Responding Empathically: A Question of Heart, not a Question of Skin

Abstract

Empathy entails the capacities to resonate with another person's emotions, understand his/her thoughts and feelings, separate our own thoughts and emotions from those of the observed and responding with the appropriate prosocial and helpful behavior. While there is abundant research on the neurobiological mechanisms of some components of empathy (e.g., emotional contagion), few studies have considered the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the empathic response. The present study explores psychophysiological correlates (skin conductance level and the interbeat interval) as a function of the empathic response while participants watch and respond to actors portraying emotionally laden vignettes. Forty undergraduate psychology students were each presented with 40 emotional vignettes of positive or negative valence and asked to choose among three different empathic responses while their electrodermal and cardiac responses were measured. Overall, the study shows that higher levels of additive empathy are associated with increased cardiac activity (i.e., decreased Interbeat Interval) but not electrodermal activity.

Effects of menstrual cycle and neuroticism on females' emotion regulation

“…The GSR level and variability of the signal increase with sympathetic arousal. This can be caused by stress, but also by emotion in general (Michael et al, 2007;Oliveira-Silva and Gonçalves, 2011). The unit of GSR is micro-siemens or micro-mho.…”

Physiological and self-report responses of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder to children crying

“…The IBI was used to be an indicator in the literature, considering several fields such as emotional concordance (Butler, Gross, & Barnard, 2014), empathy (Oliveira-Silva & Gonçalves, 2011), emotion regulation (Hannesdóttir, Doxie, Ann Bell, Ollendick, & Wolfe, 2010) and infant calming responses (Esposito, Yoshida, et al, 2013 Guided by an extensive literature showing that cry episodes belonging to children with ASD are perceived as more aversive and elicit more negative feelings compared to cry episodes of TD children, we developed two main hypotheses. We expected that parents of children with ASD can discriminate cry episodes belonging to children with ASD cry from cry episodes of TD children, based on higher stress, arousal and negative valence.…”

A psicologia como neurociência cognitiva: Implicações para a compreensão dos processos básicos e suas aplicações

“…Estudos recentes sobre a relação entre o padrão de variação da atividade cardíaca, e os aspectos emocionais e cognitivos da empatia, verificaram que este sistema parece sensível a diferentes componentes empáticos, e não apenas à reatividade fisiológica. Essa maior sensibilidade tem sido associada ao substrato anátomo-fisiológico do sistema cardíaco, caracterizado pela dupla inervação via simpático e parassimpático, envolvendo diferentes áreas cerebrais (Oliveira-Silva & Gonçalves, 2011). No estudo acima mencionado realizado por membros da nossa equipa participantes saudáveis foram submetidos a um paradigma de resposta empática, em que realizamos o registo simultâneo dos índices eletrodérmicos e cardíacos.…”

“…No estudo acima mencionado realizado por membros da nossa equipa participantes saudáveis foram submetidos a um paradigma de resposta empática, em que realizamos o registo simultâneo dos índices eletrodérmicos e cardíacos. Verificamos que as respostas mais empáticas estavam associadas ao aumento na frequência cardíaca, sugerindo que a actividade cardíaca é potencialmente um dos melhores marcadores biológicos da resposta empática (Oliveira-Silva & Gonçalves, 2011).…”