotional processing and that this impairment may be due to dysfunction within a circuit which involves the amygdala.
A sample of 6- to 13-year-old clinic-referred (n = 136) and volunteer (n = 30) participants was investigated for a potential interaction between the quality of parenting that a child receives and callous–unemotional traits in the child for predicting conduct problems. Ineffective parenting was associated with conduct problems only in children without significant levels of callous (e.g., lack of empathy, manipulativeness) and unemotional (e.g., lack of guilt, emotional constrictedness) traits. In contrast, children high on these traits exhibited a significant number of conduct problems, regardless of the quality of parenting they experiences. Results are interpreted in the context of a model that proposed that callous–unemotional traits designate a group of children with conduct problems who have distinct causal factors involved in the development of their problematic behavior.
A patient with selective bilateral damage to the amygdala did not acquire conditioned autonomic responses to visual or auditory stimuli but did acquire the declarative facts about which visual or auditory stimuli were paired with the unconditioned stimulus. By contrast, a patient with selective bilateral damage to the hippocampus failed to acquire the facts but did acquire the conditioning. Finally, a patient with bilateral damage to both amygdala and hippocampal formation acquired neither the conditioning nor the facts. These findings demonstrate a double dissociation of conditioning and declarative knowledge relative to the human amygdala and hippocampus.
The long-term consequences of early prefrontal cortex lesions occurring before 16 months were investigated in two adults. As is the case when such damage occurs in adulthood, the two early-onset patients had severely impaired social behavior despite normal basic cognitive abilities, and showed insensitivity to future consequences of decisions, defective autonomic responses to punishment contingencies and failure to respond to behavioral interventions. Unlike adult-onset patients, however, the two patients had defective social and moral reasoning, suggesting that the acquisition of complex social conventions and moral rules had been impaired. Thus early-onset prefrontal damage resulted in a syndrome resembling psychopathy.
Factor analysis of a measure of psychopathy was conducted in a sample of 95 clinic-referred children between the ages of 6 and 13 years. These analyses revealed 2 dimensions of behavior, one associated with impulsivity and conduct problems (I/CP) and one associated with the interpersonal and motivational aspects of psychopathy (callous/unemotional: CU). In a subset of this sample (n = 64), analyses indicated that scores on the I/CP factor were highly associated with traditional measures of conduct problems. In contrast, scores derived from the CU factor were only moderately associated with measures of conduct problems and exhibited a different pattern of associations on several criteria that have been associated with psychopathy (e.g., sensation seeking) or childhood antisocial behavior (e.g., low intelligence, poor school achievement, and anxiety). These analyses suggest that psychopathic personality features and conduct problems are independent, yet interacting, constructs in children, analogous to findings in the adult literature.
Activation in or near the fusiform gyrus was estimated to faces and control stimuli. Activation peaked at 165 ms and was strongest to digitized photographs of human faces, regardless of whether they were presented in color or grayscale, suggesting that face- and color-specific areas are functionally separate. Schematic sketches evoked ~30% less activation than did face photographs. Scrambling the locations of facial features reduced the response by ~25% in either hemisphere, suggesting that configurational versus analytic processing is not lateralized at this latency. Animal faces evoked ~50% less activity, and common objects, animal bodies or sensory controls evoked ~80% less activity than human faces. The (small) responses evoked by meaningless control images were stronger when they included surfaces and shading, suggesting that the fusiform gyrus may use these features in constructing its facespecific response. Putative fusiform activation was not significantly related to stimulus repetition, gender or emotional expression. A midline occipital source significantly distinguished between faces and control images as early as 110 ms, but was more sensitive to sensory qualities. This source significantly distinguished happy and sad faces from those with neutral expressions. We conclude that the fusiform gyrus may selectively encode faces at 165 ms, transforming sensory input for further processing.
