Body ownership: When feeling and knowing diverge

Individuals with the peculiar disturbance of ‘overcompleteness’ experience an intense desire to amputate one of their healthy limbs, describing a sense of disownership for it (Body Integrity Identity Disorder – BIID). This condition is similar to somatoparaphrenia, the acquired delusion that one’s own limb belongs to someone else. In ten individuals with BIID, we measured skin conductance response to noxious stimuli, delivered to the accepted and non-accepted limb, touching the body part or simulating the contact (stimuli approach the body without contacting it), hypothesizing that these individuals have responses like somatoparaphrenic patients, who previously showed reduced pain anticipation, when the threat was directed to the disowned limb. We found reduced anticipatory response to stimuli approaching, but not contacting, the unwanted limb. Conversely, stimuli contacting the non-accepted body-part, induced stronger SCR than those contacting the healthy parts, suggesting that feeling of ownership is critically related to a proper processing of incoming threats.     

Self-compassion,empathy, and helping intentions

The trait of self-compassion has three components: (1) kindness toward oneself when facing pain or failure; (2) perceiving one’s experiences as part of a larger human experience rather than feeling isolated; and (3) holding painful thoughts and feelings in balanced awareness. The present research explores if self-compassion predicts willingness to help others and empathy for others in need of help. Study 1 found that self-compassion predicted greater willingness to help a hypothetical person while simultaneously reducing empathy for that person. Study 2 used a more nuanced measure of empathy and found that self-compassion was only related to feeling less personal distress in response to someone else’s emergency. In addition, in Study 2, self-compassion only predicted greater helping intentions when the target was at fault for the emergency. Lastly, both self-compassion and empathy were uniquely related to participants’ willingness to help an individual in need.     

寻找镜中的自我：精神分裂症患者的视觉观点采择

精神分裂症患者的视觉观点采择影响其必要的社交活动和生活质量。本文通过对精神分裂症患者视觉观点采择的研究进行梳理,总结出相关的心理特点：精神分裂症患者的视觉观点采择过程受损,表现出自我中心性和他人中心性。在神经生理上表现出与视觉观点采择相关的脑区激活减弱。可能的原因是患者认知功能中反应抑制能力和心理旋转能力的受损所致,建议采用认知干预疗法可能会改善患者的视觉观点采择能力。目前的研究论证了精神分裂症患者视觉观点采择过程的损伤,对于不同水平的视觉观点采择下精神分裂症患者的认知模式还未有明确的定论,未来的研究可以从该角度入手,更加明确精神分裂症患者不同水平视觉观点采择的特点和神经生理活动。     

Investigating the role of alexithymia on the empathic deficits found in schizotypy and autism spectrum traits

Alexithymia, the inability to identify and describe one’s emotional experience, is elevated in many clinical populations, and related to poor interpersonal functioning. Alexithymia is also associated with empathic deficits in individuals with autism spectrum disorders. Accordingly, a better understanding of alexithymia could elucidate the nature of social-cognitive deficits transdiagnostically. We investigated alexithymia and components of empathy in relation to schizotypal and autism spectrum traits in healthy college students. Specifically, we examined higher-order components of empathic processing that involve perspective taking and other-oriented concern, which are reduced in alexithymia.Higher-order empathic processing was inversely correlated with both schizotypal and autism spectrum traits. Bootstrapping techniques revealed that alexithymia had a significant indirect effect on the relationship between higher-order empathy and these personality traits; thus, alexithymia contributes uniquely to their relationship. These findings suggest alexithymia represents one possible mechanism for the development of empathic deficits in these populations.These results are consistent with the perspective that awareness of one’s own emotional state may predicate a successful empathic response to another’s. This work highlights the importance of a consideration of alexithymia in elucidating the nature of empathic deficits in various clinical populations, and points to a potential point of social intervention.     

