How Cognitive and Affective Empathy Relate to Emotion Regulation: Divergent Patterns from Trait and Task-Based Measures

Abstract

Evidence suggests that empathy and emotion regulation may be related, but few studies have directly investigated this relationship. Here we report two experiments which examined: 1) how different components of empathy (cognitive & affective) relate to the habitual use of cognitive reappraisal to regulate emotions (N=220), and 2) how these components of empathy relate to implicit reappraisal in a context-framing task (N=92). In study 1, a positive correlation between cognitive empathy and reappraisal use was observed. Affective empathy showed no relationship with reappraisal use. In study 2, participants completed an implicit reappraisal task in which previously viewed negative images were paired with either a neutralising (intended to reduce negative emotionality) or descriptive (which simply described the image) framing sentence. Participants then reported how unpleasant/pleasant each image made them feel. In contrast to study 1, a positive correlation between affective empathy and the implicit reappraisal task metric (rating of neutralising-descriptive framing conditions) was observed. There was no relationship between cognitive empathy and implicit reappraisal. These findings suggest that both components of empathy are related to reappraisal, but in different ways: Cognitive empathy is related to more deliberate use of reappraisal, while affective empathy is associated with more implicit reappraisal processes.

Confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory structural equation modeling of the factor structure of the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE)

“…Emotion suppression showed no association with any of the QCAE factors. Consistent with our findings, past studies have shown positive associations for cognitive reappraisal with cognitive empathy [ 46 – 49 ]; and also, no association [ 46 , 49 ] with affective empathy. In the case of emotion suppression, past findings have also shown no association [ 47 , 48 ] with cognitive and affective empathy [ 46 , 47 ].…”

“…Indeed, emotion suppression may be dysfunctional [ 42 , 43 ], and associated with negative social outcomes [ 44 , 45 ]. Past studies have shown positive associations for cognitive reappraisal with cognitive empathy [ 46 – 49 ]; and also, no association [ 46 , 49 ] or negative association [ 47 , 48 ] with affective empathy. In the case of emotion suppression, past findings have shown that it has either no association [ 47 , 48 ] or positive association [ 46 ] with cognitive empathy.…”

Positivity, creativity, and reappraisal's emotion regulation efficacy

“…Participants filled in the Interpersonal Reactivity Index online to assess empathy, which is closely related to the individual's processing of the unpleasant pictures and CR sentences (Thompson et al, 2019). One day later, they came to the laboratory.…”

A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Emotion Regulation and Social Affect and Cognition

“…Being able to understand other people's emotions, to feel with them and show compassion, that is, our socioaffective and sociocognitive processes, is important for successful and satisfying social interactions. Notably, there is growing evidence that social cognitive-affective processes and emotion regulation are interrelated (Thompson, van Reekum, & Chakrabarti, 2019;Thompson, Uusberg, et al, 2019). More concretely, our response to another person's emotions may differ depending on our ability to regulate our emotional states (Gross, 1998;McRae & Gross, 2020).…”

“…Findings from studies of adaptive emotion regulation and cognitive empathy support these assumptions: For example, a study by Laghi et al (2018) with adolescents found that cognitive reappraisal is positively linked to perspective taking. For nonclinical participants, moderate (Buruck et al, 2014;Jordan et al, 2002;Powell, 2018;Shaw et al, 2020;Thompson, van Reekum, & Chakrabarti, 2019;Tully et al, 2016;Wang et al, 2017) to high (Berrios Martos et al, 2013;Taute et al, 2010) positive correlations have been found between adaptive emotion regulation and cognitive empathic abilities. However, in clinical samples, this link vanishes (Ghiasi et al, 2016;Lehmann et al, 2014;Rowland et al, 2013), perhaps because these samples typically use adaptive emotion regulation less frequently than nonclinical samples do (Aldao et al, 2010).…”