The aim of this investigation was to identify neural systems supporting the processing of intentional and unintentional transgressions of social norms. Using event-related fMRI, we addressed this question by comparing neural responses to stories describing normal behaviour, embarrassing situations or violations of social norms. Processing transgressions of social norms involved systems previously reported to play a role in representing the mental states of others, namely medial prefrontal and temporal regions. In addition, the processing of transgressions of social norms involved systems previously found to respond to aversive emotional expressions (in particular angry expressions); namely lateral orbitofrontal cortex (Brodmann area 47) and medial prefrontal cortex. The observed responses were similar for both intentional and unintentional social norm violations, albeit more pronounced for the intentional norm violations. These data suggest that social behavioural problems in patients with frontal lobe lesions or fronto-temporal dementia may be a consequence of dysfunction within the systems identified in light of their possible role in processing whether particular social behaviours are, or are not, appropriate.
In this article, we review diverse studies of the antecedents, facial display, and social consequences of embarrassment. These studies indicate that embarrassment serves an appeasement function, reconciling social relations when they have gone awry. We then speculate about how embarrassment is elaborated into more complex social interactions, such as teasing and flirtation. We conclude by raising questions about the blush and embarrassment that await empirical consideration.
The goal of this chapter is to consider neuro-cognitive models of “acquired sociopathy” and developmental psychopathy. I will
first provide definitions of these two clinical conditions. I will then detail the differences in the form of aggression—reactive
and instrumental—that these two disorders present with. Following this, I will review what is known about the neural bases
of these disorders on the basis of neuro-imaging studies. Then, two models of acquired sociopathy will be described: the somatic
marker hypothesis and the social response reversal model. I will also consider whether either of these models could account
for developmental psychopathy. Finally, I will consider a model of developmental psychopathy that has been extremely successful
in accounting for much of the data on this disorder.
This paper investigates the Theory of Mind ability of psychopaths. Happé's (1994) advanced test of Theory of Mind was presented to 25 psychopaths and 25 non-psychopathic incarcerated controls. The psychopaths and the non-psychopathic controls did not differ in their performance on this task. However, the psychopaths were performing significantly better than Happé's most highly able adult autistic population. It was therefore concluded that the psychopath does not have a Theory of Mind deficit. Speculations are made about the different developmental pathways of autism and psychopathy and the differences in the empathy deficit present in both these disorders.
The purpose of the present investigation was threefold: ( 1 ) to develop an empirical taxonomy of female offenders; (2) to relate these findings to empirical taxonomies of male offenders; and (3) to establish the occurrence of a personality type among female offenders approximating that called the psychopath. The women were awaiting trial in a correctional institution and approximately 94% had convictions previous to their current arrest. Personality profiles of these women were subjected to a cluster analysis, and four distinct profile types emerged, classifying three-quarters of the sample. The four types were tentatively identified as being characteristic of primary psychopaths, secondary or neurotic psychopaths, Megargee's overcontrolled personality type, and normal criminals. Similarities with previous research on both female and male offenders were emphasized, and one difference in the nondiscriminating power of the extraversion dimension was noted. The importance of further research with female offenders, and in particular, female psychopaths was stressed. High hostility scores for the entire sample were noted and an interpretation was suggested.
We take a fresh look at emotion recognition in autistic children, by testing their recognition of three different emotions (happy, sad, and surprise). The interest in selecting these is that whereas the first two are typical “simple” emotions (caused by situations), the third is typically a “cognitive” emotion (caused by beliefs). Because subjects with autism have clear difficulties in understanding beliefs, we predicted they would show more difficulty in recognising surprise. In contrast, as they have no difficulty in understanding situations as causes of emotion, we predicted they would not show deficits in recognising happy and sad. These predictions were borne out, in a comparison with a group of normal children and in a group of subjects with mental handicap. This result shows the importance of fine-grain analysis in emotion-recognition tasks, and is discussed in relation to affective and theory of mind models of autism.
This paper describes an early phase in the development of new research scale for the assessment of psychopathy in criminal populations. The scale is meant to be a sort of operational definition of the procedures that go into making global ratings of psychopathy. While the interrater reliability of these ratings is very high ( > 0.85) they are difficult to make, require a considerable amount of experience, and the procedures involved are not easily communicated to other investigators. Following a series of analyses, 22 items were chosen as representative of the type of information used in making global ratings. Two investigators then used interview and case-history data to complete the 22-item checklist for 143 male prison inmates. The correlation between the two sets of total checklist scores was 0.93 and coefficient alpha was 0.88, indicating a very high degree of scale reliability. The correlation between the total checklist scores and global ratings of psychopathy was 0.83. A series of multivariate analyses explored the factorial structure of the scale and demonstrated its ability to discriminate very accurately between inmates with high and low ratings of psychopathy. Preliminary indications are that the checklist will hold up well to crossvalidation.
