Emotion

Knafo, Ariel; Zahn-Waxler, Carolyn; Van Hulle, Carol; Robinson, JoAnn L.; Rhee, Soo Hyun

doi: 10.1037/a0014179pmid: 19102585

The authors investigated the development of a disposition toward empathy and its genetic and environmental origins. Young twins' (N = 409 pairs) cognitive (hypothesis testing) and affective (empathic concern) empathy and prosocial behavior in response to simulated pain by mothers and examiners were observed at multiple time points. Children's mean level of empathy and prosociality increased from 14 to 36 months. Positive concurrent and longitudinal correlations indicated that empathy was a relatively stable disposition, generalizing across ages, across its affective and cognitive components, and across mother and examiner. Multivariate genetic analyses showed that genetic effects increased, and that shared environmental effects decreased, with age. Genetic effects contributed to both change and continuity in children's empathy, whereas shared environmental effects contributed to stability and nonshared environmental effects contributed to change. Empathy was associated with prosocial behavior, and this relationship was mainly due to environmental effects.

Grühn, Daniel; Rebucal, Kristine; Diehl, Manfred; Lumley, Mark; Labouvie-Vief, Gisela

doi: 10.1037/a0014123pmid: 19102586

This study examined change in self-reported empathy in a four-wave longitudinal study spanning 12 years (1992–2004) and the association between empathy and other measures, including daily reports of relationship experiences. Participants initially ranged in age from 10 years to 87 years. Cross-sectional and longitudinal associations of age with empathy revealed divergent patterns. Whereas cross-sectional analyses suggested that older adults scored lower in empathy than younger adults, longitudinal analyses showed no age-related decline in empathy. This combined pattern suggests that the cross-sectional age-differences reflect a cohort rather than an age effect, with older cohorts reporting lower levels of empathy than younger ones. Independent of age, empathy was associated with a positive well-being (e.g., life satisfaction) and interaction profile (e.g., positive relations with others). In addition, a subsample of participants (n = 114) conducted experience-sampling about social interactions for a week. People with high self-reported empathy perceived their interactions as more meaningful, felt more positive in these interactions, and thought that their interaction partner felt also more positive. Thus, self-reported empathy was meaningfully associated with adults' actual social interactions.

Van Lange, Paul A. M.

doi: 10.1037/a0013967pmid: 19102587

A key questionin research on empathy is what interpersonal motivations might be activated byempathy. Does empathy promote only a concern with other's outcomes(“altruism”), as well as decreased concern with one's ownoutcomes (“selflessness”), or an increased concern withequality in outcomes (“egalitarianism”)? These interpersonalmotivations were assessed with a series of experimental games, and ourmanipulations of empathy paralleled earlier research on the empathy-altruismmodel. Participants received a (fictitious) note from another person outliningthat he or she is coping with the anticipated loss of his or her father inconditions that emphasized taking the other's perspective or an objectiveperspective (high and low empathy), whereas another group of participantsreceived no note (no empathy). Consistent with our hypotheses, results revealedthat a concern with another's well-being (altruism) was greater in the twoempathy conditions than in the no-empathy condition. Further, the authorsobserved no effect of empathy on selfishness or egalitarianism, two motivationsthat were substantially present independent of empathy. Thus, the findingssuggest that empathy adds altruistic motivation to already existing selfish andegalitarian motivation.

Jabbi, Mbemba; Keysers, Christian

doi: 10.1037/a0014194pmid: 19102588

The observation of movies of facial expressions of others has been shown to recruit similar areas involved in experiencing one's own emotions: the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), the anterior insula and adjacent frontal operculum (IFO). The causal link between activity in these 2 regions, associated with motor and emotional simulation, respectively, has remained unknown. Here using psychophysiological interaction and Granger Causality Modeling, we show that activity in the IFO is causally triggered by activity in the IFG, and that this effective connectivity is specific to the IFG. These findings shed new light on the intricate relationship between motor and affective components of emotional empathy.

Verhofstadt, Lesley L.; Buysse, Ann; Ickes, William; Davis, Mark; Devoldre, Inge

doi: 10.1037/a0013976pmid: 19102590

The goal of this investigation was to identify microlevel processes in the support provider that may foster or inhibit the provision of spousal support. Specifically, the authors focused on (a) how emotional similarity between the support provider and support seeker and (b) how empathic accuracy of the support provider relate to support provision in marriage. In a laboratory experiment, 30 couples were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 conditions (support provider: man vs. woman) of a factorial design. The couples provided questionnaire data and participated in a social support interaction designed to assess behaviors when offering and soliciting social support. A video-review task was used to assess emotional similarity and empathic accuracy during the support interaction. As expected, greater similarity between the support provider's and support seeker's emotional responses, as well as more accurate insights into the support-seeking spouse's thoughts and feelings were found to be predictive of more skilful support (i.e., higher levels of emotional and instrumental support and lower levels of negative types of support).

