1. Physiological rapport and linkage
(LEVENSON & RUEF)
- menstrual synchrony
- emoptional reliving of own experience
- heart rate and skin conductance correlations
- facial mimicry
- postural mirroring
Mechanisms?
- shared stimuli (environment, conversation)
- A's emotion -> A's face -> B's face -> B's emotion
2. Empathy
= attempts to comprehend other's mind state
- cognitive (= figuring out what the other is seeing, thinking, or
feeling): perspective-taking
If compared to real state of other -> assessment of empathic accuracy
- emotional (= feeling the same thing as the other person)
Central precursors: Imitation, joint attention, concept of mind.
ROGERS: Rapport and empathy in clinical practice (non-judgmental,
reflecting client's interpretation, helping with finding meanings)
Methods of inducing empathy:
- direct: imagine what the other is experiencing
- situation-based: imagine their situation and how you would experience it
- self-based: remember a time during which you felt the same way (exploiting the ego)
Some findings:
- accuracy is not correlated with self-reported empathy or self-guessed
accuracy
- mutual induction of same emotion happens more often for negative affect
(escalation)
- conflict resolution (and forgiveness) is more successful with "self-based"
empathy
KLEIN & HODGES (1999): Empathic accuracy, gender differences,
motivational processes
Mechanisms of successful empathy?
- simulation (total projection)
- inference processes (active perspective taking)
- emotional contagion and read-off (LEVENSON & RUEF)
3. Sympathy
(= feelings of tenderness in face of other's suffering; compassion, not
mimicry)
- antecedents (sufferer, similarity or relationship, similarity of
plight: HOUSTON)
- consequences (altruism, charitableness, forgiveness/less blame)