Empathy regulation, prosociality, and moral judgment

Schadenfreude or empathy? Children's emotional responses to the physical pain and pleasure of prosocial and antisocial others

Adults' emotional reactions to the pain and pleasure of others are influenced by the moral character of those individuals. However, it remains unclear whether children's emotional responses also show such selectivity. To investigate this, we compared 4- to 8-year-old children's emotional responses to the physical pain and pleasure of prosocial versus antisocial puppets. In Study 1, children reported unhappiness after witnessing the pain of the prosocial and antisocial puppets but reported less unhappiness after witnessing the pain of the antisocial puppet. In Study 2, children reported happiness after witnessing the pleasure of both puppets but reported being less happy for the antisocial puppet. These results suggest that children are less likely to empathize with antisocial individuals. Meanwhile, children did not display Schadenfreude (pleasure at others' pain) or Gluckschmerz (displeasure at others' pleasure) toward antisocial individuals in our studies. Moreover, the selectivity of children's emotional responses disappeared after we manipulated the physical competence rather than the moral character of the puppets in Study 3. Our findings help to reveal the moral selectivity of emotional responses to others' pleasure and pain during early childhood.

Dissecting shared pain representations to understand their behavioral and clinical relevance

Accounts of shared representations posit that the experience of pain and pain empathy rely on similar neural mechanisms. Experimental research employing novel analytical and methodological approaches has made significant advances in both the identification and targeted manipulation of such shared experiences and their neural underpinnings. This revealed that painful experiences can be shared on different representational levels, from pain-specific to domain-general features, such as negative affect and its regulation. In view of direct links between such representations and social behaviors such as prosocial behavior, conditions characterized by aberrant pain processing may come along with heavy impairments in the social domain, depending on the affected representational level. This has wide potential implications in light of the high prevalence of pain-related clinical conditions, their management, and the overuse of pain medication. In this review and opinion paper, we aim to chart the path toward a better understanding of the link between shared affect and prosocial behavior.

Measuring empathy in youth and young adults with mild intellectual disabilities or borderline intelligence in residential care - The validation of an adapted basic empathy scale: The BES-MID

Youths with mild intellectual disability (MID) are assumed to show impaired cognitive and affective empathy. However, the use of linguistic and conceptual complex empathy measures set limits to the valid and reliable assessment of empathy in youth with MID or borderline intelligence (BI). The objective of the present study was to evaluate the validity and reliability of the adapted BES-MID as an instrument for assessing cognitive and affective empathy in youth and young adults (12-24years) with MID/BI. The current study was conducted in a sample of N = 146 youth and young adults with MID or BI Results from Confirmatory Factor Analyses confirm the two-factor structure of affective and cognitive empathy for the BES-MID. While the original BES cannot be used to assess empathy in youth and young adults with MID or borderline intelligence, the BES-MID showed satisfactory validity and reliability in youth and young adults with MID or borderline intelligence. Despite some limitations and the need for further research, the current study has resulted in a valid and reliable empathy scale (BES-MID) for assessing cognitive and empathic abilities in youth and young adults with MID or borderline intelligence, which is important for future empathy research in youth and young adults with MID or borderline intelligence.

Oxytocin, but not vasopressin, decreases willingness to harm others by promoting moral emotions of guilt and shame

Prosocial and moral behaviors have overlapping neural systems and can both be affected in a number of psychiatric disorders, although whether they involve similar neurochemical systems is unclear. In the current registered randomized placebo-controlled trial on 180 adult male and female subjects, we investigated the effects of intranasal administration of oxytocin and vasopressin, which play key roles in influencing social behavior, on moral emotion ratings for situations involving harming others and on judgments of moral dilemmas where others are harmed for a greater good. Oxytocin, but not vasopressin, enhanced feelings of guilt and shame for intentional but not accidental harm and reduced endorsement of intentionally harming others to achieve a greater good. Neither peptide influenced arousal ratings for the scenarios. Effects of oxytocin on guilt and shame were strongest in individuals scoring lower on the personal distress subscale of trait empathy. Overall, findings demonstrate for the first time that oxytocin, but not vasopressin, promotes enhanced feelings of guilt and shame and unwillingness to harm others irrespective of the consequences. This may reflect associations between oxytocin and empathy and vasopressin with aggression and suggests that oxytocin may have greater therapeutic potential for disorders with atypical social and moral behavior.

