Understanding individual variation in empathy enhancement

了解同理心增强的个体差异

• 批准号: ES/R007527/1
• 负责人: Michael Banissy
• 金额: $ 49.37万
• 依托单位: Goldsmiths University of London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2018 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FR007527%2F1
• 关键词: Understanding; individual; variation; empathy; enhancement

During our daily social interactions, observing others' experiences (e.g. emotion, sensation) can induce a similar experience of our own. When the experience we feel matches that of the person we are interacting with (e.g. feeling sad because you see your friend is sad), we are said to be empathising with them. Building a scientific understanding of how we empathise with others is extremely important as empathy plays a key role in supporting social relationships that are important for health and well-being. We now know that we empathise with others in a variety of different ways. Results of recent research (including our own) have shown that our ability to mentally distinguish between and focus on the experiences of ourselves and others - our 'self-other control' - plays a key role in engaging the psychological systems that allow us to experience empathy. Moreover, we have shown that it is possible to improve self-other control using behavioural training, and that in doing so we can enhance the ability to empathise with others. These findings indicate that self-other control modulation may be a promising tool to support empathy skills, which offers the potential for developing intervention approaches in groups where improving empathy would be useful (e.g. in healthcare professions or in groups with altered empathy including Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), alexithymia, psychopathy, mirror-sensory synaesthesia).There are still many open questions regarding how our self-other control mediates our ability to empathise with others, which must be addressed before this knowledge can be used widely. The primary aims of our research focus on answering some of these questions. In particular: Can we train individuals' self-other control to enhance their performance across a range of empathy measures (including questionnaires and behavioural tests)? Will certain types of individuals be more susceptible to empathy-enhancement procedures than others? Are empathy enhancement procedures effective in clinical, compared to non-clinical, populations? How does boosting empathy affect the brain? Can we stimulate certain parts of the brain to boost empathy?Our primary working hypothesis is that improving individuals' self-other control, using behavioural training techniques, will enhance their performance in empathy tests. Second, we believe that the target of this training may benefit certain kinds of individuals more than others, depending on their levels of psychological traits related to social ability, and whether they suffer from a clinical condition. We will integrate a range of methods to address our aims and hypotheses: individuals' empathy will be tested before and after self-other control training using a variety of established, and novel, empathy tests including psychometric, brain imaging, and brain stimulation investigations. Rather than restricting our analysis to one group, we will shift the state-of-the-art by testing people with a wide spectrum of empathic reactions including typical adults, ASD, alexithymia, and mirror-sensory synaesthesia. This will broaden the implications of our work to provide insights on the relationship between self-other control and empathy across a variety of groups. In doing so, we will help to inform our understanding of empathy, clarifying the importance of self-other control, and provide the initial building blocks for future research aspiring to develop treatments and training programs to enhance it.

在我们日常的社交互动中，观察他人的经历(如情绪、感觉)也能引发我们自己的类似体验。当我们感觉到的体验与与我们互动的人相匹配时(例如，因为你看到你的朋友很难过而感到难过)，我们就被认为是同情他们。建立对我们如何与他人感同身受的科学理解是极其重要的，因为同理心在支持对健康和福祉至关重要的社会关系方面发挥着关键作用。我们现在知道，我们以各种不同的方式与他人感同身受。最近的研究结果(包括我们自己的研究)表明，我们在心理上区分并专注于自己和他人的经历的能力--我们的“自我-他人控制”--在参与允许我们体验同理心的心理系统方面发挥着关键作用。此外，我们已经证明，通过行为训练来改善自我-他人控制是可能的，而且通过这样做，我们可以增强移情他人的能力。这些发现表明，自我他人控制调节可能是一种很有前途的支持移情技能的工具，这为在提高共情能力的群体中开发干预方法提供了潜力(例如，在医疗保健专业或在同理心改变的群体中，包括自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)、述情障碍、精神病、镜像感觉通感)。关于自我他人控制如何调节我们与他人的共情能力，仍有许多悬而未决的问题，在这一知识得到广泛应用之前，必须解决这个问题。我们研究的主要目的是回答其中的一些问题。特别是：我们能否训练个人的自我-他人控制能力，以提高他们在一系列移情措施(包括问卷调查和行为测试)中的表现？某些类型的人会比其他类型的人更容易接受同理心增强程序吗？与非临床人群相比，同理心增强程序在临床人群中是否有效？增强同理心对大脑有什么影响？我们能刺激大脑的某些部分来提高同理心吗？我们的主要工作假设是，使用行为训练技术改善个体的自我-他人控制能力，将提高他们在同理心测试中的表现。其次，我们认为，这种培训的目标可能会使某些类型的人比其他人受益更多，这取决于他们与社交能力相关的心理特征的水平，以及他们是否患有临床疾病。我们将整合一系列方法来解决我们的目标和假设：在自我他人控制训练之前和之后，将使用各种既定的和新颖的同理心测试来测试个体的同理心，包括心理测量、脑成像和脑刺激调查。与其将我们的分析局限于一组人，我们将通过测试具有广泛共情反应的人，包括典型的成年人、自闭症、述情障碍和镜子感觉通感，来改变最先进的水平。这将扩大我们工作的影响，为不同群体的自我他人控制和同理心之间的关系提供洞察力。通过这样做，我们将有助于了解我们对同理心的理解，澄清自我-他人控制的重要性，并为未来的研究提供初步的基础，这些研究立志于开发治疗方法和培训计划来增强同理心。

项目成果

Are Autistic and Alexithymic Traits Distinct? A Factor-Analytic and Network Approach

自闭症和述情障碍特征有区别吗？

• DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/ajcb8
• 发表时间: 2021
• 作者: Cuve H

Systematic review and meta-analysis of the relationship between the heartbeat-evoked potential and interoception.

心跳诱发电位与内感受之间关系的系统回顾和荟萃分析。

• DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/g2zhc
• 发表时间: 2020
• 作者: Coll M

Alexithymia explains atypical spatiotemporal dynamics of eye gaze in autism

• DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104710
• 发表时间: 2021-04-13
• 期刊: COGNITION
• 影响因子: 3.4
• 作者: Cuve, Helio Clemente;Castiello, Santiago;Bird, Geoffrey
• 通讯作者: Bird, Geoffrey

Are Autistic and Alexithymic Traits Distinct? A Factor-Analytic and Network Approach.

• DOI: 10.1007/s10803-021-05094-6
• 发表时间: 2022-05
• 期刊: Journal of autism and developmental disorders
• 影响因子: 3.9
• 作者: Cuve HC;Murphy J;Hobson H;Ichijo E;Catmur C;Bird G
• 通讯作者: Bird G