Effects of empathic social responses on the emotions of the recipient

Brain and Cognition
Maria SeehausenKristin Prehn

Abstract

Empathy is highly relevant for social behavior and can be verbally expressed by voicing sympathy and concern (emotional empathy) as well as by paraphrasing or stating that one can mentally reconstruct and understand another person's thoughts and feelings (cognitive empathy). In this study, we investigated the emotional effects and neural correlates of receiving empathic social responses after negative performance feedback and compared the effects of emotionally vs. cognitively empathic comments. 20 participants (10 male) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while receiving negative performance feedback for a cognitive task. Performance feedback was followed by verbal comments either expressing cognitive and emotional empathy or demonstrating a lack of empathy. Empathic comments in general led to less negative self-reported feelings and calmer breathing. At the neural level, empathic comments induced activity in regions associated with social cognition and emotion processing, specifically in right postcentral gyrus and left cerebellum (cognitively empathic comments), right precentral gyrus, the opercular part of left inferior frontal gyrus, and left middle temporal gyrus (emotionally empathic comments), as well as the...Continue Reading

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Citations

Feb 9, 2019·Scientific Reports·Madoka NoriuchiYoko Kamio
Nov 21, 2018·Emergency Medicine Australasia : EMA·Richard Johnson, Michelle Withers
Sep 29, 2019·Advances in Health Sciences Education : Theory and Practice·Kangmoon KimYoung-Mee Lee
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Jan 14, 2021·Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience·Aviva K OlsavskyPilyoung Kim
Oct 16, 2021·Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience·Lisa I HorstmanMarian J Bakermans-Kranenburg
Oct 19, 2020··Omar Abou KhaledElena Mugellini

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