Motivated empathy: The mechanics of the empathic gaze

Cowan, David; Vanman, Eric J.; Nielsen, Mark

doi:10.1080/02699931.2014.890563

Cited by 56 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Together these results suggest that females seem to use global processing by default and therefore are not as affected by happy mood primes, while males do not use global processing by default and are therefore more sensitive to the happy prime. In related work, females fixated more on the eye regions of faces, compared to males, which may also be related to the female advantage in facial expression recognition (Hall et al, 2010), and which appears positively associated with empathetic skill (Cowan et al, 2014). …”

Section: Behavioral and Psychological Gender Differences In Humansmentioning

confidence: 92%

Empathy: Gender effects in brain and behavior

Christov-Moore

Simpson

Coudé

et al. 2014

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

769

479

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Evidence suggests that there are differences in the capacity for empathy between males and females. However, how deep do these differences go? Stereotypically, females are portrayed as more nurturing and empathetic, while males are portrayed as less emotional and more cognitive. Some authors suggest that observed gender differences might be largely due to cultural expectations about gender roles. However, empathy has both evolutionary and developmental precursors, and can be studied using implicit measures, aspects that can help elucidate the respective roles of culture and biology. This article reviews evidence from ethology, social psychology, economics, and neuroscience to show that there are fundamental differences in implicit measures of empathy, with parallels in development and evolution. Studies in nonhuman animals and younger human populations (infants/children) offer converging evidence that sex differences in empathy have phylogenetic and ontogenetic roots in biology and are not merely cultural byproducts driven by socialization. We review how these differences may have arisen in response to males’ and females’ different roles throughout evolution. Examinations of the neurobiological underpinnings of empathy reveal important quantitative gender differences in the basic networks involved in affective and cognitive forms of empathy, as well as a qualitative divergence between the sexes in how emotional information is integrated to support decision making processes. Finally, the study of gender differences in empathy can be improved by designing studies with greater statistical power and considering variables implicit in gender (e.g., sexual preference, prenatal hormone exposure). These improvements may also help uncover the nature of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders in which one sex is more vulnerable to compromised social competence associated with impaired empathy.

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Section: Behavioral and Psychological Gender Differences In Humansmentioning

confidence: 92%

Empathy: Gender effects in brain and behavior

Christov-Moore

Simpson

Coudé

et al. 2014

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

769

479

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Regarding the process of facial emotional recognition, it has been suggested that it is related with a specific visual scan pattern, in which those who look at the eyes for a longer period of time show greater accuracy and speed to recognize emotions than those who spent less time looking on eyes' area (Hall and Masumoto, 2004;Calvo et al, 2008;Balconi and Canavesio, 2014). Some studies have reported participants spent more time looking at the eyes area in emotionally stimulus than neutral, highlighting the notion that eye-to-eye encounters are critical to successful engage social interactions (Mason et al, 2005;Cowan et al, 2014). In addition, some clinical abnormalities in socially directed eye-gaze patterns to facial features exhibit low-emotional empathy, such as schizophrenia, or autism (Klin et al, 2002;Joshua and Rossell, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, some clinical abnormalities in socially directed eye-gaze patterns to facial features exhibit low-emotional empathy, such as schizophrenia, or autism (Klin et al, 2002;Joshua and Rossell, 2009). In this context, it has been reported that empathy traits and gender can influence the visual scanning linked to emotional recognition (Balconi and Canavesio, 2014;Cowan et al, 2014;van Rijn et al, 2014). Otherwise, empathy traits have been described as the qualities or the empathic tendencies that people identify in themselves (Hoffman, 1977;Davis, 1980).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, it has been suggested that the use of repetitive static stimulus is a potential source of fatigue and habituation that might have limited the ecological value of their findings (Balconi and Canavesio, 2014). On the contrary, dynamic stimuli exalt natural emotional expressions, which allows to evoke empathic responses (including emotional recognition), and to evaluate empathic processes more accurately (Regenbogen et al, 2012;Cowan et al, 2014). In this line, we have not found studies that examine the influence of both, empathy trait and gender, on the empathic process using dynamic stimuli in typical population.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although some studies have evaluated the empathic process using dynamic stimulus and recorded eye movements in clinical populations (van Rijn et al, 2014;van Goozen et al, 2016;Hubble et al, 2017;van Zonneveld et al, 2017), they did not determine the influence of empathy trait or gender. As far as we know, only one study has included typical adult population, empathy trait, and dynamic stimuli (video) to compare neutral and sad emotions (Cowan et al, 2014). The researchers reported a positive correlation between the subject's levels of empathy concern (evaluated by IRI scale) and the fixation duration on the eyes' region of the emotional stimulus.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Influence of Empathy Trait and Gender on Empathic Responses. A Study With Dynamic Emotional Stimulus and Eye Movement Recordings

