Short-Term Effects of the Empathic Talk: The Role of Perceived Empathy, Interpersonal Dispositions, and Vagal Tone on Experiencing Depth

Abstract

The present study examines the immediate impact of empathic attitudes on the receiver, by comparing an empathic conversation (EC) with a neutral one (NC) on experiencing depth (EXP), perceived empathy and vagal tone. We also evaluate if empathy effects depend on personality dispositions relevant to interpersonal functioning. An experimental, counterbalanced, within-subject design was implemented wherein participants (n = 27, age M = 22.6, SD = 4.0, 52% females) talked about a personal, meaningful topic for 20 minutes under both the EC and NC conditions. At the group level, main results indicated that the EC was more effective than the NC in promoting increases in EXP over time (F(1, 25) = 21.04, p < .001, η p 2 = .457) and perceived empathy in women (F(1, 25) = 9.42, p = .005, η p 2 = .264). At the individual level, the NC particularly precluded EXP gains in people expressing a better interpersonal functioning (βs < -.46, ps < .05 for attachment security and empathy and β = .38, p < .05 for aggression), and who also inhibited their vagal tone throughout this very condition (β = .40, p = .024). We conclude that the empathic context has an immediate positive impact on healthy psychological variables, whereas a more impersonal setting would drive people away from this positive effect. Those results are discussed in the light of the role of interpersonal proximity (being empathic to another's experience and the lack of this attitude) in psychotherapy and healthy functioning.

Perceived teacher empathy and teenagers’ positive academic emotions: The mediating effect of interpersonal emotion regulation

“…When people use IER, the effect of empathy is obvious. Empathy levels directly impact the effect of IER (Dufey & Wilson, 2017). Levy & Shamay (2017) found that individuals with a high level of empathy recognized the negative emotions of partners more accurately in the process of exploring IER, and individuals with a high level of empathy were able to choose more appropriate emotion regulation strategies for their partners (Shamay & Levy, 2021).…”

Sintonizando con otro: la teoría polivagal y el proceso de psicoterapia

“…De este modo, un tono vagal más robusto puede servir como andamiaje para desplegar estrategias orientadas a la cercanía interpersonal ante la activación de estados emocionales negativos, favoreciendo la búsqueda de apoyo en otros y una menor evitación (17) , un mayor sentido general de conexión social (18) y un mayor discernimiento de la claves sociales emocionales y de confiabilidad, como la empatía. (19,20) Considerada en conjunto, la evidencia muestra una asociación positiva entre el tono vagal (y los indicadores de este tipo de actividad como la arritmia sinusal respiratoria) y las capacidades regulatorias de la propia emocionalidad, tanto en personas sanas como en poblaciones clínicas (21) . De esta forma, el uso de estrategias emocionales flexibles para regular la emocionalidad negativa favorece el acercamiento interpersonal confiable, amistoso y proafiliativo, lo cual puede ser considerado en el trabajo psicoterapéutico por la relevancia que tiene el trabajo emocional y la relación interpersonal cliente-terapeuta para el desarrollo de un proceso exitoso.…”

Development and validation of a 12-item version of the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory (B-L RI:mini) using item response theory

“…The B-L RI has consistently shown high internal consistency and temporal stability reliabilities. For the B-L RI: OS-64, the means of internal consistency coefficients across a number of studies have been found to be 0.93 for R, 0.82 for E, 0.88 for C, 0.74 for U, and 0.85 for the total scale (Chu & Tseng, 2013;Davis et al, 2015;Dolev & Zilcha-Mano, 2019;Dufey & Wilson, 2017;Elkin et al, 2014;Fulton, 2016;Gurman, 1977;Hara et al, 2017;McClintock et al, 2017;Suzuki et al, 2019). For the B-L RI: OS-40, the means of alpha coefficients were reported to be 0.85 for R, 0.89 for E, and 0.82 for C, 0.76 for U, and 0.92 for the total scale (Barrett-Lennard, 2002;Greason & Welfare, 2013).…”