The Effect of Emotional Distance on Psychophysiologic Concordance and Perceived Empathy Between Patient and Interviewer

Abstract

This preliminary study investigated the effect of emotional distance on psychophysiologic concordance and perceived empathy in a clinical population. Participants included 20 adult outpatients from a mental health clinic that underwent a brief semi-structured interview with a trained psychiatrist in either an emotionally neutral or an emotionally distant condition. Simultaneous skin conductance (SC) levels of the patient and interviewer were recorded and used to calculate a measure of psychophysiologic concordance. Interviewer gaze was rated by an independent observer and used as a proxy indicator of emotional distance. Observer ratings of interviewer gaze, SC concordance, and patient ratings of perceived interviewer empathy were significantly lower in the emotionally distant condition compared with the emotionally neutral condition (p < 0.05). Results suggest that increased emotional distance is associated with decreased psychophysiologic concordance and reduced subjective ratings of perceived empathy. The observed differences in psychophysiologic concordance support the use of this measure as a potential marker of empathy in a clinical population in an interview setting.

A three-component framework for empathic technologies to augment human interaction

“…Hence, instead of calculating cross correlation over the signals themselves, they are calculated over sets of slopes. This has been called the concordance score by Marci and colleagues [113,114]. Using multiple modalities can significantly increase the performance of similarity measurement.…”

“…One way (among others) to improve empathy in human interaction could be through technological innovations that can measure and take into account empathy [109,113]. Such technologies might make empathy a more salient and influential construct in human interaction.…”

Intergroup dissimilarity predicts physiological synchrony and affiliation in intergroup interaction

“…This assumption appears to only sometimes be true. Physiological synchrony is associated with both beneficial relational outcomes such as empathy (Marci & Orr, 2006), enhanced group performance (Elkins, Muth, Hoover, Walker, Carpenter, & Switzer, 2009), and increased social presence (Chanel et al, 2012), but also detrimental relational outcomes such as marital dissatisfaction (Levenson & Gottman, 1983) and mutual dislike (Kaplan, Burch, & Bloom, 1964). In order to disentangle the meaning of physiological synchrony, self-report and behavioral measures are critical to triangulating the interpersonal meaning of this internally shared state (Palumbo, et al, 2016).…”

“…The SNS is typically associated with engagement in a task or situation (Blascovich, Mendes, Tomaka, Salomon, & Seery, 2003;Seery, 2011). Covariation of the sympathetic nervous system was the first form of physiological synchrony observed in the lab (Kaplan & Bloom, 1960), and it has been widely studied in the physiological synchrony literature (Levenson & Gottman, 1983;Marci & Orr, 2006). Especially because SNS activation reflects engagement in a situation, sympathetic covariation during social interactions is thought to reflect a shared internal state (Levenson & Gottman, 1983).…”

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

“…Furthermore, results from dyadic relationship studies employing infant-mother (Cohn and Tronick 1988), patient-clinician (Marci and Orr 2006), or marital dyads (Levenson and Ruef 1992) have suggested that similarities in psychophysiological responses may improve social closeness. For example, physiological concordance between clients and therapists has been associated with higher evaluation of therapists' empathy by the clients (Marci et al 2007).…”