From “Einfühlung” to empathy: exploring the relationship between aesthetic and interpersonal experience

Ganczarek, Joanna; Hünefeldt, Thomas; Belardinelli, Marta Olivetti

doi:10.1007/s10339-018-0861-x

Cited by 27 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Back in 1872, the German philosopher Robert Vischer introduced the term 'Einfuehlung' which literally means 'feeling into' another person (Vischer, 1873). Taking the perspective of this other person aims for an understanding of 'what it would be like to be living another body or another environment' (Ganczarek et al, 2018). A few years later, Lipps (1903) argued that an observer of another person's emotional state tends to imitate the emotional signals of the other person 'inwardly' by physically adapting body signals.…”

Section: Empathy-put Yourself In Their Shoesmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Alexa, I feel for you!’ Observers’ Empathetic Reactions towards a Conversational Agent

Carolus

Wienrich²,

Törke

et al. 2021

Front. Comput. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Conversational agents and smart speakers have grown in popularity offering a variety of options for use, which are available through intuitive speech operation. In contrast to the standard dyad of a single user and a device, voice-controlled operations can be observed by further attendees resulting in new, more social usage scenarios. Referring to the concept of ‘media equation’ and to research on the idea of ‘computers as social actors,’ which describes the potential of technology to trigger emotional reactions in users, this paper asks for the capacity of smart speakers to elicit empathy in observers of interactions. In a 2 × 2 online experiment, 140 participants watched a video of a man talking to an Amazon Echo either rudely or neutrally (factor 1), addressing it as ‘Alexa’ or ‘Computer’ (factor 2). Controlling for participants’ trait empathy, the rude treatment results in participants’ significantly higher ratings of empathy with the device, compared to the neutral treatment. The form of address had no significant effect. Results were independent of the participants’ gender and usage experience indicating a rather universal effect, which confirms the basic idea of the media equation. Implications for users, developers and researchers were discussed in the light of (future) omnipresent voice-based technology interaction scenarios.

show abstract

Section: Empathy-put Yourself In Their Shoesmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Alexa, I feel for you!’ Observers’ Empathetic Reactions towards a Conversational Agent

Carolus

Wienrich²,

Törke

et al. 2021

Front. Comput. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The notion of "Einfühlung" was theoretically developed in nineteenth-and early twentiethcentury German aesthetics especially by Robert Vischer and Theodor Lipps. [7] The German notion of "Einfühlung", was translated as 'empathy' by Edward Titchener and James Ward, thereby introducing the term into the English language. Empathy is one's ability to recognize, perceive and directly feel the emotion of another.…”

Section: Empathy As a Conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alexithymia and Empathy in a Non-Clinical Population: How do they Correlate?

Chakraborty

Mehmet

Brugha

2021

phy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Alexithymia and empathy are functional concepts surrounding human emotions.This study aimed to estimate the association between alexithymia and empathy within a neurotypical population. The study was a cross sectional survey conducted within a non-clinical population of medical students at a University in England using voluntary sampling to complete the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS), Basic Empathy Scale (BES), General Health Questionnaire- 12. Alexithymia and empathy scores did not show a statistically significant correlation. There was a statistically significant negative correlation between total alexithymia and cognitive empathy scores (correlation co-efficient was -0.184, p value was 0.013). Men and women differed significantly on empathy scores with women showing significantly higher empathy. The relationship between the understanding of one’s own emotions and the interpretation of others’ emotions are different functions with a more complex interaction than a simple linear correlation. Future research should focus on further exploring the differences between cognitive and affective empathy.

show abstract

“…12 As Joanna Ganczerek puts it, …the term 'Einfühlung' literally means 'feeling into' and refers to an act of projecting oneself into another body or environment ...[as] some kind of imaginary bodily perspective taking, which is aimed at understanding what it would be like to be living in another body or another environment. 13 Empathy as a concept is historically rooted in the idea of projection, and this has underpinned its future. Einfühlung was linked to the phenomenon of 'embodied simulation' or 'mirror neurons' by neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese in 2008.…”

Section: 2mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sympathetic World-making: Drawing-out Ecological-Empathy

Ednie-Brown¹,

George²,

Chapman³

et al. 2020

idea journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article reflects on an experiment in drawing, titled Surrogate Drawing, in which an assemblage of people, materials and artefacts engaged in a live, improvisational process of co-production. The group was interested in how empathy might be cultivated through architectural drawing. The article develops an argument across three main parts. The first part offers a brief overview of the drawing experiment, situated relative to some key assumptions and conventions of architectural drawing, via the work of Robin Evans and others. In particular, this involved unsettling the idea of translation and its underlying premise of projection—a premise that resonates with the concept of empathy. The second part moves into a series of first-person accounts, one from each author. This experiential access reveals degrees of complexity that question the model of projection as a primary operative principle for either drawing or empathy, calling for an alternative conceptual framework. The third part offers such an alternative, via Jakob von Uexküll’s work concerning the Umwelt, or perceptual life-worlds. Via Uexküll we come to better understand drawing as less of a process of translation or transmission, and more of a process of creative world-making. Through Uexküll’s depiction of the Umwelt as a ‘bubble,’ the paper offers an alternative diagrammatic to that of projective geometries: that of a foaming. The manifestly collective world-making inherent in this drawing experiment leads us to conclude by opening up something we discuss as ‘ecological empathy’—or sympathy. It is proposed that drawing, if conceptually liberated from projective models, may be an important technique to cultivate ecological-empathy, or sympathy. This points toward a way that architecture might be reoriented toward sympathetic world-making.

show abstract

From “Einfühlung” to empathy: exploring the relationship between aesthetic and interpersonal experience

Cited by 27 publications

References 20 publications

‘Alexa, I feel for you!’ Observers’ Empathetic Reactions towards a Conversational Agent

‘Alexa, I feel for you!’ Observers’ Empathetic Reactions towards a Conversational Agent

Alexithymia and Empathy in a Non-Clinical Population: How do they Correlate?

Sympathetic World-making: Drawing-out Ecological-Empathy

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About