L7 Emotions II (Empathy and emotion expression and recognition)

What does emotional awareness entail?

The ability to identify your own and others' emotions.

What is emotional contagion?

Fast automatic responses to another person’s emotional expressions, like mimicry.

3 components of empathy

affective empathy, cognitive empathy and prosocial motivation

Define affective empathy

Feeling what another person feels

3 ways people feel empathy

through recognition, sensitivity, and appropriate responses.

2 examples of affective empathy

parallel responses (mirroring emotional state) and reactive responses (alter emotional state)

What is cognitive empathy?

Understanding that another person is feeling something different from yourself

Two processes used in cognitive empathy

theory of mind and perspective taking

according to lesion study, what brain area is associated with cognitive empathy

vmPFC

according to lesion study, what brain area is associated with affective empathy

inferior frontal gyrus (IFG)

What is prosocial motivation

the intention to respond compassionately to another person’s distress

What are the 5 components of the Empathy Components Questionnaire (ECQ) to measure empathy?

Cognitive ability, cognitive drive, affective ability, affective drive, and affective reactivity.

What is cognitive ability

the skill in perspective-taking and to adopt another’s point of view

What is cognitive drive

the motivated interest in perspective-taking and to adopt another’s point of view

What is affective ability

the skill in recognising, being sensitive to and sharing others’ emotional experiences

What is affective drive

the motivated interest in affective ability

What is affective reactivity

the skill in responding and reacting to another person’s emotional experiences

How do males and females differ in empathy according to ECQ data?

Females show higher scores in affective empathy components; males differ slightly in cognitive empathy.

What key developmental period is important for development of empathy

early adolescence

According to a longitudinal study, affective and cognitive empathy is higher in which gender

girls

Nature of affective empathy in girls across adolescence

remains stable

Nature of affective empathy in boys across adolescence

dips between 14-17yrs, association with cognitive development perhaps

Does cross-cultural research suggest emotional expressions as innate or learned?

Provides evidence for and against

2 methods to examine the cross-cultural nature of facial expressions

1) compared emotional expressions in athletes blind at birth, become blind and sighted, 2) using vocalisations

Expressed emotion is seen as innate for what two emotion expression

vocal emotions and facial expressions

How do vocalisations express emotion across cultures?

Negative emotions are recognised universally, while positive emotions vary culturally

What indicated that expression emotion is not innate

differences in the intensity of facial emotional expressions

What cultures did a study compare intensity of facial emotional expressions

east Asian vs European

Which brain structure is prominently involved in emotion recognition?

The amygdala, with connectivity to distributed networks.

What brain asymmetry for facial expression recognition is evidenced

laterality effects in facial recognition with left-hemisphere dominance

What ERP component is important for neural processing of faces

N170

How do males and females differ in hemispheres in processing facial expressions?

Males exhibit right-sided asymmetry (more lateralisation); females show bilateral or left-sided activity.

What is the developmental trajectory (speed) of emotion recognition (vocal vs facial) in children?

Vocal emotion processing develops more slowly than facial recognition.

Accuracy of emotion processing in developmental trajectories differ as a function of what factors

emotion type and stimulus modality (facial or vocal)

What is alexithymia?

A trait involving difficulty identifying and describing feelings, with an externally oriented cognitive style

Explain externally oriented cognitive style

tendency to focus on superficial information

How does alexithymia impact emotion recognition; 3 processes affected?

It diminishes recognition, empathy, and regulation of emotions

Which 3 brain circuits are affected in alexithymia?

Cognitive circuits (e.g., vmPFC), interoception circuits (e.g., anterior insula), and affective valence circuits (e.g., amygdala).

Alexithymic traits have a significant impact on a person’s _? functioning

social cognitive functioning