Empathizing With Others’ Pain Versus Empathizing With Others’ Joy: Examining the Separability of Positive and Negative Empathy and Their Relation to Different Types of Social Behaviors and Social Emotions

Existing work linking empathy with social behavior has focused overwhelmingly on empathy for the negative emotions of others. But recent research suggests that feeling along with others’ negative emotions is a capacity distinct from feeling along with others’ positive emotions. In Study 1, we demonstrate the separability of positive and negative empathy by showing that although both relate to some of the same foundational empathic processes, each has a number of distinct correlates. In Study 2 we take an experimental approach and show that encouraging participants to empathize with the positive versus negative emotions of a suffering yet hopeful social group results in distinct patterns of vicarious emotion. Finally, Study 3 shows that although both positive empathy and negative empathy are associated to a similar degree with helping behavior directed toward others in need, positive—but not negative—empathy is related to “everyday” prosocial behaviors aimed specifically at increasing others’ positive emotions (e.g., random acts of kindness). Together, these results provide what to our knowledge is the first demonstration of the causal potency of positive and negative empathy as well as the first evidence that positive and negative empathy relate to different types of social behaviors.     

Some markers of mirroring appear intact in schizophrenia: evidence from mu suppression

Although schizophrenia is associated with impairments in social cognition, the scope and neural correlates of these disturbances are largely unknown. In this study, we investigated whether schizophrenia patients show impaired functioning of the mirror neuron system (MNS), as indexed by electroencephalographic (EEG) mu (8–13 Hz) suppression, a hypothesized biomarker of MNS activity that is sensitive to the degree of social interaction depicted in visual stimuli. A total of 32 outpatients and 26 healthy controls completed an EEG paradigm that included six action observation or execution conditions that differed in their degrees of social interaction. Participants also completed a validated empathy questionnaire. Across both groups, we found a significant linear increase in mu suppression across the conditions involving greater levels of social engagement and interaction, but no significant group or interaction effects. Patients self-reported diminished empathic concern and perspective taking, which showed some moderate relations to mu suppression levels. Thus, the schizophrenia group showed generally intact modulation of MNS functioning at the electrophysiological level, despite self-reporting empathic disturbances. The disturbances commonly seen on self-report, performance, and neuroimaging measures of mentalizing in schizophrenia may largely reflect difficulties with higher-level inferential processes about others’ emotions, rather than a basic incapacity to share in these experiences.     

动物和人类的利他本性:共情的进化

共情指个体感知或想象其他个体的情感,并部分体验到其他个体感受的心理过程.利他指以增加其他个体的福利为最终目标的动机.共情起源于动物的亲代养育行为,其神经基础来源于古老的情感系统.共情从动物低水平的情绪感染逐渐进化到同情关注以及观点采择共情.另外,共情具有良好的环境适应性.未来可以进一步研究动物与人类的共情和利他行为的异同,加大研究动物的高级共情能力和利他行为以及深入研究共情受社会因素的调节机制.     

团体成员共情的影响因素及作用模型——基于扎根理论

本研究旨在探索团体咨询成员共情的概念、影响因素及其作用。运用扎根理论对11名团体咨询成员的访谈资料分析,共形成11个轴心编码。根据编码间的关系得到如下结果：1. 团体成员共情包括共情理解、共情表达和共情感知;2. 团体成员共情理解的影响因素为相似性、观点采择;共情感知的影响因素为相似性和共情表达;3. 团体成员共情通过促进成员关系、认知领悟和情感支持提升团体效果。据此构建了团体成员共情的影响因素及作用模型。     

Egocentrism in sub-clinical depression

Depression is marked by rigid thinking and the inability to generate different and more positive views on the self. The current study conceptualises this a perspective-taking deficit, which is defined as a deficit in the ability to overcome one’s egocentrism. Previous research has demonstrated that individuals with depression are impaired in Theory of Mind reasoning and empathy – two social cognitions that involve cognitive and affective perspective-taking. Here, it was investigated whether these deficits generalise to visuo-spatial perspective-taking. To test this, a convenience sample (N?=?268; n?=?62 high depressive symptoms; n?=?206 healthy control participants) completed a test-battery including measures of cognitive and visuo-spatial perspective-taking and closely matched cognitive and visuo-spatial control tasks. The results showed that individuals exhibiting high levels of depressive symptoms were specifically impaired on both perspective-taking tasks but performed equally well on the control tasks. Interventions to combat rigid thinking in depression are discussed.     

