The Social Neuroscience of Empathy and its Relationship to Moral Behavior

Decety, Jean; Cowell, Jason M.

doi:10.1002/9781118650868.ch7

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…These findings reflect an implicit sensitivity to intentionality in both children with ASD and TD children when viewing third‐party moral transgression. The sensitivity to the interpersonal harm emerges early in development and is considered a fundamental element of moral reasoning (Decety & Cowell, 2018a, 2018b). The sensitivity to third‐party harm revealed by the eye tracking data confirms findings from EEG and fMRI studies showing a preserved affective response to perceiving others in pain (Fan, Chen, Chen, Decety, & Cheng, ; Hadjikhani et al., ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The unconscious processes involved in the response to moral transgressions, although important, have rarely been studied in children with ASD, as most research effort has examined explicit processing. Of these unconscious processes, sensitivity to interpersonal harm constitutes one critical foundation of the moral sense (Decety & Cowell, 2018a, 2018b; Decety & Howard, ). Different from the explicit sensitivity that has been examined using traditional moral judgments tasks, implicit moral sensitivity is usually assessed with implicit measures, such as attention allocation, electrophysiological recordings (EEG), and functional MRI (fMRI).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Third‐Party Sociomoral Evaluations in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Decety

et al. 2019

Child Development

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We examined explicit and implicit processes in response to third-party moral transgressions in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Twenty 4-to 7-year-old children with ASD and 19 typically developing controls evaluated dynamic visual stimuli depicting intentional or accidental harm to persons or damage to objects. Moral evaluations, eye fixations, and pupil dilations toward the stimuli were collected. Results indicate a preserved capacity to understand the mental states of perpetrators and an implicit moral sensitivity to the third-party harms in children with ASD. Nonetheless, children with ASD showed specific sensitivity and emotional arousal when viewing damage to objects. These findings contribute to the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of moral reasoning in ASD and its possible association with the autistic symptoms.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Third‐Party Sociomoral Evaluations in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Decety

et al. 2019

Child Development

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“…Empathy is defined as the capability to understand and share the affective states of others, and plays a fundamental role in social interactions. It facilitates prosocial behaviors and inhibits antisocial or aggressive actions ( Decety and Svetlova, 2012 ; Decety and Cowell, 2018 ). Impaired empathy can result in significant social disfunctions, which characterizes various forms of psychopathology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychopathic callousness and perspective taking in pain processing: an ERP study

Branchadell,

Poy,

Ribes-Guardiola

et al. 2024

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

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Psychopathy is a multifaceted personality disorder characterized by distinct affective/interpersonal traits, including callousness-unemotionality/meanness, which are often considered the hallmarks of empathic deficits. It has been posited that the processing of others’ pain could play an important role in empathy capabilities. This study aimed to investigate the influence of perspective taking on electrocortical responses during pain processing in relation to psychopathic callousness. The Late Positive Potential (LPP) —a well-established electrophysiological indicator of sustained attention to motivationally significant stimuli— was measured while 100 female undergraduates viewed images depicting bodily injuries while adopting an imagine-self or an imagine-other perspective. Callousness factor scores —computed as regression-based component scores from EFA on three relevant self-report measures of this dimension— predicted reduced LPP amplitudes to pain pictures under the imagine-other (but not imagine-self) perspective, even after controlling for other LPP conditions. This result suggests that high-callous individuals exhibit diminished brain responsiveness to others’ distress, potentially contributing to the empathic deficits observed in psychopathy. This finding highlights the usefulness of the LPP and perspective taking in studies on pain processing to refine our understanding of the low empathy characteristics of psychopathy in biobehavioral terms.

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“…For instance, some authors consider empathy essential for responding ethically to others ( Caplan and Goldie, 2011 ), as well as for developing morality, prosocial action, and motivation ( Hoffman, 2001 ; Decety and Cowell, 2014 ). On the other hand, other authors state that empathy is related to cruelty and immoral behavior ( Decety and Cowell, 2018 ). Furthermore, empathy has even been considered a prerequisite for the scientific study of consciousness ( Thompson, 2001 ) and the privileged method in social sciences ( Dilthey, 1961 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“I am feeling tension in my whole body”: An experimental phenomenological study of empathy for pain

et al. 2023

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IntroductionTraditionally, empathy has been studied from two main perspectives: the theory-theory approach and the simulation theory approach. These theories claim that social emotions are fundamentally constituted by mind states in the brain. In contrast, classical phenomenology and recent research based on the enactive theories consider empathy as the basic process of contacting others’ emotional experiences through direct bodily perception and sensation.ObjectiveThis study aims to enrich the knowledge of the empathic experience of pain using an experimental phenomenological method.Materials and methodsImplementing an experimental paradigm used in affective neuroscience, we exposed 28 healthy adults to a video of sportspersons suffering physical accidents while practicing extreme sports. Immediately after watching the video, each participant underwent a phenomenological interview to gather data on embodied, multi-layered dimensions (bodily sensations, emotions, and motivations) and temporal aspects of empathic experience. We also performed quantitative analyses of the phenomenological categories.ResultsExperiential access to the other person’s painful experience involves four main themes. Bodily resonance: participants felt a multiplicity of bodily, affective, and kinesthetic sensations in coordination with the sportsperson’s bodily actions. Attentional focus: some participants centered their attention more on their own personal discomfort and sensations of rejection, while others on the pain and suffering experienced by the sportspersons. Kinesthetic motivation: some participants experienced the feeling in their bodies to avoid or escape from watching the video, while others experienced the need to help the sportspersons avoid suffering any injury while practicing extreme sports. The temporality of experience: participants witnessed temporal fluctuations in their experiences, bringing intensity changes in their bodily resonance, attentional focus, and kinesthetic motivation. Finally, two experiential structures were found: one structure is self-centered empathic experience, characterized by bodily resonance, attentional focus centered on the participant’s own experience of seeing the sportsperson suffering, and self-protective kinesthetic motivation; the other structure is other-centered empathic experience, characterized by bodily resonance, attentional focus centered on the sportsperson, and prosocial kinesthetic motivation to help them.DiscussionWe show how phenomenological data may contribute to comprehending empathy for pain in social neuroscience. In addition, we address the phenomenological aspect of the enactive approach to the three dimensions of an embodiment of human consciousness, especially the intersubjective dimension. Also, based on our results, we suggest an extension of the enactive theory of non-interactive social experience.

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The Social Neuroscience of Empathy and its Relationship to Moral Behavior

Cited by 6 publications

References 97 publications

Third‐Party Sociomoral Evaluations in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Third‐Party Sociomoral Evaluations in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Psychopathic callousness and perspective taking in pain processing: an ERP study

“I am feeling tension in my whole body”: An experimental phenomenological study of empathy for pain

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