The Role of Culture in Affective Empathy: Cultural and Bicultural Differences

Abstract

Empathy is essential for healthy relationships and overall well-being. Affective empathy is the emotional response to others' distress and can take two forms: personal distress or empathic concern. In Western cultures, high empathic concern and low personal distress have been implicated in increased prosocial behaviour (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 1989) and better emotion management and peer relations (e.g., Eisenberg and Fabes, 1998). Various factors have been examined with respect to affective empathy, but the role of culture has received little attention. Previous work suggests that children from East Asian cultures compared to those from Western cultures experience greater personal distress and less empathic concern (e.g., Trommsdorff, 1995), but no work has specifically examined these differences in adolescents or individuals who identify as 'bicultural'. The current research examines cultural differences in affective empathy using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1980) in an adolescent and young adult sample (n=190) and examines how empathy relates to social-emotional health in bicultural individuals. Consistent with research on children, East Asian adolescents reported greater personal distress and less empathic concern than their Western counterparts. The bicultural individuals' scores fell in between the East Asian and Western groups, but revealed significant differences from their 'uni-cultural' peers, demonstrating shared influences of community and family. Importantly, however, the relationship between affective empathy and social-emotional health in bicultural individuals was the same as for Western individuals. The current results provide an important first step in understanding the different cultural influences on empathic responding in a previously understudied population -bicultural individuals.

Empathy Gender in Dental Students in Latin America: An Exploratory and Cross-Sectional Study

“…There are circumstances that negatively influence empathy: levels of anxiety, claustrophobia, obesity, depression and stress [47]- [49]. In summary, the variability of observed empathy levels in this study, related to gender, cannot be explained.…”

“…On the other hand, other authors proposed that empathy has an impact in the emotional health and in the social field throughout culture [4] [43]- [46], besides it is correlated with the pro-social behavior and altruism and also inhibits the unsocial and aggressive behavior [47] [48]. There are circumstances that negatively influence empathy: levels of anxiety, claustrophobia, obesity, depression and stress [47]- [49].…”

An Investigation of the Divergences and Convergences of Trait Empathy across Two Cultures

“…These researchers concluded that living in a collectivist society accounts for a higher concern for others because these cultures firmly believe that one's well-being depends on the well-being of others. In contrast, Cassels, Chan, and Chung (2010) found higher trait empathy in culturally individualist participants compared to their Cross-Cultural Approach to Empathy culturally collectivist peers. They attributed lower level of empathy in Eastern participants to high degree of their emotional dependency on other members of the same culture.…”

“…Sample 2 included 203 Iranians (38 males; M = 22.68, SD = 3.90; age-range = 17-30) living either in Iran or outside the country who voluntarily consented for participation. Forty-three participants living outside Iran were excluded from analysis due to exposure to diverse cultures that might affect trait empathy (Cassels et al, 2010 Table 1.…”

Competition between frontoparietal control and default networks supports social working memory and empathy

“…On the one hand, it has been proved that cultural differences have an important influence on empathy. Eastern cultures and western cultures are distinct in empathic processing patterns (Adams Jr et al, 2010;Cassels et al, 2010;Birkett, 2014). On the other hand, participants in this study were well educated, so these results may limit their generalizability to other populations.…”