Martínez-Velázquez¹,

González²,

Chamorro³

et al. 2020

Front. Psychol.

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Previous studies have suggested that empathic process involve several components such as cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and prosocial concern. It has also been reported that gender and empathy trait can influence empathic responses such as emotional recognition, which requires an appropriate scanning of faces. However, the degree to which these factors influence the empathic responses, which include emotion recognition, affective empathy, and cognitive empathy, has not yet been specified. Aim: The aim of the present study was to identify the differences between individuals with high and low level of empathy trait, as well as differences between men and women, in an explicit task in order to evaluate the empathic responses. Methods: With this goal in mind, we recorded eye movements during the presentation of dynamic emotional stimuli (joy, anger, fear, and neutral videos). After watching each video, participants had to rate the valence and arousal dimensions of emotional content and explicit empathy responses were assessed. Thirty participants (15 women) were included in a High Empathy group (HE; mean age = 21.0) and 30 participants (16 women) in the Low Empathy group (LE; mean age = 21.2), according to their scores in the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) scale. Results: As expected, the HE group showed higher scores than the LE group in the explicit empathy responses. These differences, based on global scores, were mainly explained by affective empathy and cognitive empathy responses but not by emotional recognition one. No differences were observed by gender in these measures. Regarding eye movements in the dynamic emotional stimuli, HE group had longer fixation duration on the eyes area than LE group. In addition, women spent more time on the eyes area in comparison to men. Discussion: Our findings suggest that both men and women with high empathy trait are more accurate to empathizing but not on the basis of the emotional recognition response. Martínez-Velázquez et al.

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Awareness of embodiment enhances enjoyment and engages sensorimotor cortices

Moffat,

Cross

2024

Human Brain Mapping

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Whether in performing arts, sporting, or everyday contexts, when we watch others move, we tend to enjoy bodies moving in synchrony. Our enjoyment of body movements is further enhanced by our own prior experience with performing those movements, or our ‘embodied experience’. The relationships between movement synchrony and enjoyment, as well as embodied experience and movement enjoyment, are well known. The interaction between enjoyment of movements, synchrony, and embodiment is less well understood, and may be central for developing new approaches for enriching social interaction. To examine the interplay between movement enjoyment, synchrony, and embodiment, we asked participants to copy another person's movements as accurately as possible, thereby gaining embodied experience of movement sequences. Participants then viewed other dyads performing the same or different sequences synchronously, and we assessed participants' recognition of having performed these sequences, as well as their enjoyment of each movement sequence. We used functional near‐infrared spectroscopy to measure cortical activation over frontotemporal sensorimotor regions while participants performed and viewed movements. We found that enjoyment was greatest when participants had mirrored the sequence and recognised it, suggesting that awareness of embodiment may be central to enjoyment of synchronous movements. Exploratory analyses of relationships between cortical activation and enjoyment and recognition implicated the sensorimotor cortices, which subserve action observation and aesthetic processing. These findings hold implications for clinical research and therapies seeking to foster successful social interaction.

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Motivated empathy: The mechanics of the empathic gaze

Cited by 56 publications

References 24 publications

Empathy: Gender effects in brain and behavior

Empathy: Gender effects in brain and behavior

The Influence of Empathy Trait and Gender on Empathic Responses. A Study With Dynamic Emotional Stimulus and Eye Movement Recordings

Awareness of embodiment enhances enjoyment and engages sensorimotor cortices

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