Two facets of affective empathy: concern and distress have opposite relationships to emotion recognition

Abstract

Theories on empathy have argued that feeling empathy for others is related to accurate recognition of their emotions. Previous research that tested this assumption, however, has reported inconsistent findings. We suggest that this inconsistency may be due to a lack of consideration of the fact that empathy has two facets: empathic concern, namely the compassion for unfortunate others, and personal distress, the experience of discomfort in response to others' distress. We test the hypothesis that empathic concern is positively related to emotion recognition, whereas personal distress is negatively related to emotion recognition. Individual tendencies to respond with concern or distress were measured with the standard IRI (Interpersonal Reactivity Index) self-report questionnaire. Emotion recognition performance was assessed with three standard tests of nonverbal emotion recognition. Across two studies (total N = 431) anddifferent emotion recognition tests, we found that these two facets of affective empathy have opposite relations to recognition of facial expressions of emotions: empathic concern was positively related, while personal distress was negatively related, to accurate emotion recognition. These findings fit with existing motivational models of empathy, suggesting that empathic concern and personal distress have opposing impacts on the likelihood that empathy makes one a better emotion observer.

What’s in a Meow? A Study on Human Classification and Interpretation of Domestic Cat Vocalizations

“…Empathy was higher also in cat owners and persons who had grown up with cats, and a significant correlation was found between the total number of correct context identifications and empathy toward cats, but not empathy toward animals in general. Greater empathy toward cats, and not just toward animals in general, could motivate the choice of a cat as a companion animal; moreover, “being empathetic” toward cats may, for example, motivate owners to shift their attention toward them more, which can thereby increase accuracy in emotion recognition as happens in humans [ 60 , 61 ]. In general, feeling empathy together with familiarity can lead perceivers to focus on expressive cues that communicate information about the feelings of others.…”

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Refining the link between psychopathy, antisocial behavior, and empathy: a meta-analytical approach across different conceptual frameworks

“…Conversely, affective empathy will be defined as the ability to be sensitive to and vicariously experience the emotional states felt by other people. These vicarious emotional responses can encompass both empathic concern (e.g., other-oriented feelings of sympathy) and personal distress (e.g., self-oriented feelings of discomfort; Grynberg & Konrath, 2020;Israelashvili et al, 2020).…”

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“…In other words, when patients observed others' facing adversity, they felt more personal distress leading to limited cognitive fluency. The findings of Israelashvili et al 44 showed that healthy participants who scored high on selfreport empathic concern also increased their accuracy of recognizing nonverbal facial emotions, whereas those who scored high on personal distress generally had poor performances. It may suggest that the two facets of empathic concern and personal distress have opposite influences in affective empathy.…”