1 / 12

Exploring Empathy: Theories, Models & Definitions

Delve into the historical perspectives, basic terms, and key distinctions of empathy to understand its affective, cognitive, and ideomotoric aspects. This comprehensive outline explores empathy vs. sympathy, congruent vs. contrast empathy, and situation-mediated vs. expression-mediated empathy.

elyons
Download Presentation

Exploring Empathy: Theories, Models & Definitions

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Theories and Models of Empathy Carsten Zoll

  2. Outline • Basic terms • A short history of empathy • A broad definition • Distinctions

  3. Basic terms Observer Target

  4. Historical View I • Titchener (1909): Empathy, derived from the Greek “empatheia” • Lipps (1903): “Einfühlung” • Mechanism: inner imitation (motor mimicry) emotional effects, “shared affects”

  5. Historical View II • Kohler (1929): Understanding other‘s feelings • viewing and interpreting  cognitive effects • Piaget (1932): decentering • Mead (1934): role-taking

  6. A broad definition Empathy is “any process where the attended perception of the object’s state generates a state in the subject that is more applicable to the object’s state or situation than to the subject’s own prior state or situation” (Preston, 2001) Subject = Observer Object = Target

  7. Distinctions Empathy vs. Sympathy Congruent vs. Contrast Affective vs. Cognitive vs. Ideomotoric Situation-mediated vs. Expression-mediated

  8. Empathy vs. Sympathy • Sympathy used for shared affects between an observer and a target until 1950s • Clear distinction today • Sympathy = compassion • Empathy  see Preston definition resp. the distinctions to follow

  9. Congruent vs. Contrast Empathy • Congruent Empathy • The inner state of the observer is similar to the inner state of the target • Contrast Empathy • The inner state of the observer is different to the target‘s inner state (e.g. gloat) • Many contemporay researchers restrict their definitions to Congruent Empathy

  10. Affective vs. Cognitive vs. Ideomotoric Empathy • Affective Empathy • Observer feels something due to the perception of the Target • Cognitive Empathy • Observer knows about the inner state of the target • Ideomotoric Empathy • Observer’s motoric preactivation due to the perception of movements of the target

  11. Situation-mediated vs. Expression-mediated Empathy • Situation mediated Empathy • Observer concludes inner state of the Target from the situation the Target is dealing with • Expression mediated Empathy • Observer concludes inner state of Target from the emotional expression of the Target • Facial expression • Gesture, Posture • Paraverbal Cues (e.g. voice pitch) • Psychophysiological Cues (e.g. flush)

  12. Summary • Heterogeneous and broad construct • All changes of the Observer’s inner state that are due to the perception of the Target are empathic outcomes • Main distinction: Affective vs. Cognitive empathy

More Related