Associations between Empathy and Self-Conscious Emotions during Social Interactions
Year: 2019
Type: preprint
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Empathy can alter the emotional state of an individual, yet little is known about how empathy impacts emotions in daily life. This study investigated how cognitive and affective empathy experienced during social interactions was associated with pride and shame. Participants (N = 150) between 19-89 years of age (M = 47.64, SD = 18.85) completed three 21-day measurement bursts of experience sampling every 4.5 months. Following each of 64,111 interactions, participants rated the intensity of two emotional states (proud, ashamed) and their experience of cognitive and affective empathy for their interaction partner. Results from multilevel models indicated that, at the within-person level, greater momentary cognitive empathy was associated with dampened shame and increased pride whereas greater momentary affective empathy was associated with increased shame and pride. At the between-person level, people who reported more cognitive empathy overall reported less shame and greater pride, and people who reported more affective empathy overall also reported greater shame but not any more or less pride. The emotional consequences differ based on the valence of the emotion experienced for cognitive empathy but not for affective empathy. Empathy is a dynamic process with different underlying processes for cognitive and affective empathy.
Language: English
Topic: Emotions and Moral Behavior
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4254445939