Clark, Tedra F.; Winkielman, Piotr; McIntosh, Daniel N.

doi: 10.1037/a0014124pmid: 19102591

Identification of other people's emotionfrom quickly presented stimuli, including facialexpressions, is fundamental to many social processes,including rapid mimicry and empathy. This study examinedextraction of valence from brief emotional expressions inadults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a conditioncharacterized by impairments in understanding and sharing ofemotions. Control participants were individuals with readingdisability and typical individuals. Participants were shownimages for durations in the range of microexpressions (15 msand 30 ms), thus reducing the reliance on higher levelcognitive skills. Participants detected whether (a)emotional faces were happy or angry, (b) neutral faces weremale or female, and (c) neutral images were animals orobjects. Individuals with ASD performed selectively worse onemotion extraction, with no group differences for gender oranimal–object tasks. The emotion extractiondeficit remains even when controlling for gender, verbalability, and age and is not accounted for byspeed–accuracy tradeoffs. The deficit in rapidemotional processing may contribute to ASD difficulties inmimicry, empathy, and related processes. The resultshighlight the role of rapid early emotion processing inadaptive social–emotional functioning.

Wiens, Stefan; Peira, Nathalie; Golkar, Armita; Öhman, Arne

doi: 10.1037/a0013731pmid: 19102592

If emotions guide consciousness, people may recognize degraded objects in center view more accurately if they either fear the objects or are disgusted by them. Therefore, we studied whether recognition of spiders and snakes correlates with individual differences in spider fear, snake fear, and disgust sensitivity. Female students performed a recognition task with pictures of spiders, snakes, flowers, and mushrooms as well as blanks. Pictures were backward masked to reduce picture visibility. Signal detection analyses showed that recognition of spiders and snakes was correlated with disgust sensitivity but not with fear of spiders or snakes. Further, spider fear correlated with the tendency to misinterpret blanks as threatening (response bias). These findings suggest that effects on recognition and response biases to emotional pictures vary for different emotions and emotional traits. Whereas fear may induce response biases, disgust may facilitate recognition.

Van Damme, Stefaan; Crombez, Geert; Notebaert, Lies

doi: 10.1037/a0014149pmid: 19102593

To investigate attentional bias to threatening information, the authors propose a new version of the spatial cueing paradigm in which the focus is on perceptual accuracy instead of response speed. In two experiments, healthy volunteers made unspeeded discriminations between three visual targets presented left or right. Each target was preceded by a visual cue (colored rectangle) at either the same (valid) or opposite (invalid) location. By means of differential classical conditioning with aversive white noise, a threat cue and a control cue were created. Analyses of error rates showed that cueing effects (lower proportion of errors in valid trials relative to invalid trials) were more pronounced in threat trials than in neutral trials. This threat-related bias was particularly because of threat cues reducing accuracy in invalid trials, indicating difficulty disengaging attention from threatening information. Engagement of attention was not affected by threat, as threat cues did not facilitate the processing of targets in valid trials. The findings are discussed in light of the strengths and limitations of spatial cueing tasks.

Yiend, Jenny; Mathews, Andrew; Weston, Becky; Dunn, Barnaby D.; Cusack, Rhodri; Mackintosh, Bundy

doi: 10.1037/a0014146pmid: 19102594

The implicit control of emotion processing was investigated by varying encoding instructions for both negative and neutral pictures while measuring psychophysiological responses. Participants made comparative judgments about consecutive pictures for blocks of neutral or negative content. The highly specified judgment task was designed to minimize variance in the implementation of implicit control of processing. Affective modulation of startle amplitude was significantly reduced during judgments involving nonnegative content (how “planned” an image was compared to its predecessor), compared to those that involved negative content (how “frightening” an image was compared to its predecessor), indicating successful implicit control of processing. The more attenuated affect modulation was, the less anxious individuals became during the task, suggesting that the implicit control of emotion processing is significantly associated with emotional experience. These data provide convergent evidence for a companion neuroimaging study because of the similar neural substrates thought to underlie affective modulation of startle. This supports the view that higher-level top-down pathways modulate activation of the amygdala.

Trimmer, Christopher G.; Cuddy, Lola L.

doi: 10.1037/a0014080pmid: 19102595

Is music training associated with greater sensitivity to emotional prosody in speech? University undergraduates (n = 100) were asked to identify the emotion conveyed in both semantically neutral utterances and melodic analogues that preserved the fundamental frequency contour and intensity pattern of the utterances. Utterances were expressed in four basic emotional tones (anger, fear, joy, sadness) and in a neutral condition. Participants also completed an extended questionnaire about music education and activities, and a battery of tests to assess emotional intelligence, musical perception and memory, and fluid intelligence. Emotional intelligence, not music training or music perception abilities, successfully predicted identification of intended emotion in speech and melodic analogues. The ability to recognize cues of emotion accurately and efficiently across domains may reflect the operation of a cross-modal processor that does not rely on gains of perceptual sensitivity such as those related to music training.