empathy

[Monicarodr]

THE PROCESS OF EMPATHY
Monica Rodriguez

This week we examined the neural correlates of the “process” of
empathy, as opposed to the consequences that empathy has for a target
and/or perceiver, as Lindsay points out. The articles we covered were
concerned mostly with cognitive views on the empathic process, and the
results, in turn, help clarify these theories.
Batson (2009) makes the following distinctions about the meanings and
theorization of empathy. According to him we respond to two different
questions. The first is: How can we know what the other person is
thinking and feeling? In answering this question, researchers have
coined the terms “empathic accuracy”, “perspective taking”, and
“motor mimicry” (e.g., adopting movements, posture and gestures of
someone else). We match someone else’s emotional/neural state because
perception and action rely on same neural circuits.

The second question is: What leads some people to respond and care for
the suffering of another? Imagining how the other is thinking and
feeling is somewhat different than imagining how one would think and
feel in the same situation. In the former, we use our “lay theories”
to infer what another is thinking or feeling (“theory” theory), or,
alternatively, we resort to our own feelings to understand someone
else (simulation theory). Feeling for another who is suffering
(vicarious distress) is what Lindsay learned in grade school, namely
sympathy, where we deal with the consequences generated by some else’s
emotional state.

Preston et al, Carr et al, examined the process of empathy defined as
actively projecting oneself into in someone else’s situation, using
psychophysiology, PET, and fMRI to examine the neural correlates of
empathy. Results showed that 1) the brain areas recruited for
personal and nonpersonal imagery maximally overlap when participants
could relate to the story well. When they could not relate to the
story well, then there was more activation in the fusiform gyri and
visual association areas for the nonpersonal imagery. People can feel
what they have experienced themselves in other by accessing that
experience (by projection or simulation); if the personal experience
is not present, then they try to imagine how it would be to be on the
shoes of the other (where motor mimicry is useful). According to Carr
et al, the insula plays a significant role in activating this
perceptual-motor mechanism.

Lamm et al, were indirectly concerned with the second question. Their
interest was to examine the distinction between feeling as someone
else may feel, and being able to invoke this mechanism without
confounding self-other emotional reactions. Maintaining psychological
distance from another while being empathic allows people to be helpful
to others in case of need (closer to the concept of sympathy). For
this they manipulated the consequences of the emotional state in the
other (e.g., effective versus ineffective treatment to pain).

Lindsay: As you can see from my comments this week, I based my input
pretty much on yours. You covered the issue of process versus
consequences of empathy, definition issues, the importance of the self-
other distinction, and of “empathic overarousal” that I discuss here.
And, you brought us great new material about the insula!. Hopefully we
can get to hear about these at some point. Thank you!

Camille: You brought up really interesting points. As you say, if
empathy is experienced by merely viewing facial expressions in
isolation, then these pathways might be constantly active! Is that the
case? Would this be referring to the default mechanism we discussed
earlier in the semester?
Second, and you guys could probably answer this, is meta-analysis an
appropriate tool? Does it work with low sample size studies? Third,
I was also skeptical about people’s ability to switch from an
emotional “self” perspective to an “other” perspective and back.
Really?

David: I got it right this time. Yes, the Zaki article was not
strictly neuroscience (but it had Oschner in it!). But it dealt with
the phenomena of empathic accuracy (how well we predict the emotional
state of another, based on own-other appraisals) and that was of
interest to this week. The interaction between the degree of the
expressivity of the actor with affective empathy showed how necessary
is to examine the combined role of actor’s emotions and participants’
empathy. At first I did not get what you meant about the direction of
the interaction. But then I realized you are right! You say that when
people are high in expressiveness and high in affective empathy it is
a given that they would be more accurate; it would have been more
impressive if people high in empathy could judge people low in
expressivity accurately (which also shows that their hypothesis of
“it takes two” works both ways as long as there is an interaction
effect). Second, you liked the Lamm methods better than the Preston.
Your point of “I would feel pain watching someone in surgery, but
watching someone wearing headphones and a turtleneck make faces to
aversive noises” is well taken (LOL!). Given that there are soooo
many movies with great capacbility of generating vicarious pain,
perhaps we should be more sophisticated about our stimuli!

Jen: Great job at summarizing the articles! It helps me to go through
them, and this time you were third! (I’ll explain). You agree with
David about liking the Lamm article better. Venture other opinions!

Stuart: I would also, like you, understand better when the
representations are automatic versus controlled, if in all cases
participants perceive emotional states, and have to internally
generating these representations. Does context (e.g., treatment info,
cognitive appraisal, etc.) play such a fundamental role? Another vote
for the Lamm!! I see your point regarding the altruistic discussion.
On the one hand, one would expect that the more emotionally involved
would be more motivated to be altruistic (social studies have shown
that altruism is related to trait empathy). On the other, if one
becomes too emotional, according to Lamm, one would not be able to
react altruistically enough (e.g., get help when witnessing a car
accident). I did not get why you think that memory reconstruction
would make the issue of empathy a moot one. Interesting point about
how aware people may be of their if-then’s relations when making
inferences about others’ states (I think Mendoza-Denton has
investigated this, if you are interested). Finally, I bet you I can
find a similar awfully long sentence in a social article!




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