Empathy, oxytocin, and depression are three subjects that are widely researched. Empathy means experiencing or understanding the emotions of an individual who is being observed. Oxytocin has frequently been shown to have a connection to lactation and labor. Depression is a common sickness that results in malfunctioning, suffering, and a shorter life. The mutual relationship and connection of all three has received limited research. The aim of this essay is to explore how they all relate to one another, to see what neural areas of involvement they have in common, and finally to see if there is a potential to administer oxytocin in order to alter empathy and/or depression. The sources used are published literature on the topics, found in for example Google Scholar and Worldcat. What was found was that both emotional and cognitive empathy have a positive relationship with oxytocin. Emotional empathy has in most research a positive relationship with depression while cognitive empathy seems to have a negative relationship with depression.Depression has a negative correlation with oxytocin. The neural areas of common involvement were amygdala, hippocampus, and cingulate cortex. Future research should look at how empathy, oxytocin, and depression affect each other, and why this happens. It is also important to look at the possibilities of affecting a neural area involved in empathy, oxytocin, and/or depression in order to make an impact on any of these factors.

国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。

国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。

Limited research has been conducted on biracial people. Of the current research that examines mother’s cognitive empathy towards her child, there is little focus on how the differences in perceived racialization of the child (child is perceived as racially similar, dissimilar, or mixed in comparison to his or her mother) may influence mother’s cognitive empathy towards her child. The current study will question whether perceived phenotypic racialization of the child, race of the mother, gender of the child, and diversity of the neighborhood that the mother and child live in influence mothers’ cognitive empathy towards their children. The participants will be 480 mothers who are Asian (120), Black (120), Hispanic (120), and White (120), whose first-born child is biracial, male or female, and between the ages of 7 and 10. Participants will complete an adapted version of the Parent Development Interview (PDI), coded with a modified version of the Parent Affective and Cognitive Empathy Scale (PACES). The results will show that there are significant differences in how mothers empathize with their children due to a range of variables. The findings will add to the literature on biracial people and may help aid future studies on the implications that differing levels of cognitive empathy have on mother-child relationships and development.

Psychopathy is a severe personality disorder that results in antisocial, manipulative, and callous behavior. The main diagnostic instrument for assessing psychopathy is the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised. This thesis will introduce the psychopathy construct, including what is known as subclinical psychopathy. Subclinical psychopathy refers to individuals who exhibit many of the characteristics of psychopathy, except for some of the more severe antisocial behaviors. This constellation of traits allows the subclinical psychopath to avoid incarceration. The fundamental difference between clinical and subclinical psychopaths is a major question in the field of psychopathy and is the main theme of this thesis. Impaired empathy is one of the key aspects of psychopathy and it may be a significant factor in both clinical and subclinical psychopaths. Subclinical psychopathy may be related to a moderated or altered expression of empathy. Hence, the empathy construct is a secondary concern in this thesis. This thesis has two aims: (a) to argue that the conceptualization of subclinical psychopathy is flawed and needs revision in accordance with less ambiguous criteria; and (b) to present data in support of the hypothesis that subclinical psychopaths have intact, or even enhanced, cognitive capacities in contrast to clinical psychopaths.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In this study we examined 381 interactions between Donors and Fundraisers from a large research university by analyzing their Contact Reports. Specifically, we examined whether we could extract measures of fundraiser empathy through the application of a coding scheme and linguistics analysis, and whether there are differences in the reports based on donor characteristics. We found evidence that there are significant differences between how fundraisers write reports and what they include in them, based on school of graduation and type of interaction, but little difference in their treatment by donor gender. We conclude that indeed measures of empathy can be extracted from Contact Reports, but that minimum standards of reporting should be adopted by fundraising organizations in order to support using Contact Reports as qualitative evaluation tools.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The social cognitive ability to identify another’s internal state and social affective ability to share another’s emotional experience, known as empathy, are integral to healthy social functioning. During tasks, neural systems active when adolescents empathize include cognitive (medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) and affective (anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex) regions that are consistent with the adult task-based literature implicating the default mode, salience, and frontoparietal networks. However, task-based studies are limited to examining neural regions probed by the task; thus, do not capture broader patterns of information processing associated with complex processes, such as empathy. Methods of functional connectivity capture broader patterns of information processing at the level of network connectivity. Although it has clear advantages in identifying neural vulnerabilities to disorder, functional connectivity has yet to be used in adolescent investigations of empathy. Via parent- and self-report, deficits in either cognitive or affective processes central to empathy associate with the most widely agreed on classifications of behavioral disorders in adolescents – transdiagnostic symptoms of internalizing and externalizing. However, this evidence relies exclusively on self-report measures and research has yet to examine the neural connectivity underlying transdiagnostic symptoms in relation to cognitive and affective empathy. What has yet to be known is (1) how the social cognitive and affective processes of empathy are functionally connected across a heterogeneous sample of adolescents and (2) the association of cognitive, affective, and imbalanced empathy with transdiagnostic symptoms. Addressing these gaps in knowledge is an important incremental step for specifying vulnerabilities not fully captured via subjective report alone. This information can be used to improve prevention and intervention strategies. The present study will examine the functional connectivity of neural networks underlying empathy in early to mid-adolescents and their association with transdiagnostic symptoms.

