Inferring the Emotions of Friends Versus Strangers

Abstract

Three studies examined cross-cultural differences in empathic accuracy (the ability to correctly infer another's emotional experience) within the context of different relationships. East-West cultural differences in self-construal were hypothesized to differentiate levels of empathic accuracy across relationship types. In contrast to the independent self prevalent among members of Western cultures, members of Eastern cultures generally view the self as interdependent with those with whom they have a relationship. Easterners, relative to Westerners, are more concerned with the thoughts or feelings of close others and less concerned with the thoughts or feelings of those with whom they have no relational link (i.e., strangers). Across three studies, the authors found that East Asians, compared with European Americans, made more accurate inferences regarding the emotions of close others (i.e., friends), but less accurate inferences regarding the emotions of strangers. Furthermore, individual differences in interdependent self-construal among East Asians predicted the degree of empathic accuracy.

Culture shapes empathic responses to physical and social pain.

“…The current findings also do not follow Ma-Kellams and Blascovich’s (2012) findings that demonstrated greater empathic accuracy for strangers among Westerners, and greater empathic accuracy for close others among Easterners, relative to their cultural counterparts. The targets in our studies were strangers to participants, thus following Ma-Kellams and Blascovich’s (2012) reasoning, one could have expected the British participants in our studies to be more empathically accurate, which we did not find. However, although targets were strangers, both targets and participants were university students making them share an identity, which might have blurred the lines between in-group and out-group membership and this way closed the social gap between the targets and participants.…”

“…In fact, one could claim that negative affect, as measured in the current study, could reflect an other-oriented negative emotional response to the target. However, we think that this is unlikely given that the naturalistic stimuli videos used in the present studies were derived from common procedures designed to elicit an empathic response (e.g., Ma-Kellams & Blascovich, 2012 ) as opposed to an other-oriented negative response such as anger.…”

“…In another line of research, Ma-Kellams and Blascovich (2012) studied cultural differences in empathic accuracy as a function of target familiarity (stranger vs. close other). They asked European American and East Asian participants to infer the emotions of both strangers and close others describing a recent emotional experience, and assessed participants’ empathic accuracy of emotional intensity for specific emotions (see also Côté et al, 2011 ; Kraus, Côté, & Keltner, 2010 ).…”

Empathy predicting career choice in future physicians

“…However, our understanding of how empathy is modulated in medical education is still fairly limited [17]. Although one hypothesis states that empathy is shaped by cultural factors and that it cannot be considered a universal phenomenon [18,19], so far there have been no studies dealing with the empathy of medical students or residents, nor its impact on their career choice in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, there is a general lack of studies on previous personal or close family members' experiences related to health-care needs as well as studies regarding the role of religious beliefs in physician's empathy [17].…”

Protecting Autonomy, Protecting Relatedness: Appraisal Patterns of Daily Anger and Shame in theUnitedStates andJapan

“…In contrast, relationship ideals in Japanese contexts emphasize relatedness and interdependence between people as well as the need to adjust to each other's expectations in order to maintain harmonious relations (Kim & Markus, 1999;Morling, Kitayama, & Miyamoto, 2002;Rothbaum et al, 2000). People protect relatedness and keep relationships smooth by frequently taking the perspective of others (i.e., an "outside-in" perspective, Cohen & Gunz, 2002;Ma-Kellams & Blascovich, 2012). This comes with a tendency to adopt a more selfcritical stance and to focus on negative information about the self (Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto, & Norasakkunkit, 1997); being self-critical is positively rewarded by one's close others (Kitayama & Markus, 2000).…”