Neuroimaging studies have shown differential amygdala responses to masked ("unseen") emotional stimuli. How visual signals related to such unseen stimuli access the amygdala is unknown. A possible pathway, involving the superior colliculus and pulvinar, is suggested by observations of patients with striate cortex lesions who show preserved abilities to localize and discriminate visual stimuli that are not consciously perceived ("blindsight"). We used measures of right amygdala neural activity acquired from volunteer subjects viewing masked fear-conditioned faces to determine whether a colliculo-pulvinar pathway was engaged during processing of these unseen target stimuli. Increased connectivity between right amygdala, pulvinar, and superior colliculus was evident when fear-conditioned faces were unseen rather than seen. Right amygdala connectivity with fusiform and orbitofrontal cortices decreased in the same condition. By contrast, the left amygdala, whose activity did not discriminate seen and unseen fear-conditioned targets, showed no masking-dependent changes in connectivity with superior colliculus or pulvinar. These results suggest that a subcortical pathway to the right amygdala, via midbrain and thalamus, provides a route for processing behaviorally relevant unseen visual events in parallel to a cortical route necessary for conscious identification.
Although the amygdala is widely believed to have a role in the recognition of emotion, a central issue concerns whether it is involved in the recognition of all emotions or whether it is more important to some emotions than to others. We describe studies of two people, DR and SE, with impaired recognition of facial expressions in the context of bilateral amygdala damage. When tested with photographs showing facial expressions of emotion from the Ekman and Friesen (1976) series, both DR and SE showed deficits in the recognition of fear. Problems in recognising fear were also found using photographic quality images interpolated ("morphed") between prototypes of the six emotions in the Ekman and Friesen (1976) series to create a hexagonal continuum (running from happiness to surprise to fear to sadness to disgust to anger to happiness). Control subjects identified these morphed images as belonging to distinct regions of the continuum, corresponding to the nearest prototype expression. However, DR and SE were impaired on this task, with problems again being most clearly apparent in the region of the fear prototype, An equivalent test of recognition of morphed identities of six famous faces was performed normally by DR, confirming the dissociability of impairments affecting the recognition of identity and expression from the face. Further two-way forced-choice tests showed that DR was unable to tell fear from anger, but could tell happiness from sadness without difficulty. The finding that the recognition of fear can be differentially severely affected by brain injury is consistent with reports of the effects of bilateral amygdala damage in another case (Adolphs, Tranel, Damasio, & Damasio, 1994, 1995). The recognition of facial expressions of basic emotions may therefore be linked, to some extent, to specific neural substrates.