Syftet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka hur kön och rollspelande relaterar till affektiv och kognitiv empati. 204 personer deltog i föreliggande studie genom att besvara en elektronisk enkät och 192 ifyllda enkäter analyserades. Mätinstrumenten som användes för att undersöka empati och sensorisk föreställningsförmåga var IRI och PSI-Q. Två 2x2 ANOVA utfördes för att undersöka hur kön (man och kvinna) och rollspelande (rollspelande och icke-rollspelande) relaterar till upplevd grad av affektiv och kognitiv empati. Det fanns en signifikant interaktionseffekt mellan kön och rollspelande avseende affektiv empati. Manliga deltagare uppvisade ungefär lika hög affektiv empati oavsett om de spelade rollspel eller inte. Kvinnliga icke-rollspelare uppvisade högre affektiv empati än kvinnliga rollspelare. Det fanns en signifikant huvudeffekt av kön avseende kognitiv empati. Kvinnorna uppvisade högre kognitiv empati än männen. Det fanns även en signifikant huvudeffekt av rollspelande avseende kognitiv empati som erhöll att rollspelare uppvisade högre kognitiv empati än icke-rollspelare. Den aktuella studien kan medföra nytta för framtida forskning och bidra till idéer om tillvägagångssätt för att lära ut kognitiv empatisk förmåga. / The purpose of the present study was to investigate how gender and role play relate to affective and cognitive empathy. 204 people participated in the present study by answering an online survey and 192 completed questionnaires were analyzed. The instruments that were used to measure empathy and sensory imagery were IRI and PSI-Q. Two 2x2 ANOVA were performed to investigate how gender (male and female) and role playing (role playing and non-role playing) relate to perceived degree of affective and cognitive empathy. There was a significant interaction between gender and role playing regarding affective empathy. Male participants showed equal degree of affective empathy regardless of whether they role played or not. Female non-role players showed higher affective empathy than female role players. There was a significant main effect of gender on cognitive empathy. The women showed higher cognitive empathy than men. There was also a significant main effect of role playing with regard to cognitive empathy, role players showed higher cognitive empathy than non-role players. The current study can bring benefits to future research and contribute to ideas of approaches to teach cognitive empathy.

Only a few studies have examined relationships between social anxiety and subtypes of empathy. Findings are mixed. The present study examined social anxiety severity on a continuum and how it related to affective and cognitive empathy in 684 nonpsychiatric adults (77% female). Participants completed an online battery of measures that included: a self-report measure of social anxiety severity (Fear of Negative Evaluation), a self-report measure with subscales for affective and cognitive empathy (Interpersonal Reactivity Index), and a behavioral measure of cognitive empathy (Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task; MIE). After statistically covarying for general anxiety severity, biological sex moderated the relationship between social anxiety severity and performance on the MIE task. In women, a higher severity of social anxiety related to better performance on the MIE. This relationship was not statistically significant in men. IRI subscale scores did not show significant main effects or interactions with sex in relation to social anxiety. The findings suggest a possible difference in how each sex experiences and/or develops social anxiety. This has implications for assessment and treatment. Future research should examine these relationships in more diverse psychiatric samples.

The paper would focus on the game narrative and empathy, more specifically, the primary goal of this paper is to see how game narrative evokes players’ empathy and get some narrative design principles that can be used in future game design and research. To fulfill the research goal of the paper, I will analyze three role-playing games To the Moon(2011), A Bird Story(2014), and Finding Paradise(2017). They are all developed by a designer Kan Gao, and focus on storytelling, especially To the Moon, receiving praise for its narrative and was given the "Best Story" award by GameSpot(“To the Moon,” 2022). The result of the paper can complement the study on the intersection of game narrative and empathy, also it can supply some practical cases in the game field for Keen’s(2006) narrative empathy theory. And the study can help researchers to study deeper in this field, and provide more empathic narrative design strategies for game designers. And those devices about plot twists, flashbacks, camera angles, etc, may also apply to the literature and film creation for evoking the audience’s empathy.