The role of physiological arousal for self-reported emotional empathy

Deuter, Christian Eric; Nowacki, Jan; Wingenfeld, Katja; Kuehl, Linn K.; Finke, Johannes B.; Dziobek, Isabel; Otte, Christian

doi:10.1016/j.autneu.2018.07.002

Cited by 22 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 63 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Recent literature has suggested that physiological reactivity and conscious experience have a dynamic interplay rather than a linear, dependent relationship (Cunningham, Dunfield, & Stillman, 2013; Hollenstein, & Lanteigne, 2014). Empathic responses may primarily be conscious feelings with low physiological reactivity (Deuter et al, 2018). Future studies should clarify the dynamic interplay between conscious feelings and physiological reactivity for being empathic.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feeling Empathically Toward Other People and the Self: The Role of Perspective Shifting in Emotion Sharing and Self-Reassurance

Chiu

Kwok

et al. 2019

Clinical Psychological Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Feeling one’s own emotions empathically when negative thoughts about the self arise, a defining element of self-reassurance, promotes resilience to prolonged emotional reactivity. We propose that feeling empathically toward the self is accomplished by first stepping into the shoes of an objectified, undesired self-aspect, after which the process of perspective shifting should be completed by reengaging the self to experience the moment in the first person. We hypothesize that the resumption of the egocentric perspective in perspective shifting, a cognitive characteristic of sharing other people’s emotions, is crucial for self-reassurance as well. The relationships among flexibility in perspective shifting, self-reassurance, and emotion sharing were examined in community participants. Our results show that quickly switching back to a visuospatial egocentric perspective after adopting an opposing perspective relates to self-reassurance and emotion sharing. We conclude that both reassuring the self and empathizing with other people involve flexibility in perspective shifting.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feeling Empathically Toward Other People and the Self: The Role of Perspective Shifting in Emotion Sharing and Self-Reassurance

Chiu

Kwok

et al. 2019

Clinical Psychological Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We used a modified version [ 39 ] of the MET [ 40 ] to asses cognitive and emotional empathy. The computerized task consists of 30 pictures of people in emotional situations that are presented on a black screen.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive and emotional empathy after stimulation of brain mineralocorticoid and NMDA receptors in patients with major depression and healthy controls

Nowacki

Wingenfeld

Kaczmarczyk

et al. 2020

Neuropsychopharmacol.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Mineralocorticoid receptors (MR) are predominantly expressed in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. Both brain areas are associated with social cognition, which includes cognitive empathy (ability to understand others’ emotions) and emotional empathy (ability to empathize with another person). MR stimulation improves memory and executive functioning in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and healthy controls, and leads to glutamate-mediated N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDA-R) signaling. We examined whether the beneficial effects of MR stimulation can be extended to social cognition (empathy), and whether DCS would have additional beneficial effects. In this double-blind placebo-controlled single-dose study, we randomized 116 unmedicated MDD patients (mean age 34 years, 78% women) and 116 age-, sex-, and education years-matched healthy controls to four conditions: MR stimulation (fludrocortisone (0.4 mg) + placebo), NMDA-R stimulation (placebo + D-cycloserine (250 mg)), MR and NMDA-R stimulation (both drugs), or placebo. Cognitive and emotional empathy were assessed by the Multifaceted Empathy Test. The study was registered on clinicaltrials.gov (NCT03062150). MR stimulation increased cognitive empathy across groups, whereas NMDA-R stimulation decreased cognitive empathy in MDD patients only. Independent of receptor stimulation, cognitive empathy did not differ between groups. Emotional empathy was not affected by MR or NMDA-R stimulation. However, MDD patients showed decreased emotional empathy compared with controls but, according to exploratory analyses, only for positive emotions. We conclude that MR stimulation has beneficial effects on cognitive empathy in MDD patients and healthy controls, whereas NMDA-R stimulation decreased cognitive empathy in MDD patients. It appears that MR rather than NMDA-R are potential treatment targets to modulate cognitive empathy in MDD.

show abstract

“…Two studies (Cugnata et al, 2018;Deuter et al, 2018) were not included in the meta-analysis because of multilevel analyses.…”

Section: Study Selection and Characteristics Of Included Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The authors, however, reported only results on the relation among HRV, the Faux Pas Test, and the RMET (Jáuregui et al, 2011). Deuter et al (2018) administered a PC-assisted shortversion of the Multifaceted Empathy Test (MET; Dziobek et al, 2008) to assess cognitive empathy intended as a social cognition measure. The participants were required to infer the mental state of the person in the photo and were asked to indicate the correct emotion from a 1 Children were presented with a set of 28 photographs (selected from the adult version of the task) depicting the eye region of the face and were asked to choose the word that best described what the person was thinking or feeling from a total of 4 items (only 1 correct).…”

Section: Theory Of Mind Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…list of four. The test consists of 30 picture stimuli with people in emotionally charged situations, and in this case (Deuter et al, 2018), the images were presented in 3 blocks of 10 picture stimuli to detect the cognitive components of empathy. The accuracy in the detection of emotional states is usually considered an index of "cognitive empathy" (Blair, 2008), conceptualized as the ability to create a theory about the mental state of others and take their perspective (Perry and Shamay-Tsoory, 2013).…”

Section: Theory Of Mind Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Heart in the Mind: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Association Between Theory of Mind and Cardiac Vagal Tone

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Theory of mind (ToM) is the human ability to infer the mental states of others in order to understand their behaviors and plan own actions. In the past decades, accumulating evidence has shown that heart rate variability (HRV), an index of parasympathetic control of the heart, is linked to behavioral regulation, social competence, and social cognition abilities, all implicated—to some extent—in ToM. This study aims to systematically review and meta-analyze the available studies, investigating the relation between ToM and HRV in typically developing people. Six studies were eligible for the meta-analysis, yielding a significant association between HRV and ToM of a small-to-medium effect size (g = 0.44). This result was not influenced by publication bias. Due to the small number of studies eligible for the meta-analysis, it was not possible to test for the effect of categorical moderators. The moderating role of sex and quality of the studies was examined by meta-regression analysis. Moderation analysis did not yield any significant effect; however, at a descriptive level, studies yielding the largest effect size were characterized by the use of high frequency-HRV assessment at rest and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test to evaluate ToM abilities. The results preliminarily suggest that tonic HRV might be used as an indicator of the ability to understand the content of mind of others.

show abstract

The role of physiological arousal for self-reported emotional empathy

Cited by 22 publications

References 63 publications

Feeling Empathically Toward Other People and the Self: The Role of Perspective Shifting in Emotion Sharing and Self-Reassurance

Feeling Empathically Toward Other People and the Self: The Role of Perspective Shifting in Emotion Sharing and Self-Reassurance

Cognitive and emotional empathy after stimulation of brain mineralocorticoid and NMDA receptors in patients with major depression and healthy controls

The Heart in the Mind: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Association Between Theory of Mind and Cardiac Vagal Tone

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About