Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Tübingen, Germany.
Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Tübingen, Germany; LEAD Graduate School and Research Network, University of Tübingen, Germany.
Psychiatry Res. 2018 Nov;269:625-632. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2018.08.035. Epub 2018 Aug 17.
Deficiencies in empathic functioning are considered a core characteristic of violent behavior. Enhancing empathy in aggressive populations may thus represent a promising intervention target. Hence, the aims of the present work were two-fold: First, we wanted to thoroughly assess empathic competencies and second, we aimed to investigate effects of an empathy induction on experienced empathy levels and prosocial behavior in a sample of violent offenders relative to matched controls. Empathy was assessed using both self-report as well as objective measures. For the empathy induction, participants were presented with empathy inducing and control videos. To assess the effects of the empathy induction on behavior, participants played a dictator game indicative of prosocial behavior after every video. Violent offenders showed no systematic impairment in empathy measures. Despite lower shares in the dictator game across conditions, the empathy induction led to a substantial increase in prosocial behavior in both groups. Importantly, high psychopathy scores were distinctively associated with lower self-reported empathy levels, an attenuated affective responsiveness to the empathy induction, and less altruistic behavior. Treatment programs aiming to improve empathy should take individual characteristics into account and may be applied to distinctive subgroups rather than to violent offenders per se.
同理心功能的缺陷被认为是暴力行为的核心特征。因此，增强攻击性人群的同理心可能是一个有前途的干预目标。因此，本研究的目的有两个：首先，我们想彻底评估同理心能力；其次，我们旨在调查在暴力罪犯样本中，相对于匹配对照组，同理心诱导对体验到的同理心水平和亲社会行为的影响。同理心使用自我报告和客观测量来评估。对于同理心诱导，参与者观看了同理心诱导和对照视频。为了评估同理心诱导对行为的影响，参与者在观看每个视频后玩一个独裁者游戏，以表明亲社会行为。暴力罪犯在同理心测量中没有表现出系统的缺陷。尽管在不同条件下，独裁者游戏的参与者比例较低，但同理心诱导在两组中都导致了亲社会行为的显著增加。重要的是，高精神病评分与自我报告的同理心水平较低、对同理心诱导的情感反应减弱以及利他行为较少有关。旨在提高同理心的治疗方案应考虑个体特征，并可能适用于不同的亚组，而不是暴力罪犯本身。
