Abstract :
[en] BEING EMPATHIC: BEHAVIORAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF RECOGNIZING AND SHARING OTHER'S
EMOTIONS
M. Rossignol1,2
, K. El Bouragui1,2,3, C. Besche-Richard2
1 Department of Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology (CPN), Faculty of Psychology and Education,
University of Mons (UMONS), Mons, Belgium
2
Interdisciplinary Research Center in Psychophysiology and Cognitive Electrophysiology (CiPsE), Mons,
Belgium
3 Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Laboratoire C2S, Reims, France
Introduction: Empathy is a multicomponent concept covering cognitive empathy, the aptitude to intellectually
understand others' emotional states, and affective empathy, the ability to share the emotional experiences of
others, possibly in our own body. This study aimed to clarify the relations between self-reported, behavioral
and physiological dimensions of empathy.
Methods: 46 women saw pictures of people in situations evoking happiness, anger or sadness and
electrodermal activity (EDA) was recorded as an index of sympathetic activity. Then, participants were asked
to use nine-point scales to (a) infer the emotional state of the protagonists (cognitive empathy - CE) ; (b)
estimate their own emotion in the same situation (simulation) ; (c) rate their involvement in what the
protagonist was feeling (empathic concern - EC) and (d) their current emotional experience (emotional arousal
- EA), They completed the Basic Empathy Scale to measure self-reported cognitive (BESC) and affective
empathy (BESA).
Results: Participants showed good cognitive empathy skills, but emotion intensities were lower in simulation
(p<.001). A high correlation was observed between EC and EA (r=.522, p<.001), which were higher for negative
as compared to positive pictures (both p-values <.001). Moreover, a main effect of emotion on EDA (p<.001)
showed more peaks during happy scenes, the number of peaks being globally correlated to BESA (p=.04).
Finally, EDA and EC predicted EA for anger exclusively (p<.001).
Conclusions: Our results confirm the clear dissociation between cognitive empathy and affective empathy that
relies on empathic concern and affects emotional arousal and even sympathetic body responses.
