Narcissism is commonly associated with low empathy, but empirical studies have used diverse methods, yielding mixed findings. The present meta-analysis examined the overall magnitude of the ...association between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism and affective and cognitive empathy (N = 32200). Grandiose narcissism was significantly negatively associated with self-reported cognitive (r = −0.085) and affective (r = −0.145) empathy. When empathy was measured behaviourally, grandiose narcissism was significantly associated only with affective empathy (r = −0.251) but not cognitive empathy (r = −0.052). Vulnerable narcissism was significantly negatively associated with self-reported cognitive and affective empathy (r = −0.179 and r = −0.105 respectively). The association between vulnerable narcissism and cognitive empathy measured behaviourally was not significant (r = −0.069). The association between narcissism and empathy is nuanced and depends on various conceptual and methodological factors.
In other words, wondering about others can be a pathway to meaningful dispositions towards and/or encounters with them. ...Sardar's perspective - his attention to this issue, as a postcolonial critic ...and a scholar of Islam, who identifies as a Muslim - signals the power relations associated with wonder, particularly the wonder and wondering that exists within diverse and unequal societies. ...for wonder to result in curiosity, we also need to care. ...there is no definitive curiosity, but rather a series of different understandings, meanings and practices.28 Brian Dillon, who recently curated an exhibition on this subject, explains that 'if there is something called curiosity, it is an oddly dissolved, indistinct and various notion'.29 Consequently, when cultural critics and philosophers have attempted to discuss curiosity, they have generally opted to focus upon particular forms or histories of curiosity, rather than generalising about curiosity in the way that Iris Murdoch's two characters, Arnold and Bradley, appeared to do. Anas Al-Tikriti portrayed the mass rally of February, 2003 as the comingtogether of distinct groups: 'Muslims standing by non-Muslims', 'people of all ages, of all classes, standing together', and 'Muslims' sharing a platform with 'the atheists and the gays and homosexuals'.55 This representation mirrored the tripartite leadership of the anti-war movement, which comprised organisations representing Muslims, Socialists and Peace campaigners, each with a constituency to represent and maintain, and it spoke more generally of social types and tidy categories.
Having shared or similar attributes with others in need has been shown to increase observers' empathic response, willingness to help and prosocial behaviour. We tested whether a subtle similarity, ...namely of observers' and targets' self-regulatory orientation in terms of a promotion or prevention regulatory focus (i.e., interpersonal regulatory fit), would entail similar effects. Interpersonal regulatory fit and misfit was conveyed through focus- congruent or -incongruent emotional reactions which targets facing distressing situations expressed. We predicted that when observers' regulatory focus fits with targets' negative emotional reaction (i.e., promotion focus and dejection reaction or prevention focus and agitation reaction), they would be more likely to express empathy, willingness to help, and to engage in prosocial behaviour towards this target compared to conditions of misfit. Five studies examined observers' chronic and situationally induced regulatory focus (Studies 1, 3, & 4 and Studies 2 & 5 respectively) and presented different distressing scenarios with targets conveying focus-congruent or focus-incongruent negative emotions. Inconsistent results emerged across studies, which indicated misfit, fit and no effects. An internal meta-analysis across all studies indicated that overall there was no evidence of either a fit or a misfit effect. Two further studies (Study 8 & 9) including a stronger portrayal of target's regulatory focus and attempted replication of a previous study also yielded inconsistent findings. A systematic review was carried out to examine the important moderators affecting the interpersonal regulatory fit phenomenon. Lastly, we explored further divergent avenues of research, as informed by regulatory focus theory broadly, with two studies addressing social projection and empathy, as well as violation of expectations and social perception (Study 6 & 7). Overall, this work sheds light on the technical challenges when exploring relations between subtle interpersonal regulatory (mis)fit and prosocial reactions. Implications for future research are discussed, including the importance of creating stronger interpersonal (mis)fit experiences by exploring other mediums of presentation and emphasising distressed targets' hindered goal pursuits in addition to negative emotional reactions.
The anthropology of empathy Hollan, Douglas W; Throop, C. Jason
2011., 20110815, 2011, 2011-08-01, 20110101, Volume:
1
eBook
Exploring the role of empathy in a variety of Pacific societies, this book is at the forefront of the latest anthropological research on empathy. It presents distinct articulations of many ...assumptions of contemporary philosophical, neurobiological, and social scientific treatments of the topic. The variations described in this book do not necessarily preclude the possibility of shared existential, biological, and social influences that give empathy a distinctly human cast, but they do provide an important ethnographic lens through which to examine the possibilities and limits of empathy in any given community of practice.
