In social neuroscience, empathy is often approached as an individual ability, whereas researchers in anthropology focus on empathy as a dialectic process between agents. In this perspective paper, we argue that to further elucidate the mechanisms underlying the development of empathy, social neuroscience research should draw on insights and methods from anthropology. First, we discuss neuropsyc...

Sir, We thank Gillespie et al. (2014) for their letter. They summarize data that suggest that in autism, vicarious activations can be relatively normal under instructions explicitly encouraging vicarious processes, while being abnormal in conditions in which instructions do not. This points to an important opportunity to improve our understanding of empathy—both with regards to deficits in pati...

Empathy indicates an emotional rapport, or identification, with another person. It has been introduced as a central focus for ‘sensitivity trainings’ and feedback workshops in professional settings, and the relatively new Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) movement in schools. Empathy is promoted as a hallmark of social relationships that if featured in human interactions will presumably make ...

Functional imaging studies of healthy participants and previous lesion studies have provided evidence that empathy involves dissociable cognitive functions that rely on at least partially distinct neural networks that can be individually impaired by brain damage. These studies converge in support of the proposal that affective empathy--making inferences about how another person feels--engages a...

CONTEXT There is a need for studies specifically addressing the barriers to empathy training from the perspective of medical students. The objective of this study was to evaluate attitudes of 3rd and 4th year medical students regarding their training in clinical empathy at a public teaching hospital and medical school. METHODS A questionnaire assessing students' satisfaction with, and opinion...

Recent evidence suggests that there are two possible systems for empathy: a basic emotional contagion system and a more advanced cognitive perspective-taking system. However, it is not clear whether these two systems are part of a single interacting empathy system or whether they are independent. Additionally, the neuroanatomical bases of these systems are largely unknown. In this study, we tes...

The purpose of the study was to examine the association between affective empathy, cognitive empathy, and gender on cyberbullying among adolescents. Participants were 396 adolescents from Singapore with age ranging from 12 to 18 years. Adolescents responded to a survey with scales measuring both affective and cognitive empathy, and cyberbullying behavior. A three-step hierarchical multiple regr...

BACKGROUND Psychopathy is characterised by profound deficits in the human tendency to feel and care about what other people feel, often known as 'affective empathy'. On the other hand, the psychopath often has intact 'cognitive' empathy skills, that is, he is able to describe what and why other people feel, even if he does not share or care about those feelings. Despite a rapidly advancing neur...

PURPOSE Empathy is an important trait of a physician and a key element in the physician-patient relationship. This study evaluated the ability to express empathy in medical students. METHODS Medical student empathy was measured by the modified Pencil-and-Paper Empathy Rating Test of Winefield and Chur-Hansen. The subjects comprised 110 medical students. The data were analyzed by descriptive a...

Although knowing and feeling the emotions of other people might result in less bullying, we argue that not caring about these feelings will also be important. That is, what good is empathy, if one does not care about the feelings or values of others? We examined self-reports of callous-unemotional traits (CU: Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits), bullying, and empathy in 201 children (ages ...