Empathic Accuracy in Clinical Populations

Abstract

Empathy, broadly defined as the ability to understand the other and to share others' emotions, motivates prosocial behavior and underlies successful interpersonal relations. Dysfunctions in this ability may cause fundamental difficulties in social communication. Empathy has been measured in various ways, from self-report questionnaires to laboratory objective performance tests. Empathic accuracy (EA), i.e., the ability to accurately empathize, is measured using more complex and ecological paradigms, such as asking participants to infer filmed interactions, or having people narrate personal emotional stories then assessing the correspondence between the perceiver and the target of empathy as the criteria for empathic ability. This measure is particularly useful in the study of clinical populations, where deconstructing the multifaceted concept of empathy may contribute to a more complete understanding of specific clinical profiles. This paper presents a scoping review of the literature on EA in clinical populations, and on EA and clinical traits and states in nonclinical or high-risk populations. Following an exhaustive literature search, 34 studies were found eligible to be included in this review. The largest category was studies focused on EA in people with schizophrenia (31%; 11 papers), followed by studies focused on EA in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and autistic traits in a nonclinical population (22%; 8 papers). Studies were also found on EA and depression tendencies, psychopathy, social anxiety, behavior disorders, and personality disorders, and a few other clinical conditions. The included studies varied on research aims, designs, sample sizes, and male:female ratios. The overall synthesized results suggest that EA is reduced in schizophrenia and ASD. In other clinical populations, the number of studies was very limited. We urge researchers to further examine EA in these less-studied populations. The review reveals a general underrepresentation of female participants in studies on EA in clinical populations. We suggest that future research address understudied clinical populations, such as those diagnosed with psychopathy. Subject, target, and situational variables should also be considered, with special attention to gender differences (and similarities), the association between EA abilities and adaptive functioning, and the study of individuals with clinical conditions as targets, not just observers, in EA tasks.

An Investigation of Behavioural and Self-Reported Cognitive Empathy Deficits in Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders and Adolescents With Behavioural Difficulties

“…Due to low prevalence of ASD among females, we mainly included males in the ASD group, whereas in the BD and control groups the number of females included was higher than the number of males. While the gender imbalance should be considered a limitation of the study and generalisability of the results, previous studies have found no gender differences on the EA task in neither clinical nor non-clinical adolescent populations (44,67,84). For example, no gender differences have been found on the EA in typically developing adolescents and those with CD (58,100).…”

“…Similar to previous studies addressing EA in adolescents with CD, no differences were found for the BD group across cognitive empathy on the EA task (84). In addition to the behavioural measure of empathy, a self-report questionnaire was administered to further assess cognitive and affective components of empathy.…”

Are there positive effects of having a sibling with special needs? Empathy and prosociality of twins of children with non‐typical development

“…However, such explanations do not account for the specificity of the positive effect on cognitive (but not emotional or motivational) self‐reported empathy. Nevertheless, in future studies, it will be interesting to assess empathy using methods beyond questionnaires, for example, ecological Empathic Accuracy paradigms that use the reported emotions of the target of empathy as criteria for empathic performance (see Rum & Perry, 2020), or observational methods to look at actual empathic responding. It would also be beneficial to measure social desirability to explore possible effects on empathy and prosociality.…”

Empathy or not empathy, that’s the question—A pragmatic behavior analytical approach.

“…Empathy to those with shared ancestry seems likely to have been reinforced, and those unable to respond to the distress of their own kin, could have been denied mates. This phylogenetic role of empathy is in line with the empathy problems found in ASD; deficits in prosocial behavior and responding to social stimuli (Dawson et al, 2004; Oerlemans et al, 2018; Rum & Perry, 2020).…”