Jospe Karine, Genzer Shir, Klein Selle Nathalie, Ong Desmond, Zaki Jamil, Perry Anat
Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Department of Information Systems and Analytics, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Cortex. 2020 Nov;132:296-308. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.09.001. Epub 2020 Sep 9.
There is an ongoing debate concerning the contribution of different aspects of empathy to achieving an accurate understanding of others. In this study, we aimed to better comprehend the roles of experience sharing and mentalizing using a modified empathic-accuracy task. We analyzed the unique contribution of each of these mechanisms with an explicit cognitive report as well as an affective physiological synchrony measurement. First, we recorded the emotional autobiographical stories told by participants ("targets", N = 28). Then, the targets watched their own videos as their heart rate (HR) was measured, and they reported on both a continuous and a discrete emotion scale what they felt while relaying the story. Next, we collected HR data from new participants ("observers", N = 72) as they similarly rated the targets' valence and discrete emotional states. In order to test the contribution of sensorimotor cues and contextual cues to empathic accuracy, observers viewed some videos with audio, others without audio, and listened to a third set of only the audio. We hypothesized that empathic accuracy-a cognitive measure that is a proxy for mentalizing and is operationalized by the correlation between a target's reported emotions and an observer's inference of those emotions-would be greater when linguistic information is present. We also hypothesized that physiological synchrony, a proxy for experience sharing, would be greater in the video-only condition, which was limited to sensorimotor cues to infer the other's emotional state. Indeed, we found that empathic accuracy was greater when auditory information was present, and that HR synchrony was more prevalent when visual cues were presented alone. Having both information streams together did not enhance accuracy, yet it was the only condition in which both behavioral empathic-accuracy measures correlated with HR synchrony. This study provides evidence that separate experience sharing and mentalizing pathways are active in the same task.
关于共情的不同方面对准确理解他人的贡献，目前存在着持续的争论。在本研究中，我们旨在使用经过修改的共情准确性任务，更好地理解经验分享和心理化的作用。我们通过明确的认知报告以及情感生理同步测量，分析了每种机制的独特贡献。首先，我们记录了参与者（“目标对象”，N = 28）讲述的情感自传故事。然后，目标对象在测量心率（HR）的同时观看自己讲述故事的视频，并在连续和离散情感量表上报告他们在讲述故事时的感受。接下来，我们从新的参与者（“观察者”，N = 72）那里收集心率数据，这些观察者同样对目标对象的效价和离散情绪状态进行评分。为了测试感觉运动线索和情境线索对共情准确性的贡献，观察者观看了一些有音频的视频、一些没有音频的视频，并听了第三组仅包含音频的内容。我们假设，当存在语言信息时，共情准确性（一种认知测量指标，可作为心理化的代理指标，并通过目标对象报告的情绪与观察者对这些情绪的推断之间的相关性来操作化）会更高。我们还假设，作为经验分享代理指标的生理同步性，在仅视频条件下会更高，该条件仅限于通过感觉运动线索来推断他人的情绪状态。事实上，我们发现当存在听觉信息时，共情准确性更高，而当仅呈现视觉线索时，心率同步性更为普遍。同时拥有两种信息流并没有提高准确性，但这是行为共情准确性测量指标与心率同步性都相关的唯一条件。这项研究提供了证据，表明在同一任务中，经验分享和心理化的途径是分别活跃的。
