School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Australia.
Behav Res Ther. 2011 Dec;49(12):852-7. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2011.09.008. Epub 2011 Oct 12.
Empathy is an important pro-social behaviour critical to a positive client-therapist relationship. Therapist anxiety has been linked to reduced ability to empathise and lower client satisfaction with therapy. However, the nature of the relationship between anxiety and empathy is currently unclear. The current study investigated the effect of experimentally-induced anxiety on empathic responses elicited during three different perspective-taking tasks. Perspective-taking was manipulated within-subjects with all participants (N=52) completing imagine-self, imagine-other and objective conditions. A threat of shock manipulation was used to vary anxiety between-subjects. Participants in the threat of shock condition reported higher levels of anxiety during the experiment and lower levels of empathy-related distress for the targets than participants in the control condition. Perspective-taking was associated with higher levels of empathy-related distress and concern compared to the objective condition. The present results suggest that perspective-taking can to a large extent mitigate the influence of heightened anxiety on an individual's ability to empathise.
同理心是一种重要的亲社会行为，对积极的医患关系至关重要。治疗师的焦虑与同理心能力下降和患者对治疗的满意度降低有关。然而，焦虑与同理心之间的关系性质目前尚不清楚。本研究调查了实验诱导的焦虑对三种不同换位思考任务中诱发的同理心反应的影响。通过想象自我、想象他人和客观条件这三种不同的条件在被试内进行换位思考的操作。使用电击威胁的操作在被试间改变焦虑水平。与对照组相比，电击威胁组的参与者在实验过程中报告的焦虑水平更高，对目标的同理心相关痛苦程度更低。与客观条件相比，换位思考与更高水平的同理心相关痛苦和关注相关。目前的结果表明，换位思考在很大程度上可以减轻焦虑对个体同理心能力的影响。