Moral judgment of objectionable online content: Reporting decisions and punishment preferences on social media

Harmful and inappropriate online content is prevalent, necessitating the need to understand how individuals judge and wish to mitigate the spread of negative content on social media. In an online study with a diverse sample of social media users (n = 294), we sought to elucidate factors that influence individuals' evaluation of objectionable online content. Participants were presented with images varying in moral valence, each accompanied by an indicator of intention from an ostensible content poster. Half of the participants were assigned the role of user content moderator, while the remaining participants were instructed to respond as they normally would online. The study aimed to establish whether moral imagery, the intention of a content poster, and the perceived responsibility of social media users, affect judgments of objectionability, operationalized through both decisions to flag content and preferences to seek punishment of other users. Our findings reveal that moral imagery strongly influences users' assessments of what is appropriate online content, with participants almost exclusively choosing to report and punish morally negative images. Poster intention also plays a significant role in user's decisions, with greater objection shown to morally negative content when it has been shared by another user for the purpose of showing support for it. Bestowing a content moderation role affected reporting behaviour but not punishment preferences. We also explore individual user characteristics, finding a negative association between trust in social media platforms and reporting decisions. Conversely, a positive relationship was identified between trait empathy and reporting rates. Collectively, our insights highlight the complexity of social media users' moderation decisions and preferences. The results advance understanding of moral judgments and punishment preferences online, and offer insights for platforms and regulatory bodies aiming to better understand social media users' role in content moderation.

Do Bad People Deserve Empathy? Selective Empathy Based on Targets' Moral Characteristics

The relation between empathy and morality is a widely discussed topic. However, previous discussions mainly focused on whether and how empathy influences moral cognition and moral behaviors, with limited attention to the reverse influence of morality on empathy. This review summarized how morality influences empathy by drawing together a number of hitherto scattered studies illustrating the influence of targets' moral characteristics on empathy. To explain why empathy is morally selective, we discuss its ultimate cause, to increase survival rates, and five proximate causes based on similarity, affective bonds, the appraisal of deservingness, dehumanization, and potential group membership. To explain how empathy becomes morally selective, we consider three different pathways (automatic, regulative, and mixed) based on previous findings. Finally, we discuss future directions, including the reverse influence of selective empathy on moral cognition, the moral selectivity of positive empathy, and the role of selective empathy in selective helping and third-party punishment.

Effect of doctor-patient news-induced moral judgments on pain empathy for doctors and patients in China

Objective

Pain empathy's preferential nature tends to trigger prejudice and intergroup conflicts. Given the current degree of proliferation of doctor-patient conflict news in China, this study aims to determine whether readers of doctor-patient news-initiated moral judgments prefer pain empathy for doctors or patients.

Materials and methods

This study utilized localized doctor-patient news with high or low moral performance (based on morality ratings of patients' behaviors) as moral-judgment-eliciting materials, and painful pictures as pain empathy-eliciting materials. The event-related potential (ERP) technique was utilized to assess moral judgment's effect on the cognitive empathy component and to investigate electroencephalogram signals' accuracy in classifying four brain response patterns when facing doctor or patient is experiencing or not experiencing pain.

Results

Under low moral text material, participants exhibited smaller mean wave amplitude of positive 300 (P3) and late positive potential (LPP) to painful pictures than non-painful pictures when facing patients; under high moral text material, participants exhibited larger mean wave amplitude of P3 and LPP to painful pictures than non-painful pictures when facing doctors. Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals' classification accuracy was significant in 0-1,000 ms in both high and low moral judgments, but the classification accuracy was higher in low moral judgments in some cognitive empathy stages (0.51, 0.53-0.55, 0.66-0.79, and 0.88-1 s).

Conclusion

Under low moral judgment, individuals pay less attention to the patient's (perpetrator's) pain; under high moral judgment, individuals empathize with the doctor (the person praised), showing that news-induced moral judgment can sway readers' empathy for different social groups. In cognitive empathy, individuals' brain representations are more discriminatory under low than high moral judgments when confronted with pain by doctors and patients, which provides insight into objectively recognizing group bias.

