Lecture 4 - Empathy PDF

Lecture 4 - Empathy The word empathy is little more than 100 years old Coined by Titchener (1909) from the German word Einfühlung (Lipps, 1903) Einfühlung (literally ‘feeling into’) refers to “putting oneself in someone else’s situation” Empathy Matters Because It evolved primarily...

Lecture 4 - Empathy The word empathy is little more than 100 years old Coined by Titchener (1909) from the German word Einfühlung (Lipps, 1903) Einfühlung (literally ‘feeling into’) refers to “putting oneself in someone else’s situation” Empathy Matters Because It evolved primarily to support a range of prosocial behaviours, from parental care to helping It allows to connect with others by taking their perspective, sharing their emotions, and feeling compassion for them It motivates prosocial and caregiving behaviours, inhibits aggression, and facilitates cooperation between members of a similar social group Empathy is Hard to Define There are many definitions of empathy, almost as many as there are researchers in this field There are probably nearly as many definitions of empathy as people working on the topic Some authors have proposed to drop the term empathy all together Empathy is…? A psychological construct which accounts for a super-ordinate category of behaviours A complex form of psychological inference in which observation, memory, knowledge, and reasoning are combined to yield insights into the thoughts and feelings of others Breaking Empathy into its components Empathy includes: affective sharing between the self and the other, based on perception-action coupling that lead to shared representations self-other awareness. Even when there is some temporary identification, there is no confusion between self and other mental flexibility to adopt the subjective perspective of the other Includes emotion regulation, e.g. in mPFC  There is empathy if: one is in an affective state this state is isomorphic to another person’s affective state this state is elicited by the observation or imagination of another person’s affective state one knows that the other person is the source of one’s own affective state (self-other distinction) These things are NOT empathy (according to de Vignemont and Singer): Cognitive perspective-taking does not meet the first condition. One represents the mental states of others, including affective states, without being emotionally involved E.g., based on my knowledge of you, I infer from your behavior that you are anxious but I do not feel anxious emotional contagion involves affect sharing but does not meet the condition of self–other distinction the baby starts crying because other babies cry, but the baby is not aware of the source of their affective state sympathy refers to an affective state related to the other, but does not meet the condition of isomorphism I feel sorry for you because you feel jealous, depressed or angry but I am not jealous or depressed myself Many Definitions of Empathy Empathy is feeling what others feel, and thus empathy overlaps with the concept of emotional cognition For others ‘empathy’ is referring to a more complex cognitive capacity such as intentionally adopting the subjective perspective of another individual in order to understand what she feels and thinks, a definition largely overlapping with ‘theory of mind’, ‘social cognition’ and ‘perspective taking’. In definitions of empathy, cognitive aspects are sometimes included and sometimes excluded - in which case they are called theory of mind, perspective taking, or mentalising And it gets messier… In the neuroscience literature, empathy and ToM are used as umbrella terms for studying a  variety of different processes Both empathy and ToM are thought to comprise affective and cognitive subforms Affective vs cognitive empathy sharing of others’ feelings vs reasoning about others’ affective states Cognitive vs affective ToM Inferences about others’ beliefs and intentions vs desires and emotions Most scholars probably agree that empathy includes, at a minimum, an affective response that reflects somebody else’s emotions How to measure empathy No single agreed-upon measure Different definitions of empathy depends on field depends on method depends on population studied Mainly Questionnaires  Interpersonal reactivity index (IRI; subscales personal distress, perspective taking, empathic concern) Empathy Quotient Behaviour and/ or physiology in different tasks The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) Subscale Item Empathic Concern I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me. Empathic Concern Sometimes I don't feel very sorry for other people when they are having problems. (REVERSE) Empathic Concern When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective towards them. Empathic Concern Other people's misfortunes do not usually disturb me a great deal. (REVERSE) Perspective Taking I try to look at everybody's side of a disagreement before I make a decision. Perspective Taking I sometimes find it difficult to see things from the "other guy's" point of view. (REVERSE) Perspective Taking I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from theirperspective. Tasks Assessing (Affective) Empathy Observe other people in pain Observe emotional facial expressions Sometimes while imagining the person’s feelings Watch videos of people reporting negative autobiographical events View a cartoon story. One person is in an emotion-triggering situation. Predict what the other person will do Role of Simulation in affective empathy  The concept of empathy is very much linked to simulation theories and the concepts of mirroring, perception-action coupling, emobdiment The general idea is that we understand other people by recreating the associated mental processes and brain activity E.g. when you see another person’s emotional facial expression you automatically activate (to some extent) in your own brain the motor and somatosensory areas that would be needed to express the same emotion yourself emotional areas also get activated as a consequence This can take 3 forms: Direct imitation Subtle imitation/ mimicry Convert ** Insula is important in feeling and seeing disgust ** The Chameloen Effect Spontaneous imitation of gestures during interaction People high on perspective taking imitate more Facial mimicry People with higher scores on the Questionnaire Measure of Emotional Empathy (QMEE) show more facial mimicry to happy and angry faces Tasks Assessing Cognitive Empathy (ToM) Text-based false-belief task Image-based false belief task Trait judgements: a text descrives somebody’s posisitve/ negative behaviour. Then read a trait- adjective and decide if consistent with the person’s behaviour Strategically predicting other people’s behaviour in economic games Triangle test: Observe videos with movement of triangles and determine if random or intentional Director’s task: imagine another person’s spatial perspective Reading the mind in the eye task Neural Basis of Empathy Depends how you