I critically examine the existing data in emotion research to show that empathy is not necessary for moral judgment. I argue that other emotions, such as disgust, are responsible for moral judgment, and that humans are able to make moral judgments without empathy. Autistic individuals are of interest because they are said to lack empathy, yet display some form of morality. Thus, empathy cannot ...

BACKGROUND Aggression comprises a heterogeneous set of behavioral patterns that aim to harm and hurt others. Empathy represents a potential mechanism that inhibits aggressive conduct and enhances prosocial behavior. Nevertheless, research results on the relationship between empathy and aggression are mixed. Subtypes of aggressive behavior, such as reactive and proactive aggression might be diff...

BACKGROUND Empathy is paramount in the health care setting, optimizing communication and rapport with patients. Recent empirical evidence suggests that empathy is associated with improved clinical outcomes. Therefore, given the importance of empathy in the health care setting, gaining a better understanding of students' attitudes and self-reported empathy is important. The objective of this stu...

Going along the questions of how, when and to what extent does empathy arise in humans, we propose an approach to model empathy for EMMA – an Empathic MultiModal Agent – based on three processing steps: First, the Empathy Mechanism by which an empathic emotion is produced. Second, the Empathy Modulation by which the empathic emotion is modulated. Third, the Expression of Empathy by which EMMA’s...

The main aim of this study was to test hypothetical associations between personality dimensions and empathy scores in medical students. The Portuguese version of NEO-FFI was administered in order to characterize participants in terms of five personality traits: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Openness to Experience, and Conscientiousness. Self-reported empathy measures were obtained w...

Social support coping has been shown to mediate the relationship between gender and posttraumatic growth. This study examined whether empathy also serves as a significant mediator in this relationship, potentially as a precursor to social support coping. Participants (N = 156) were recruited on a college campus and at a retirement community. They completed questionnaires that assessed the varia...

Much research has shown that women are more empathic than men. Yet, women and men are equally forgiving. However, it is not clear whether empathy is more important to forgiveness for men or for women. The purpose of the present study was to examine gender differences in levels of empathy and forgiveness and the extent to which the association of empathy and forgiveness differed by gender. Parti...

Empathy is a multidimensional construct consisting of cognitive (inferring mental states) and emotional (empathic concern) components. Despite a paucity of research, individuals on the autism spectrum are generally believed to lack empathy. In the current study we used a new, photo-based measure, the Multifaceted Empathy Test (MET), to assess empathy multidimensionally in a group of 17 individu...