Interweaving the Symbolic and Nonsymbolic in Therapeutic Action: Discussion of Gianni Nebbiosi’s “The Smell of Paper”

Gianni Nebbiosi’s paper speaks to therapeutic action in a new key in the challenges of finding communion with a hard-to-reach patient. He achieves this through the creative interweaving of the nonsymbolic, his mime and music, and the symbolic, which attains greater purchase through painful personal reckoning in concert with his increasing awareness of previously unformulated states within and between each member of this particular analytic dyad. Central to this paper is the move from an empathic stance to greater complexity for each of the dyad. Distinguishing between empathy and recognition is germane. Particularly as we witness the transformation through therapeutic action of empathic presence to recognizing presence that permits the emergence of a more complex empathy—an achieved empathy that incorporates feeling and knowing the multiple, more deeply held, and often paradoxical aspects of our patients and indeed of ourselves as these play out in intersubjective space.     

The Interplay of Empathy and Individualism in Support for Social Welfare Policies

Public support for government welfare programs is grounded in two potentially conflicting factors: a belief in individualism which undermines support for welfare assistance and the capacity for empathy which potentially enhances support. However, empathy is an expensive psychological commodity subject to pervasive up- and down-regulation. This article examines the degree to which a belief in individualism affects the expression of compassionate support for a person in need among those with the capacity for empathy. In two online survey experiments, empathic ability powerfully increases support for a welfare recipient and social welfare policies when it does not conflict with individualism. But, empathic ability decreases compassion and support for government welfare among strong individualists. Evidence that individualists down-regulate empathy for someone in need of government assistance is consistent with the conservative view that welfare promotes dependency and undermines individual agency. In contrast, charitable assistance is not associated with long-term dependency, and we find that empathy is up-regulated by strong individualists to generate charitable support for the same individual to whom they denied government assistance. The up- and down-regulation of empathy in response to someone in need of government welfare helps illuminate the sharp divisions over social welfare policy among the American public.     

Social evaluation and the empathy-altruism hypothesis

Archer, Diaz-Loving, Gollwitzer, Davis, and Foushee (1981) suggested that feeling empathy for a person in need may lead to increased helping because the empathic individual wants to avoid negative social evaluation. As support for this suggestion, they claimed that empathy leads to increased helping only under socially evaluative circumstances. We conducted two studies to test this claim. In Study 1 subjects were led to believe that no one--including the person in need--would ever know if they declined to help. In this situation, which was designed to be totally devoid of the potential for negative social evaluation for not helping, there was still a positive relationship between self-reported empathic emotion and offering help. In Study 2 empathy (low versus high) and social evaluation (low versus high) were manipulated in a 2 X 2 design. Once again there was a positive relationship between empathy and offering help when the potential for social evaluation was low as well as high. Results of both studies, then, suggest that the motivation to help evoked by empathy is not egoistic motivation to avoid negative social evaluation. Instead, the observed pattern was what would be expected if empathy evokes altruistic motivation to reduce the victim's need.     

CANTAB explicit memory is less impaired in addicted schizophrenia patients

It has been suggested that in order to sustain the lifestyle of substance abuse, addicted schizophrenia patients would have less negative symptoms, better social skills, and less cognitive impairments. Mounting evidence supports the first two assumptions, but data lack regarding cognition in dual diagnosis schizophrenia. Seventy-six schizophrenia outpatients (DSM-IV) were divided into two groups: with (n = 44) and without (n = 32) a substance use disorder. Motor speed and visuo-spatial explicit memory were investigated using CANTAB. As expected, dual diagnosis patients showed a better cognitive performance. Our results suggest either that substance abuse relieves the cognitive deficits of schizophrenia or that the patients with less cognitive deficits are more prone to substance abuse.     

