The Role of Unique Personal Representations in Understanding and Responding to the Emotions of Others.

Empathy;Cognitive Psychology;Individual Differences;Psychology;Social Sciences;Psychology

Hofelich, Alicia J.Seidler, Rachael D. ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Empathy;    Cognitive Psychology;    Individual Differences;    Psychology;    Social Sciences;    Psychology;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/93872/ajhof_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

We encounter others in need everyday. Often we may feel a twinge of their suffering, and sometimes we offer help or support. However, not every individual in need elicits these feelings, and people vary widely in the types of targets they choose to help. According to the Perception-Action Model of empathy (PAM; Preston & de Waal, 2002), the neural substrates that give rise to first-hand experiences of an emotion also underlie the understanding of that emotion in another. Therefore, an observer’s ability to understand and empathize with a target depends on the extent to which they have compatible representations of the target’s state. This dissertation investigates these predicted interactions between the personal representations of observers and the various emotional displays of targets, focusing on how these interactions impact empathic, physiological, and prosocial responses. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 demonstrate that individual differences in associations between females and sadness predict preferential giving to sad, distraught female hospital patients compared to more positive resilient females. Chapter 4 examines empathic, prosocial, and physiological responses in females with and without a history of depression, determining whether observers who have experienced intense negative affect empathize and give the most help to patients who express the most negative emotion. Overall, the findings suggest emotion representations differ across individuals and these differences influence the types of targets people empathize with and help.