Selective impairment of cognitive empathy for moral judgment in adults with high functioning autism

Gleichgerrcht, Ezequiel; Torralva, Teresa; Rattazzi, Alexia; Marenco, Victoria; Roca, María; Manes, Facundo

doi:10.1093/scan/nss067

Cited by 75 publications

(90 citation statements)

References 78 publications

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“…talking out of turn) is substantially intact in children and adults with ASD [7][8][9][10] . These studies underscore that ASD population (both children and adults) can distinguish between intentional good and bad actions and have preserved moral knowledge 11,12 . Although autistics do not seem to be impaired in evaluating intentional third-party harm-doings, they exhibit enduring deficits on more complex intent-based moral judgment tasks that require integration of information about mental states of the agents with the information about outcomes of these acts.…”

mentioning

confidence: 68%

“…over appropriateness of action ("Is it appropriate for you to do it?") because: (i) it tends to be more emotionally arousing 102 , (ii) it tends to elicit more egocentric/self-focused (versus allocentric/other-focused) frame of reference because of potential self-relevant consequences 103 , and (iii) perceived appropriateness of utilitarian course of action on moral dilemmas does not differ in ASD 11 (as compared to healthy controls). Thus, the behavioural choice of action provides a more sensitive measure to tap into moral cognition in autism.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite their social impairments, both children and adults with autism still manage to acquire knowledge about normative canon consisting of appropriateness of various moral behaviours 10,11 . For example, they can properly distinguish between moral norms that relate to suffering in victims from social conventions that are context-bound societal rules [7][8][9][10] .…”

Section: Dissociable Empathy-utilitarianism Associations Between Autimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Drawing on this prior work, one would expect that ASD would also beget a similar utilitarian moral profile due to similar sociocognitive and socioaffective problems. Accordingly, one previous study has shown that ASD individuals are more willing to sacrifice someone for the greater good on personal moral dilemmas and report to perceive such situations to be less emotionally distressing as compared to controls, arguably due to reduced perspective-taking (cognitive empathy) that normally enables individuals to see things from the perspective of the person that needs to be sacrificed 11 . But this study used only one moral dilemma per condition and thus generalizability of these results remains to be assessed.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Divergent roles of autistic and alexithymic traits in utilitarian moral judgments in adults with autism

Patil¹,

Melsbach²,

Hennig-Fast³

et al. 2017

Preprint

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This study investigated hypothetical moral choices in adults with high-functioning autism and the role of empathy and alexithymia in such choices. We used a highly emotionally salient moral dilemma task to investigate autistics' hypothetical moral evaluations about personally carrying out harmful utilitarian behaviours aimed at maximizing welfare. Results showed that they exhibited a normal pattern of moral judgments despite the deficits in social cognition and emotional processing. Further analyses revealed that this was due to mutually conflicting biases associated with autistic and alexithymic traits after accounting for shared variance: (a) autistic traits were associated with reduced utilitarian bias due to elevated personal distress of demanding social situations, while (b) alexithymic traits were associated with increased utilitarian bias on account of reduced empathic concern for the victim. Additionally, autistics relied on their non-verbal reasoning skills to rigidly abide by harm-norms. Thus, utilitarian moral judgments in autism were spared due to opposite influences of autistic and alexithymic traits and compensatory intellectual strategies. These findings demonstrate the importance of empathy and alexithymia in autistic moral cognition and have methodological implications for studying moral judgments in several other clinical populations.

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mentioning

confidence: 68%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Dissociable Empathy-utilitarianism Associations Between Autimentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Divergent roles of autistic and alexithymic traits in utilitarian moral judgments in adults with autism

Patil¹,

Melsbach²,

Hennig-Fast³

et al. 2017

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…AE involves the set of feelings elicited in response to the affective state of others, which can carry feelings of warmth or concern for others (empathic concern) or a set of selforiented feelings induced by an agent (personal distress; Gleichgerrcht et al, 2013). The emphasis of AE is representatively focused on experiencing the emotional states of others consciously, which implies a self-other distinction (Eres et al, 2015;Mattan et al, 2016), as well as an understanding of the origin of emotional experience (Bernhardt & Singer, 2012).…”

Section: Evaluation Of Aementioning

confidence: 99%

Multidimensional assessment of empathic abilities in patients with insular glioma

Chen

Wang

et al. 2016

Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci

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Recent studies have provided evidence that there are two possible systems for empathy: affective empathy (AE) and cognitive empathy (CE). Neuroimaging paradigms have proven that the insular cortex is involved in empathy processing, particularly in AE. However, these observations do not provide causal evidence for the role of the insula in empathy. Although impairments in empathy have been described following insular damage in a few case studies, it is not clear whether insular cortex is involved in CE and whether these two systems are impaired independently or laterally in patients with insular gliomas. In this study, we assessed 17 patients with an insular glioma, 17 patients with a noninsular glioma, and 30 healthy controls using a method that combined a self-report empathy questionnaire with the emotion recognition task, assessment of empathy for others' pain, and the emotional perspective-taking paradigm. We found that patients with an insular glioma had lower scores for empathic concern and perspective taking than did either healthy controls or lesion controls. The patients' abilities to recognize facial emotions, perceive others' pain, and understand the emotional perspectives of others were also significantly impaired. Furthermore, we did not observe a laterality effect on either AE or CE among those with insular lesions. These findings revealed that both AE and CE are impaired in patients with an insular glioma and that the insular cortex may be a central neuroanatomical structure in both the AE and CE systems.

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Reexamining empathy in autism: Empathic disequilibrium as a novel predictor of autism diagnosis and autistic traits

et al. 2022

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A large body of research showed that autistic people have intact emotional (affective) empathy alongside reduced cognitive empathy. However, there are mixed findings and these call for a more subtle understanding of empathy in autism. Empathic disequilibrium refers to the imbalance between emotional and cognitive empathy and is associated with a higher number of autistic traits in the typical population. Here we examined whether empathic disequilibrium predicts both the number of autistic traits and autism diagnosis. In a large sample of autistic (N = 1905) and typical individuals (N = 3009), we examined empathic disequilibrium and empathy as predictors of autistic traits and autism diagnosis, using a polynomial regression with response surface analysis. Empathy and autistic traits were measured using validated self-report questionnaires. Both empathic disequilibrium and empathy predicted linearly and non-linearly autism diagnosis and autistic traits. Specifically, a tendency towards higher emotional than cognitive empathy (empathic disequilibrium towards emotional empathy) predicted both autism diagnosis and the social domain of autistic traits, while higher cognitive than emotional empathy was associated with the non-social domain of autism. Empathic disequilibrium was also more prominent in autistic females. This study provides evidence that beyond empathy as was measured thus far, empathic disequilibrium offers a novel analytical approach for examining the role of empathy. Empathic disequilibrium allows for a more nuanced understanding of the links between empathy and autism.K E Y W O R D S cognitive, empathy, autism, emotional empathy, empathy, response surface analysis BACKGROUNDAutism is a common neurodevelopmental condition and is characterized by marked social difficulties, especially in communication (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The difficulty in communicating may partially explain why many autistic individuals are vulnerable to exclusion, show high rates of mental health difficulties

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Selective impairment of cognitive empathy for moral judgment in adults with high functioning autism

Cited by 75 publications

References 78 publications

Divergent roles of autistic and alexithymic traits in utilitarian moral judgments in adults with autism

Divergent roles of autistic and alexithymic traits in utilitarian moral judgments in adults with autism

Multidimensional assessment of empathic abilities in patients with insular glioma

Reexamining empathy in autism: Empathic disequilibrium as a novel predictor of autism diagnosis and autistic traits

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