Placebo Analgesia Reduces Costly Prosocial Helping to Lower Another Person's Pain

Painkiller administration lowers pain empathy, but whether this also reduces prosocial behavior is unknown. In this preregistered study, we investigated whether inducing analgesia through a placebo painkiller reduced effortful helping. When given the opportunity to reduce the pain of another person, individuals experiencing placebo analgesia (n = 45 adults from Austria; 21 male, 24 female) made fewer prosocial choices at the lowest helping level and exerted less physical effort when helping, compared with controls whose pain sensitivity was unaltered (n = 45; 21 male, 24 female). Self-reported empathic unpleasantness positively correlated with prosocial choices across the whole sample. While not replicating group differences in empathy, a mediation analysis revealed that the level of unpleasantness to other people's pain fully mediated the effect of placebo analgesia on prosocial choices. Given the importance of prosociality for social cohesion, these findings have broad potential implications both for individuals under the influence of painkillers and for society at large.

Eliciting empathetic drives to prosocial behavior during stressful events

In the current pandemic situation, psychological science is increasingly considered by public health policy. Empathy is mainly recognized as a crucial drive for prosocial behavior. However, this rich body of evidence still lacks visibility and implementation. Effective social programs are needed, and little is known about how to elicit empathetic drives. The paper gives first a clear foundation to the role of empathy during stressful events. It provides then a comprehensive overview of innovative interventions triggering empathic response in the public such as fiction, film, and theater. Moreover, it integrates interactive ways of sharing personal views that could elicit empathetic feelings in different people. Advances deriving from this perspective could be of significant public interest in the current and future health crises and help authorities develop innovative social programs, which should be the focus of further scientific inquiry.

Cognitive cost of empathizing with mothers and strangers by Chinese college students

Background

Empathy is a choice and the product of a dynamic decision process based on motivation. The value trade-off in empathy is object-specific and people are more likely to empathize with ingroup, especially empathize with whom we are particularly concerned. The mother is an integral part of the self-concept, but the status of the mother in the self-concept of the eastern and western subjects was different. Previous studies have shown that mother is integrated in self-concept and share the same motivational hierarchy with self in Chinese brain.

Objectives

The study's purpose is to investigate the empathic choice for mothers in Chinese culture and its regulatory mechanism.

Methods

Three experiments were conducted to investigate whether Chinese college students would choose to empathize with their mothers. Experiment 1 used the Empathy Selection Task to examine the empathic choices between mother-other and stranger-other conditions with two blocks of 50 trials, and used the NASA Task Load Index to evaluate the cognitive costs for each deck option presented; Experiment 2 induced a disagreeable emotional state and replicate the same conditions of the experiment 1; Experiment 3 induced an agreeable emotional state and replicate the same conditions of the experiment one.

Results and conclusions

The results showed that: (1) participants tended to avoid empathizing with their mothers and strangers for to the cognitive cost; (2) participants were more likely to choose empathy when the target was their mother rather than when the target was a stranger-other, due to the social reward; and (3) participants were more likely to opt to empathize with their mothers when positive emotions towards their mothers were primed. The results suggested that empathy is a choice and the product of a dynamic decision process based on motivation and the value trade-off in empathy is object-specific.

A whirlpool of emotion: How entrepreneurs’ empathy affects employees‘ emotional exhaustion

Drawing upon upper echelons and self-determination theories, we hypothesize and test a mediating process linking entrepreneurs’ empathy to employees‘ emotional exhaustion and the moderating role of psychological empowerment. Based on a dyadic-survey study of entrepreneurs and their employees in high-tech new ventures in China, we conducted the empirical test by using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) and found that entrepreneurs’ empathy has a negative effect on employees‘ emotional exhaustion, and psychological empowerment not only partially mediates the relationship between entrepreneurs’ empathy and employees‘ emotional exhaustion but also positively moderates the above relationship. This study frames an integrative perspective of emotions and psychologies and sheds a nuanced understanding of the mechanisms linking empathy with emotional exhaustion. Limitations and future directions are addressed.

Motivated Down-Regulation of Emotion and Compassion Collapse Revisited

Compassion collapse is a phenomenon where feelings and helping behavior decrease as the number of needy increases. But what are the underlying mechanisms for compassion collapse? Previous research has attempted to pit two explanations: Limitations of the feeling system vs. motivated down-regulation of emotion, against each other. In this article, we critically reexamine a previous study comparing these two accounts published in 2011 and present new data that contest motivated down-regulation of emotion as the primary explanation for compassion collapse.