Intraspecific violence is now established as a biological phenomenon intrinsic to living nature. Ethologists maintain that culturally moulded programs of aggression which can be released by certain environmental triggers exist in the nervous system among higher animals. Evidence also suggests that there co-exists a biological capacity for morality and empathy. A child by the age of two is endow...

In three experiments, we examine parochial empathy (feeling more empathy for in-group than out-group members) across novel group boundaries, and test whether we can mitigate parochial empathy with brief narrative descriptions. In the absence of individuating information, participants consistently report more empathy for members of their own assigned group than a competitive out-group. However, ...

Previous studies found that humor and empathy are associated with interpersonal relationships. Particularly, Hampes (2001) reported that humor styles and empathy had a positive correlation in adults. The purpose of the study is to explore the link between empathy and humor use in teenagers and to investigate if gender differences exist as well. 115 adolescents between 11-12 years old participat...

This study examines: (a) the impact of traumatic brain injury (TBI) on emotional empathy, (b) the relationship between emotional empathy and neuropsychological ability, and (c) the influence of low emotional empathy on measures of affect. Eighty-nine patients completed the Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale (BEES), a number of neuropsychological tests, some of which were ecologically valid tests ...

This study investigated the effects of voluntarily empathizing with a musical performer (i.e., cognitive empathy) on music-induced emotions and their underlying physiological activity. N = 56 participants watched video-clips of two operatic compositions performed in concerts, with low or high empathy instructions. Heart rate and heart rate variability, skin conductance level (SCL), and respirat...

OBJECTIVE Deficits in empathy, an important part of social cognition, have been described in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Importantly, psychosocial stress enhances emotional empathy in healthy participants. However, it remains unknown whether stress affects empathy in BPD. METHOD We randomized 47 women with BPD and 47 healthy women to either the Trier Social Stress Tes...

This study used descriptive correlation to examine factors affecting empathy in nurses, specifically, how empathy relates to adult attachment, self-esteem, and communication self-efficacy. Data were collected from March 16until March 27, 2015. A survey was administered to 100 nurses working in two university hospitals located in D city and K province. All data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Stati...

Introduction This study seeks to explore whether the documented decline in medical student empathy can be prevented or slowed using simulated patient-role activities and small-group discussions about the patient experience of living with a chronic illness. Methods First-year students (M1, n = 118) at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine (UCFCOM) participated in a simulated pati...

Background: Empathy is an important element of physician-patient communication. Empathy is linked to a number of attributes such as patient treatment compliance and satisfaction, better history taking and physical examination and therefore achieving better clinical outcomes. Previous research indicates that self-reported empathy among medical students declines during the course of their medical...

Understanding how humans represent others' pain is critical for understanding pro-social behavior. 'Shared experience' theories propose common brain representations for somatic and vicarious pain, but other evidence suggests that specialized circuits are required to experience others' suffering. Combining functional neuroimaging with multivariate pattern analyses, we identified dissociable patt...