define and measure it Cognitive empathy Medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) Temporal poles Emptional empathy Inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) Insula  Motor and somatosensory cortices Including supplementary motor area (SMA) Mirror Neuron system (MNS) TPJ lesion impairs representation of someone else’s belief (ToM) 3 patients with lesions of the left TPJ false belief tasks TPJ and self-other distinction The right supramarginal gyrus (sub-region of TPJ) was inhibited with TMS This increased the egocentricity bias in the emotional domain Schurz et al. (2020) Tried solving problem of unclear definitions of empathy and ToM, by looking for the “hidden” structure behind tasks and brain activity relating to social cognition summarized brainimaging research in healthy participants (188 studies, 4,207 subjects) keywords for lit search: neuroimaging, fMRI, PET, theory of mind, mentalizing, mindreading, empathy, empathetic, altruism, sympathy, emotional contagion, compassion sorted studies into 11 groups (6 for ToM and 5 for empathy) according to stimuli and task instructions Performed meta analyses for each of the 11 groups, looking for relations among brain activation networks for different task groups then looked for supraordinate groups with hierarchical clustering of these meta- analytic results Summary Meta-analysis of brainimaging studies based on 11 groups defined based on tasks and  instructions (rather than on authors’ labelling, e.g. empathy or ToM) confirms the distinction between sensory-affective versus more abstract and decoupled representations of others’ mental states empathy vs. ToM affective vs. cognitive empathy these overarching networks (and their corresponding mental operations) are flexibly combined depending on the task/situation Indeed, there is also an intermediate cluster: Some of the tasks typically assumed to measure either ToM or empathy engage both cognitive and affective processes Empathy of Pain The Pain Matrix A network of brain regions involved in the processing, modulation, and perception of pain Noxious stimuli consistently activate: the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC/aMCC) the anterior insula (AI) the secondary somatosensory cortex (SII) cerebellum and supplementary motor area (SMA) and, less robustly, the thalamus and the primary somatosensory cortex (SI) Part of this pain matrix is also activated during empathy for pain Can empathy be trained? ToM and the inhibition of imitation Santiesteban et al. (2012) tested 2 opposing theories about ToM: imitation/mimicry underlies ToM (and empathy) When we observe an action, the corresponding motor representations become activated (mirror neurons?) This allows to infer the mental states associated with performance of that action Who?: The mirror neuron people: Gallese, Rizzolatti, Iacoboni Self-other distinction, and the inhibition of imitation support ToM  Who?: Brass and colleagues They used the finger tapping task The Finger Tapping task the incongruent condition (requiring inhibition of the tendency to imitate) results in activation of medial PFC and right TPJ the ‘congruency effect’: difference between mean RT for incongruent vs congruent conditions Methods 3 groups of healthy participants: Training to imitate (congruent condition in finger tapping task) Training to inhibit (incongruent condition in finger tapping task) general inhibitory control (Stroop-like paradigm) 2 days: 1st day: training (40 min) 2nd day: Finger-tapping task (ability to inhibit the tendency to imitate) Was training successful? ToM task (Strange Stories test) perspective-taking task (requires self-other distinction) Results the imitation group took longer to inhibit an (incongruent) imitative response than both the inhibition (p =.001) and the control groups (p <.001) The inhibition group had better visual perspective taking (but no effects on Strange Stories test – a measure of ToM) ** Improved perspective taking through stimulation of rTPJ with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) ** Lacking Empathy Both psychopathy and autism have been associated with lack of empathy  Psychopathy Some studies suggest that people high on psychopathic traits have reduced emotional empathy e.g. recognition of and responses to expressions of fear and sadness the psychopath cannot simulate emotions he cannot experience and must rely exclusively on cognitive inputs to his theory-of-mind mechanism Autism Spectrum conditions has consistently been associated with a lack of cognitive empathy may include anomalies of emotional empathy Does Empathy Occur in other species? Some forms of empathy most likely are present in other species Affective empathy likely shared sharing emotion without self-awareness corresponds to the phenomenon of emotional contagion, which takes the form of “total identification without discrimination between one’s feelings and those of the other” (de Waal, 1996) Some forms of ToM likely shared (non-human primates) chimpanzees understand the goals and intentions of others, as well as the perception and knowledge of others But there is currently no evidence that chimpanzees understand false beliefs Empathy and prosocial behaiour in rats Rats help to free another rat They do so, because they share the stress of the caged rat Helping behaviour is rewarding (like chocolate) Tranquilizers stop helping behaviour after receiving midazolam, an anxiolytic less helping behaviour but still open chocolate container Free rat ”caught” the distress of the caged rat. By reducing distress in the free rat with a drug, his helping behaviour is also reduced. The origins of empathy “The ability to perceive and respond with care to the suffering and distress of others stems from evolutionarily ancient subcortical circuits (brainstem, amygdala, hypothalamus and basal ganglia) and neuro-hormonal mechanisms associated with affective sensitivity, attachment and parental care. Empathy-related behaviours have co-opted these primitive homeostatic processes involved in reward and pain systems “ Summary Empathy is a hard-to-define psychological construct A common distinction in social neuroscience is between Affective (emotional) empathy Emotion sharing An automatic emotional response that is isomorphic to the emotional state/expression of the other Shared with many animals, including rats and birds Cognitive empathy (ToM, mentalizing, perspective taking) more complex set of processes that rely on understanding the other person’s perspective and beliefs, without necessarily sharing them Some forms shared with other animals, especially non-human primates Affective and cognitive empathy require partially separate neural networks, and can be selectively impaired ASC and psychopathy seem to be associated, respectively, with diminished cognitive and affective empathy The origins of empathy may lie in subcortical circuits and neuro-hormonal mechanisms associated with affective sensitivity, attachment and parental care #PS495