Empathy and the Actor's Emotion’

Metcalf, John T.

doi:10.1080/00224545.1931.9918970

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…There is both theoretical and empirical support for the possibility that acting training may increase empathy and theory of mind. Theatre theorists have argued that acting fosters empathy (Levy, 1997;Metcalf, 1931;Verducci, 2000) because actors take on roles in which they must feel and portray the feelings of their characters (Hayman, 1969;Hull, 1985;Stanislavsky, 1950). Actors must carefully analyze the beliefs, desires, and motivations of their characters (Hull, 1985;Stanislavsky, 1950)-activities that psychologists would classify as requiring sophisticated theory of mind.…”

Section: Please Scroll Down For Articlementioning

confidence: 98%

Enhancing Empathy and Theory of Mind

Goldstein

Winner

2012

Journal of Cognition and Development

260

187

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Section: Please Scroll Down For Articlementioning

confidence: 98%

Enhancing Empathy and Theory of Mind

Goldstein

Winner

2012

Journal of Cognition and Development

260

187

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“…The claim that acting experience is a training ground for empathy has been widely made (Levy, 1997;Metcalf, 1931;Verducci, 2000), and empirical support for this hypothesis comes from a study by Nettle (2006) who found that adult actors scored higher on Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright's (2004) Empathy Quotient, a self-report measure of emotional empathy. The two major approaches of teaching acting-"Technique" (e.g., Bruder, Cohn, Olnek, Pollack, Previto, & Zigler, 1986;Mamet, 1997;Olivier, 1986) and "Method" (Hull, 1985;Stanislavsky, 1950)-lead to different predictions concerning empathy.…”

Section: Actors and Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

Actors are Skilled in Theory of Mind but Not Empathy

Goldstein

Winner

2009

Imagination, Cognition and Personality

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Actors must imagine themselves in a different world: they must adopt the perspective of multiple characters, grasp their beliefs and intentions, and feel their emotions. In this study we tested the hypothesis that actors have unusually sharp mind-reading abilities and unusually strong empathy. In Study 1, adolescent actors outperformed adolescents without acting experience in their ability to imagine the mental states expressed by pictures of peoples' eyes (a theory of mind measure), but did not excel on empathy as measured by a self-report scale. In Study 2, we replicated these findings with young adults using a different measure of theory of mind. These findings show that adolescent and adult actors are skilled in reading others' mental states, but do not report above average levels of empathy. Thus, strength in theory of mind can exist independently of strength in empathy.

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“…Specifically, actors are compelled to: 1) reproduce recognizable reality; 2) express genuine emotion; 3) draw from one's own personality to advance psychological truth; and 4) communicate with other actors (Vineberg, 1991). Several authors have suggested that acting experience promotes perspective taking ability (Levy, 1997;Metcalf, 1931;Verducci, 2000). Empirical evidence to support this claim includes Chandler, Greenspan, and Barenboim's (1974) study of 48 children with social challenges who received 10 weeks of drama training including Method-style roletaking activities that significantly increased participants' perspective taking ability.…”

Section: Methods Acting (Theater Education)mentioning

confidence: 99%