Group members often reason egocentrically, believing that they deserve more than their fair share of group resources. Leading people to consider other members' thoughts and perspectives can reduce these egocentric (self-centered) judgments such that people claim that it is fair for them to take less; however, the consideration of others' thoughts and perspectives actually increases egoistic (se...

The ability to empathize with other people is a critical component of human social relationships. Empathic processing varies across the human population, however it is currently unclear how personality traits are associated with empathic processing. This study was designed to test the hypothesis that specific personality traits are associated with behavioral and biological indicators of improve...

INTRODUCTION Relationships between risk-taking behavior and depressive disorders in young people are considered as a complex psychopathological problem. Previous findings showed strong correlations between substance abuse, risk-taking behavior and depressive symptoms. Nevertheless, questions remain concerning potential common factors of depression and risk-taking behavior. Besides research focu...

Training to inhibit imitative tendencies has been shown reduce self-other interferences in both automatic imitation and perspective taking, suggesting that an enhancement of distinction is transferrable from the motor cognitive domain. This study examined whether socio-cognitive training specifically enhances distinction, or rather modulates self-salience, is, relative attentional priority info...

Theoretical considerations Empathy from a cognitivistic viewpoint According to current understanding empathy is an experience in which people participate in or share the emotional state of somebody else on the basis of this person's expression and/or their situation. The emphasis on the emotional dimension expressed in this definition is rather new. Under Piagetian influence, empathy was more o...