Empathy in multiple sclerosis––Correlates with cognitive, psychological and occupational functioning

Abstract

Background: Recent studies report deficits in social cognition in individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS). Social cognitive skills such as empathy are important for adequate social and occupational functioning. Our objectives are: (1) to examine whether empathy differs between individuals with MS and healthy controls, (2) to examine relations between empathy and cognitive, psychological and occupational functioning. Methods: 278 individuals with MS (relapsing-remitting subtype) and 128 healthy controls from the MS@Work study participated in this investigation. The participants completed questionnaires about demographics, cognitive, psychological and occupational functioning, and underwent neurological and neuropsychological examinations. Mann-Whitney U-tests were used to examine group differences in empathy. Pearson and Spearman rank correlation analyses were used to examine relations between empathy and the other measures. Results: Empathy did not differ between individuals with MS and healthy controls. In individuals with MS, higher empathy was correlated with a higher educational level (X 2 (df) = 13.2(2), p = 0.001), better verbal learning (r = 0.20, p = 0.001), less symptoms of depression (r=−0.21, p = 0.001), higher extraversion (r = 0.25, p ≤ 0.001), agreeableness (r = 0.55, p ≤ 0.001) and conscientiousness (r = 0.27, p ≤ 0.001) and better occupational functioning in terms of work scheduling and output demands (r = 0.23, p = 0.002) and less cognitive/psychological work barriers (r = −0.21, p = 0.001). In healthy controls, higher empathy was correlated with less symptoms of depression (r = −0.34, p ≤ 0.001), less fatigue (r = −0.37, p ≤ 0.001), higher agreeableness (r = 0.59, p ≤ 0.001) and better occupational functioning in terms of work ability as compared to lifetime best (r = 0.28, p = 0.001) and less cognitive/psychological work barriers (r = −0.34, p ≤ 0.001). Empathy did not differ between unemployed and employed individuals with MS or healthy controls. Conclusion: Empathy did not differ between individuals with MS and healthy controls. Within both investigated groups, higher empathy was weakly to moderately correlated with less symptoms of depression, higher agreeableness and better occupational functioning. We also found unique correlations for empathy within the

Empathy and Theory of Mind in Multiple Sclerosis: A Meta-Analysis

“…Recently, several studies have assessed empathy deficits in patients with MS with inconsistent findings. For example, Realmuto et al (25) and van der Hiele et al (26) found no differences between patients with MS and healthy controls (HCs) in terms of empathy, whereas Kraemer et al (27) found moderate impairment in empathy in patients with MS compared to HCs. These inconsistent findings may be related to low statistical power, as many of these studies enrolled small sample sizes.…”

Multimodal emotion perception in young and elderly patients with multiple sclerosis

“…Our results suggest that pwMS have decreased socioemotional sensitivity, as self-reported on a questionnaire investigating their behavior in everyday life. Previous studies using self-reported empathy questionnaires in pwMS are very conflictual, with some showing decreased (Almeida et al, 2016;Kraemer et al, 2013;Patil et al, 2017;Pitteri et al, 2019) and others preserved empathy (Banati et al, 2010;van der Hiele et al, 2020). Nonetheless, these studies are limited by the biases associated with self-reported questionnaires, which is why we also obtained an external point of view and investigated socioemotional sensitivity as reported by relatives of pwMS.…”

Associations between socioemotional alterations, quality of life, and social functioning in multiple sclerosis: A scoping review

“…The majority of those studies seem to show a significant association between altered socioemotional abilities and QoL/social functioning (Isernia et al, 2019;Phillips et al, 2009Phillips et al, , 2011Phillips et al, , 2014Schirda et al, 2015;van der Hiele et al, 2020). Alterations in those domains may have detrimental effects on the individuals' well-being, with negative consequences on QoL and social functioning (particularly, psychological and social dimensions of QoL and work-related aspects).…”

“…Those studies obtained, at least in part, distinct results. Indeed, two studies did not find significant correlations between lowered social cognition and QoL scores (Ciampi et al, 2018;Grothe et al, 2020), while the remaining studies found significant associations between reduced social cognition performance and worse QoL (Isernia et al, 2019;Phillips et al, 2011) or between altered social cognition and reduced social functioning (van der Hiele et al, 2020).…”