From negative reactivity to empathic responding: Infants high in negative reactivity express more empathy later in development,with the help of regulation

Empathy has great effect on human well‐being, promoting healthy relationships and social competence. Although it is increasingly acknowledged that infants show empathy toward others, individual differences in infants’ empathy from the first year of life have rarely been investigated longitudinally. Here we examined how negative reactivity and regulation, two temperament traits that predict empathic responses in older children and adults, relate to infants’ empathy. Infants were studied at the ages of nine (N = 275) and 18 (N = 301) months (194 infants were studied at both ages). Empathic responses were assessed by infants’ observed reactions to an experimenter's simulated distress. Negative reactivity (fear, sadness, and distress to limitations) and regulation (soothability and effortful control) were assessed by parental reports. Negative reactivity was also examined by infants’ observed reactions to an adult stranger (fear) and during interaction with their mothers (displays of sadness/distress). When examined cross‐sectionally, infants’ fear and distress to limitations associated with self‐distress in response to others’ distress. In contrast, when examined longitudinally, early sadness and distress to limitations, but not fear, associated with later empathic concern and inquisitiveness. Moreover, this longitudinal relation was moderated by infants’ soothability and was evident only for children that had high soothability by the later time‐point. Our findings suggest that infants who at an earlier age show negative reactivity, react later in development with more empathy if they achieve sufficient regulation abilities. By that, the findings stress the developmental nature of temperament–empathy relations during infancy.     

Promoting an Empathic Dialectic for Therapeutic Change: An Integrative Review

This integrative review is focused on a formulation of therapeutic empathy. We describe the “empathic dialectic” as therapists’ capacity to emotionally resonate with patients’ internal states, such as during ruptures, and to coregulate their own and the patients’ states through mentalization. The first aim was to provide a theoretical framework for the empathic dialectic, by summarizing background literature on the empathic process, intersubjectivity, rupture repair, relational psychoanalysis, and attachment. The second aim was to conduct an integrative review of peer-reviewed articles published between the years of 2016 and 2021. After conducting a review of 28 articles, we sought to identify (1) research that supports the existence of an empathic dialectic, (2) evidence that therapists’ attachment influences the empathic dialectic, and (3) implications of the empathic dialectic for training and supervision. Results pointed to the central role of therapists’ attachment security in the empathic dialectic, and the negative repercussions of therapists’ insecurity when mentalization is underdeveloped. Results also highlighted the role of supervision as a means of enhancing trainees’ self-awareness of their attachment, and its impact on the alliance. As the American Psychological Association embraces a clinical competencies model in its accreditation of clinical psychology doctoral programs, the importance of attaining an integrative understanding of therapeutic empathy has become increasingly imperative. To this end, we conclude by promoting the empathic dialectic as a key clinical competency, and providing further recommendations for training and supervision.

     

团体咨询成员的相互共情及其与效果的关系——社会关系模型在团体咨询研究中的应用

研究旨在探讨团体成员的相互共情及其与团体效果的关系。共收集10个团体,53名成员的数据,运用社会关系模型分析。结果发现：1.成员自评相互共情得分较高,但互评相关不显著;2.共情水平与会谈效果正相关,与团体反治疗性因素负相关;3.被共情水平与不信任负相关;4.共情准确性与团体治疗性因素正相关。结论：成员自评相互共情水平较高,但互评不匹配。成员自评共情水平越高,会谈效果越好,受团体反治疗性因素阻碍更少。越被准确评估情绪效价的成员,从治疗性因素中获益更多。     

