Department of Psychology, University of Rochester.
Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.
Psychol Sci. 2020 Jun;31(6):607-622. doi: 10.1177/0956797620904975. Epub 2020 May 18.
When is accurately reading other people's emotions costly and when is it beneficial? We aimed to identify whether the association between empathic accuracy and both relationship quality and motivation to change varies depending on the type of emotion being detected: appeasement (e.g., embarrassment) or dominance (e.g., anger). Romantic partners (couples: = 111; individuals: = 222) discussed a characteristic they wanted their partner to change and rated their own emotions and perceptions of their partner's emotions. Relationship quality was self-reported and objectively coded. Using multilevel response-surface analysis, we tested preregistered hypotheses about whether empathic accuracy for appeasement and dominance emotions was differentially associated with relationship quality and motivation to change. For appeasement emotions, empathic accuracy predicted higher relationship quality. For dominance emotions, higher intensity of felt emotions-not empathic accuracy-predicted lower relationship quality. Empathic accuracy did not predict the motivation to change. These results suggest that the benefits of empathic accuracy can depend on the emotion type.
准确解读他人的情绪在什么时候是有代价的，又在什么时候是有益的？我们旨在确定同理心准确性与关系质量和改变动机之间的关联是否因所检测的情绪类型而异：安抚（例如尴尬）或支配（例如愤怒）。浪漫伴侣（夫妻：= 111；个体：= 222）讨论了他们希望伴侣改变的一个特征，并对自己的情绪和对伴侣情绪的感知进行了评分。关系质量是自我报告和客观编码的。我们使用多层次响应曲面分析，测试了同理心准确性对安抚和支配情绪与关系质量和改变动机的关联是否存在差异的假设。对于安抚情绪，同理心准确性预测关系质量更高。对于支配情绪，更高的情绪强度（而不是同理心准确性）预测关系质量更低。同理心准确性不预测改变的动机。这些结果表明，同理心准确性的好处可能取决于情绪类型。