• The four parts of which this work consists, though intimately related to each other as different views of the same great aggregate of phenomena, are yet, in the main, severally independent and complete in themselves. The General Analysis is an inquiry concerning the basis of our intelligence. Its object is to ascertain the fundamental peculiarity of all modes of consciousness constituting knowledge proper—knowledge of the highest validity. The Special Analysis has for its aim, to resolve each species of cognition into its components. Commencing with the most involved ones, it seeks by successive decompositions to reduce cognitions of every order to those of the simplest kind; and so, finally to make apparent the common nature of all thought, and disclose its ultimate constituents. The General Synthesis, setting out with an abstract statement of the relation subsisting between every living organism and the external world, and arguing that all vital actions whatever, mental and bodily, must be expressible in terms of this relation; proceeds to formulate, in such terms, the successive phases of progressing Life, considered apart from our conventional classifications of them. And the Special Synthesis, after exhibiting that gradual differentiation of the psychical from the physical life which accompanies the evolution of Life in general, goes on to develop, in its application to psychical life in particular, the doctrine which the previous part sets forth: describing the nature and genesis of the different modes of Intelligence, in terms of the relation which obtains between inner and outer phenomena. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
• The four parts of which this work consists, though intimately related to each other as different views of the same great aggregate of phenomena, are yet, in the main, severally independent and complete in themselves. The General Analysis is an inquiry concerning the basis of our intelligence. Its object is to ascertain the fundamental peculiarity of all modes of consciousness constituting knowledge proper—knowledge of the highest validity. The Special Analysis has for its aim, to resolve each species of cognition into its components. Commencing with the most involved ones, it seeks by successive decompositions to reduce cognitions of every order to those of the simplest kind; and so, finally to make apparent the common nature of all thought, and disclose its ultimate constituents. The General Synthesis, setting out with an abstract statement of the relation subsisting between every living organism and the external world, and arguing that all vital actions whatever, mental and bodily, must be expressible in terms of this relation; proceeds to formulate, in such terms, the successive phases of progressing Life, considered apart from our conventional classifications of them. And the Special Synthesis, after exhibiting that gradual differentiation of the psychical from the physical life which accompanies the evolution of Life in general, goes on to develop, in its application to psychical life in particular, the doctrine which the previous part sets forth: describing the nature and genesis of the different modes of Intelligence, in terms of the relation which obtains between inner and outer phenomena. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Huntington's disease can particularly affect people's recognition of disgust
from facial expressions1,
2, and functional neuroimaging research
has demonstrated that facial expressions of disgust consistently engage different
brain areas (insula and putamen) than other facial expressions3,
4,
5.
However, it is not known whether these particular brain areas process only
facial signals of disgust or disgust signals from multiple modalities. Here
we describe evidence, from a patient with insula and putamen damage, for a
neural system for recognizing social signals of disgust from multiple modalities.
Antisocial personality disorder exacts a costly toll on society and poses many unique challenges for treatment. This chapter reviews historic conceptions of antisocial personality disorder and the related but distinct condition of psychopathy. The systematic co-occurrence of antisocial personality disorder with other diagnostic conditions (e.g., alcoholism, other forms of drug dependence) is discussed, and research is reviewed indicating that disorders of these types (termed “externalizing” disorders) share a common underlying dispositional vulnerability. This is followed by a review of current diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder and changes to the diagnosis that have been proposed for the DSM-5, highlighting parallels to the literature (including changes proposed for the DSM-5) on conduct disorder, the childhood precursor to adult antisocial personality disorder. The chapter concludes with a discussion of currently available methods of treatment for antisocial populations, emphasizing the best-supported cognitive behavioral approaches, and future directions for treatment based on recent developments in the literature reviewed. Particular emphasis is placed on ways in which interventions could be tailored to meet the unique treatment needs of phenotypically distinct subgroups of antisocial individuals, and how emerging knowledge of the neurobiological underpinnings of antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy might be applied to developing alternative methods of treatment such as pharmacologically based or neuro-reprogramming (e.g., brain-process oriented training, or direct brain biofeedback) approaches that directly target cognitive and affective processing deficits common in these populations.
Provides an understanding of antisocial personality disorders (APDs; conduct disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and psychopathy) that is informed by developmental cognitive neuroscience. The author states that these disorders must be understood in terms of both the information-processing impairments shown by afflicted individuals and the dysfunctional neural substrates that give rise to these impairments. Three conceptualizations (an impairment in executive functioning implicating prefrontal cortex, an impairment in executive emotion's processing implicating orbito-frontal cortex, and an impairment in emotion processing implicating the amygdala) of the causes of APDs are discussed. It is concluded that executive functioning impairments are not associated with the development of the APDs, although the individual's executive functioning may interact with other impairments to effect prognosis; impairments of executive emotion processing may be implicated in the development of the APDs, though the evidence is equivocal and the lack of any detailed theory makes firm conclusions difficult; and the development of the APDs is associated with an impairment in emotional processing and this impairment may be due to dysfunction within a circuit which involves the amygdala. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Debate continues concerning the diagnosis of psychopathy, despite the publication of the DSM-IV. The DSM criteria for antisocial personality disorder are widely used, particularly in civil psychiatric settings and in research on substance use. However, interest in the Psychopathy Checklist is burgeoning, particularly among experimental psychopathologists and forensic clinicians.