The human face has a fascinating capability to express emotions. The facial feedback hypothesis suggests that the human face not only expresses emotions but is also able to send feedback to the brain and modulate the ongoing emotional experience. It has furthermore been suggested that this feedback from the facial muscles could be involved in empathic reactions. This thesis explores the concept of emotional empathy and relates it to two aspects concerning activity in the facial muscles. First, do people high versus low in emotional empathy differ in regard to in what degree they spontaneously mimic emotional facial expressions? Second, is there any difference between people with high as compared to low emotional empathy in respect to how sensitive they are to feedback from their own facial muscles? Regarding the first question, people with high emotional empathy were found to spontaneously mimic pictures of emotional facial expressions while people with low emotional empathy were lacking this mimicking reaction. The answer to the second question is a bit more complicated. People with low emotional empathy were found to rate humorous films as funnier in a manipulated sulky facial expression than in a manipulated happy facial expression, whereas people with high emotional empathy did not react significantly. On the other hand, when the facial manipulations were a smile and a frown, people with low as well as high emotional empathy reacted in line with the facial feedback hypothesis. In conclusion, the experiments in the present thesis indicate that mimicking and feedback from the facial muscles may be involved in emotional contagion and thereby influence emotional empathic reactions. Thus, differences in emotional empathy may in part be accounted for by different degree of mimicking reactions and different emotional effects of feedback from the facial muscles.

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.

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Attorneys are at an increased risk of negative psychological and physical effects due to stressors in their careers. The purpose of this study was to identify if sex crime attorneys and homicide attorneys identify with significant psychological changes throughout their careers. The framework for this study was theoretical in nature and utilized the social cognitive processing theory. This quantitative study (N = 28) included the use of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire, and the Multi-Dimensional Emotional Empathy Scale. A minimal significance was found correlating a decrease in aggression to years of experience as an attorney. There was no significance between alcohol intake, emotional empathy, and years of experience as an attorney. An insufficient number of participants may have affected any potential correlations. A correlation between career stressors and negative effects on a personal or professional degree would be cause for implementing techniques to improve professional and personal morale, limit life stressors, and improve overall health. Providing assistance to those who are at risk of negative behaviors due to their career would prevent future immediate and long-term treatments, increasing their quality of life.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Family Studies and Human Services / Walter R. Schumm / Abstract This study seeks to clarify a controversy in the literature about which characteristics of families are most responsible for facilitating the development of empathy in children. The study utilized a correlational research design and self-report questionnaires. The Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale measured the criterion variable, subjects’ levels of emotional empathy. The Circumplex Model of Marital and Family Systems’ accompanying questionnaire, the fourth version of the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES IV) measured the two key predictor variables, levels of family cohesion and family flexibility, in the subjects’ families of origin. The central hypothesis of the Circumplex Model is that healthy family functioning would be predicted by balanced functioning on both of these key dimensions of family life. The first predictor variable, family cohesion, appears to encompass those factors emphasized by researchers who have asserted that positive family affective bonds would be the family characteristic most predictive of higher levels of empathy in children. The second predictor variable, family flexibility, appears to encompass those factors emphasized by researchers who have asserted that the style of parental discipline would be the family characteristic most predictive of higher levels of empathy in children. Participants in this study were all students at a mid-size, public, Midwestern university. A purposive convenience sample was utilized. Correlational statistics and multiple regression analyses were used to test hypotheses. The results suggested several conclusions. Balanced levels of family cohesion were positively associated with higher levels of emotional empathy, as predicted. The prediction that balanced levels of family flexibility would also be positively associated with higher levels of emotional empathy was not supported. Instead, higher levels of empathy were associated with a somewhat strict or rigid style of parental discipline. Various alternative explanations for these results are discussed, as are limitations of the study, recommendations for future research, and implications for practitioners.

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.

This paper is written in special acknowledgement and recognition of oppressed minority groups including, but not limited to, those of Black, Indigenous, and Asian persons. All lives do not matter until Black, Red, and Yellow lives matter. / Obama once spoke of his desire to see empathetic individuals appointed to the position of Supreme Court Justice of the United States. His desire was met by many with resistance as people voiced concerns regarding the unreliability of beliefs founded on empathy and possible negative consequences that may come about. Concerns regarding unreliability are the product of our inability to access the ‘privileged information’ or the actual thoughts and perspectives of those we intend to empathize with. Attempts to form empathic beliefs, in the absence of this information, could lead to various harms to the very groups we intend to empathize with. Stereotyping, bias, and claims of sincerely ‘knowing’ the unique circumstances of those very different from ourselves can all lead to the justification of actions with harmful consequences. In my thesis I wish to address these concerns by acknowledging that most practical sources of knowledge (those we make use of and depend on regularly), such as those predicated on notions of cause and effect, have similar risks associated with them. Theories such as gravity and evolution remain theories and yet via the establishment of best practices and diligent communities, we are able to minimize the dissemination of false knowledge claims and their respective harms. In my paper I acknowledge this and explain how empathy can be dealt with in a similar fashion, while also reducing potential harms to others and allowing us to take advantage of the many benefits empathic knowledge has to offer. In the same way that we still continue to make use of our understanding of gravity to improve our lives and society by building aircrafts, we can make use of empathy to improve the ability of individual social and moral agents, as well as society as a whole. Under this pragmatic approach even the legal system can reap the benefits of empathic knowledge claims, so long as we, moving forward, work to collectively discern how to best ensure the validity of empathic knowledge claims. / Thesis / Master of Philosophy (MA) / Obama once spoke of his desire to see empathetic individuals appointed to the position of Supreme Court Justices of the United States. His desire was met by many with resistance as people voiced concerns regarding the unreliability of beliefs founded on empathy and possible negative consequences that may come about. In my thesis I wish to address these concerns by acknowledging that most useful sources of knowledge have similar risks associated with them, and yet via the establishment of best practices and diligent communities we are able to minimize the dissemination of false knowledge claims and their respective harms. In my paper I acknowledge this and explain how empathy can be dealt with in a similar fashion, while also reducing potential harms to others and allowing us to take advantage of the many benefits empathic knowledge has to offer.

This thesis copes with the research of empathy of deliquent youngsters-specifically their emotional and congitive part, it also evaluates the egoism or altruism of these individuals and their compassion level. The main purpose of this thesis is therefore to find out, what is the level and structure of empathy in these deliquent youngsters. The data was acquired by a specific TAT test and was evaluated according to the five subscales of SCORS ,which resemblance to empathy is proven in this work. Moreover, the content analysis of the acquired TAT protocols was carried out. The results of protocol evaluation according to SCORS system show low,yet not pathological values of emotional and cognitive empathy of youngster deliquents, additionally, they show their mainly egoistic motives across their social interactions as well as a pathological low level of compassion with others. In this thesis, the results, describing the level of cognitive and emotional empathy, are being compared to the Smith's theory (2006), which copes with the possibility of having a disorder caused by general lack of empathy in youngster deliquents. TAT protocols of respondents were also subjects of the content analysis, and its result show for example uncertainity in the external manifestation of respondents, "black and white"...