Empathie und Persönlichkeitsstörungen aus neurobiologischer Sicht

In contrast to the vague application of the term empathy in general usage, the neurobiological literature differentiates between cognitive empathy and emotional empathy. The former includes cognitive recognition of the mental state of someone else due to reflexive acquisition of perspectives and theory of mind functions, the latter includes the reflexive intuitive sympathy and sharing the emotions of others. Both independent from each other and interindividual differently expressed facets can be assigned to different brain networks which process these events. Early evolutionary processes of emotional empathy are already developed in infants by mirror image imitation of mimicry and gestures of the primary contact person. They involve premotor regions, areas of the sensomotor cortex, the inferior parietal lobule and the anterior insular regions. Phylogenetically younger processes of cognitive empathy are represented in particular in midline structures, such as the medial prefrontal cortex, superior temporal sulcus, posterior cingulum or precuneus as well as in the temporoparietal junction. They have their beginning in shared attention processes in early dyadic processes. Both facets of empathy are involved in moral decision-making processes. In this context, neurobiological studies show that psychopaths have undisturbed cognitive empathic capabilities and are principally able to recognize and apply moral values but confer little attentional importance to them when they compete with own targets. Individuals with borderline personality disorders in contrast to psychopaths show impairments in cognitive empathy. The deficits affect mentalization functions, which involve the understanding of the mental state of others and oneself and are also the starting point for many misunderstandings in an interpersonal context. Additionally, individuals with borderline personality disorder have a tendency to share emotions with other people. They therefore succeed in showing sympathy and compassion although associated with the danger of diffusion of self and third party borders.     

The Integrity Objection,Reloaded

Abstract

Bernard Williams’ integrity objection poses a significant challenge to utilitarianism, which has largely been answered by utilitarians. This paper recasts the integrity objection to show that utilitarian agents could be committed to producing the overall best states of affairs and yet not positively act to bring them about. I introduce the ‘Moral Pinch Hitter’ – someone who performs actions at the bequest of another agent – to demonstrate that utilitarianism cannot distinguish between cases in which an agent maximizes utility by positively acting in response to her duty, and cases in which an agent fails morally by relying upon someone else to perform the obligatory act. The inability to distinguish among these cases establishes a new, reloaded integrity objection to utilitarianism: utilitarianism cannot explain why it would be wrong to have someone else make difficult moral decisions, and to act on those decisions, for me.     

Perceptual hysteresis as a marker of perceptual inflexibility in schizophrenia

People with schizophrenia are known to exhibit difficulties in the updating of their current belief states even in the light of disconfirmatory evidence. In the present study we tested the hypothesis that people with schizophrenia could also manifest perceptual inflexibility, or difficulties in the updating of their current sensory states. The presence of perceptual inflexibility might contribute both to the patients’ altered perception of reality and the formation of some delusions as well as to their social cognition deficits. Here, we addressed this issue with a protocol of auditory hysteresis, a direct measure of sensory persistence, on a population of stabilized antipsychotic-treated schizophrenia patients and a sample of control subjects. Trials consisted of emotional signals (i.e., screams) and neutral signals (i.e., spectrally-rotated versions of the emotional stimuli) progressively emerging from white noise – Ascending Sequences – or progressively fading away in white noise – Descending Sequences. Results showed that patients presented significantly stronger hysteresis effects than control subjects, as evidenced by a higher rate of perceptual reports in Descending Sequences. The present study thus provides direct evidence of perceptual inflexibility in schizophrenia.     

Affective empathy as core moral agency: psychopathy,autism and reason revisited

Empathy has become a common point of debate in moral psychology. Recent developments in psychiatry, neurosciences and social psychology have led to the revival of sentimentalism, and the ‘empathy thesis’ has suggested that affective empathy, in particular, is a necessary criterion of moral agency. The case of psychopaths – individuals incapable of affective empathy and moral agency, yet capable of rationality – has been utilised in support of this case. Critics, however, have been vocal. They have asserted that the case of autism proves the empathy thesis wrong; that psychopathy centres on rational rather than empathic limitations; that empathy is not relevant to many common normative behaviours; and that rationality is required when empathy fails. The present paper analyses these four criticisms. It will be claimed that they each face severe difficulties, and that moral agency ought to be approached via a multi-tier model, with affective empathy as a baseline.