Stanford University.
Psychol Bull. 2014 Nov;140(6):1608-47. doi: 10.1037/a0037679.
Empathy features a tension between automaticity and context dependency. On the one hand, people often take on each other's internal states reflexively and outside of awareness. On the other hand, empathy shifts with characteristics of empathizers and situations. These 2 characteristics of empathy can be reconciled by acknowledging the key role of motivation in driving people to avoid or approach engagement with others' emotions. In particular, at least 3 phenomena-suffering, material costs, and interference with competition-motivate people to avoid empathy, and at least 3 phenomena-positive affect, affiliation, and social desirability-motivate them to approach empathy. Would-be empathizers carry out these motives through regulatory strategies including situation selection, attentional modulation, and appraisal, which alter the course of empathic episodes. Interdisciplinary evidence highlights the motivated nature of empathy, and a motivated model holds wide-ranging implications for basic theory, models of psychiatric illness, and intervention efforts to maximize empathy.
同理心具有自动性和情境依存性之间的紧张关系。一方面，人们经常在不知不觉中对他人的内在状态产生共鸣。另一方面，同理心会随着同理心者和情境的特点而变化。同理心的这两个特点可以通过承认动机在驱动人们避免或接近他人情绪方面的关键作用来协调。具体来说，至少有 3 种现象——痛苦、物质成本和对竞争的干扰——促使人们避免同理心，而至少有 3 种现象——积极的情绪、亲和性和社会期望性——促使他们接近同理心。潜在的同理心者通过情境选择、注意力调节和评价等调节策略来执行这些动机，这些策略改变了同理心的过程。跨学科证据突出了同理心的动机性质，一个有动机的模型对基本理论、精神病学模型和最大限度地提高同理心的干预努力具有广泛的意义。