Research has indicated that empathy and prosocial responding are associated with numerous emotional, psychological and social benefits. However, although adolescence is recognised as a key period for ...prosocial development, knowledge about the factors that facilitate the development of empathy and prosocial responding among adolescents is limited. A narrative systematic review was conducted of studies examining the significant social and psychological correlates of empathy and prosocial behaviour in adolescents. Empirical research papers focusing on typically developing adolescents, aged 13-18 years were identified and assessed for quality. Findings from a total of 168 papers were extracted and subjected to a narrative synthesis. Results indicated that a number of different contextual and psychological factors significantly influence the levels of other-oriented (empathy and prosocial) responding expressed by adolescents. However, findings indicate that differential relationships may be observed depending on how empathy and prosocial responding are operationalised. Overall, results from this review have important implications for future research and policy.
•Greater understanding about the development of empathy and prosocial responding during adolescence is warranted•Youth empathy and prosocial behaviour are associated with numerous different social/individual factors.•Greater consistency in how empathy and prosocial behaviour are conceptualised and measured in independent research studies is needed.
This article proposes a link between autistic people being misperceived by the neurotypical majority and their being at risk of poor mental health and well‐being. We present a transactional account ...of development in which the misperceptions (and consequent behaviour) of the neurotypical majority influences the perceptions and behaviour of autistic people such that they become increasingly separate and indeed isolated from mainstream society. This jeopardizes their mental health and prevents autistic people from developing to full potential. The situation is not only problematical for the development of autistic people but is also to the detriment of wider society, in so far as autistic people are effectively prevented from contributing fully. This account assumes that some (not necessarily all) autistic people yearn to be included, to be productive and to be useful. It thus directly opposes accounts that view autism as an extreme case of diminished social motivation.
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.
O estudo teve por objetivo descrever o desenvolvimento e a validação inicial de uma escala de empatia para estudantes brasileiros. O instrumento foi construído pela análise da literatura sobre ...empatia e de quatro escalas encontradas na literatura internacional e nacional. A amostra consistiu em 201 estudantes, de ambos os sexos, com idades entre 9 e 16 anos, do 5º ao 9º ano escolar. A escala proposta contempla 17 itens, com respostas em formato do tipo Likert de quatro pontos (nunca, quase nunca, quase sempre e sempre), distribuídos em três fatores com variância explicada de 44,57%. O alfa de Cronbach do fator "preocupação com o outro" foi de 0,75, do "envolvimento emocional" foi de 0,71 e do "flexibilidade interpessoal" foi de 0,63. O instrumento requer estudos adicionais pois um fator (flexibilidade interpessoal) não apresentou índices aceitáveis de consistência interna.
The primary goal of this research was to improve our understanding of how empathy influences other cognitive faculties, specifically episodic memory. We first put forward a working model that ...attempts to describe the array of processes considered fundamental to empathy and to demonstrate how they emerge from an interaction of cognitive faculties, from primitive state-matching to higher-level episodic simulation, to achieve social goals. Four studies were then conducted. The first two developed and adapted a novel text-based paradigm in order to identify any differences in the encoding and retrieval strategies of low and high empathy individuals. Study 3 adapted this paradigm into video monologues and introduced a novel empathy measure, the Emotional Resonance Index (ERI). Study 4 introduced a second paradigm that presented participants with written scenarios to investigate how empathy may relate to theory of mind-based inferences. In study 1 and 2, we found that, at encoding, high empathy individuals were more emotionally impacted by the content of narratives, specifically those with neutral and positive valence. At retrieval, they consistently remembered more emotional details than low empathy individuals, especially from narratives with positive valence. In study 3, we observed that high empathy participants no longer remembered more emotional details but instead remembered less non-emotional details. All participants demonstrated a stronger emotional reaction to narratives presented in congruent emotional tone, but high empathy individuals reported experiencing stronger emotionality than low empathy individuals. In study 4, we found that hot empathy predicted a preference for typical responses and responses of positive emotional valence. For certain scenarios, response choices varied with empathy scores and personality traits. In the final chapter, we considered how these findings correspond to our working model and the dissociable processes it describes. Finally, we discussed the contribution these findings make to prevailing cognitive theories of empathy, before outlining some limitations of these novel paradigms and suggestions for future research.
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