Motivating empathy: Three methodological recommendations for mapping empathy

Empathy for the Sake of Empathy :

Empathy.

After defining empathy, discussing its measurement, and offering an example of empathy in practice, we present the results of an updated meta-analysis of the relation between empathy and psychotherapy outcome. Results indicated that empathy is a moderately strong predictor of therapy outcome: mean weighted r = .31 (p < .001; 95% confidence interval: .28-.34), for 59 independent samples and 3599...

Defining Empathy and Its Components Empathy

In The Western Illusion of Human Nature, the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (2008) chronicles a common idea uniting philosophers including Thucydides, Thomas Hobbes, and John Adams. According to Sahlins, these thinkers believed that social contracts are needed to restrain humans from expressing their antisocial “natural state,” under which self-interest trumps all other concerns. This view of ...

Comic Strip Humour and Empathy as Methodological Instruments in Teaching

Laughter is an instinctive activity that facilitates social communication and can be used to enrich the education system. Taking into consideration that children are, by their nature, visually oriented, the humour and empathy of the comic strip make it an appropriate methodological instrument for the acquisition of new learning materials. The popular comic strip Alan Ford consolidates realist e...

Towards Artificial Empathy - How Can Artificial Empathy Follow the Developmental Pathway of Natural Empathy?

The design of artificial empathy is one of the most essential issues in social robotics. This is because empathic interactions with ordinary people are needed to introduce robots into our society. Several attempts have been made for specific situations. However, such attempts have provided several limitations; thus, diminishing authenticity. The present article proposes “affective developmental...