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Dissociating Cognitive and Affective Empathy

Dissociating Cognitive and Affective Empathy

Talk given at the 17th annual undergraduate research symposium

Jake Thompson

April 26, 2014
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  1. Undergraduate
    Research
    Symposium
    April 26, 2014
    DISSOCIATING COGNITIVE
    AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY
    W. Jake Thompson
    Advisor: Dr. Evangelia G. Chrysikou
    Department of Psychology
    University of Kansas

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  2. ¡  Empathy: the ability to (a) correctly recognize the emotions of
    others, and (b) respond in an emotionally appropriate way to
    different situations (Hooker et al., 2010).
    §  Cognitive Empathy: perspective taking, emotion recognition, placing
    oneself emotionally in a situation
    §  Affective Empathy: personal distress, affective responsiveness,
    emotional contagion
    WHAT IS EMPATHY?

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  3. IMPAIRED COGNITIVE EMPATHY

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  4. IMPAIRED AFFECTIVE EMPATHY

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  5. ¡  Research on empathy in social situations indicates that there
    is a dissociation between these two processes (Masten et al.,
    2010).
    ¡  Empathy is not an automatic process, but requires significant
    cognitive resources (De Lissnyder et al., 2012).
    PREVIOUS RESEARCH

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  6. ¡  Rumination hurts performance on processes that require
    cognitive flexibility such as empathy (Altamirano et al., 2010).
    ¡  The cognitive inflexibility and prevalence of rumination in
    depression have been closely associated with deficits in
    empathic processing that are associated with the disorder
    (Thoma et al., 2011).
    EMPATHY AND DEPRESSION

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  7. EMPATHY AND DEPRESSION
    ¡  Similar brain regions involved (Koenigs & Grafman, 2009;
    Shamay-Tsoory et al., 2009).
    ¡  Ventromedial PFC
    §  Cognitive Empathy
    §  Elevated activity in
    depression
    ¡  Dorsolateral PFC
    §  Affective Empathy
    §  Decreased activity in
    depression

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  8. IS THERE A DISSOCIATION
    BETWEEN THESE PROCESSES IN
    DEPRESSION?

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  9. ¡  The present study aims to build on past findings by exploring
    the extent to which ruminative thought in depression impacts
    an individual’s empathic abilities.
    ¡  We aim to:
    1.  Develop a behavioral measure of affective empathy.
    2.  Explore differences in empathic abilities within the context of major
    depressive disorder.
    CURRENT STUDY

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  10. ¡  Emotional Load: “Think about a time when you were sad.”
    ¡  Non-Emotional Load: “Think about how one would normally
    make breakfast.”
    ¡  No Load: Straight into tasks.
    RUMINATION MANIPULATION

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  11. ¡  Can participants accurately
    identify emotions?
    ¡  Reading the Mind in the
    Eyes (Baron-Cohen et al.,
    2001).
    ¡  Performance evaluated by
    accuracy and reaction time.
    BEHAVIORAL MEASURE: COGNITIVE EMPATHY

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  12. MIND IN THE EYES

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  13. Time à

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  14. ¡ Do participants have an
    affective reaction to
    emotional stimuli?
    ¡ Lexical Decision Task
    §  Emotional Prime: Happy, Sad,
    or Neutral Face.
    §  Target: Positive, Negative, or
    Non-word.
    §  High affective empathy
    should show greater priming
    effects.
    BEHAVIORAL MEASURE: AFFECTIVE EMPATHY

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  15. ¡  Normally eyes see two slightly
    different but very similar images.
    ¡  When presented with very different
    images, the brain is unable to
    combine them, and the images
    alter between dominant and
    suppressed.
    BINOCULAR RIVALRY

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  17. Time à

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  18. ¡  Depression
    §  SCID-I Diagnosis
    §  BDI ≥ 13
    ¡  Age
    §  Range: 18 - 21
    §  Healthy mean: 18.65
    §  Depressed mean: 19.00
    ¡  Gender
    §  Healthy: 56.8% female.
    §  Depressed: 88.2% female.
    PARTICIPANTS
    Healthy Depressed
    Emotional
    Load
    n = 12 n = 6
    Non-
    Emotional
    Load
    n = 12 n = 6
    No Load n = 13 n = 5

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  19. ¡  We found a significant interaction between depression and
    rumination/mood condition.
    §  Rumination only had a significant effect on the depressed
    individuals.
    §  Depression only had a significant effect on the “No Load” rumination
    condition.
    ¡  There was a significant difference between depressed and
    healthy participants within rumination conditions.
    ¡  We also found that rumination manipulation affected controls
    and depressed individuals differently.
    RESULTS – AFFECTIVE EMPATHY

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  20. ALL WORDS
    Interaction: F(2,48)
    = 4.13, p = .02
    0
    100
    200
    300
    400
    500
    600
    700
    800
    900
    No Load Breakfast Emotional
    Reaction Time (ms)
    Controls
    Depressed
    p = .02 p = .14

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  21. ALL WORDS
    Interaction: F(2,48)
    = 4.13, p = .02
    0
    100
    200
    300
    400
    500
    600
    700
    800
    900
    Controls Depressed
    Reaction Time (ms)
    No Load
    Breakfast
    Emotional
    p = .04
    Non-Significant

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  22. 0
    100
    200
    300
    400
    500
    600
    700
    800
    900
    Controls Depressed
    Reaction Time (ms)
    No Load
    Breakfast
    Emotional
    HAPPY WORDS
    Interaction: F(2,48)
    = 4.30, p = .02
    p = .03
    Non-Significant

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  23. 0
    100
    200
    300
    400
    500
    600
    700
    800
    900
    Controls Depressed
    Reaction Time (ms)
    No Load
    Breakfast
    Emotional
    SAD WORDS
    Interaction: F(2,48)
    = 3.35, p = .04
    p = .06
    Non-Significant

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  24. RESULTS – COGNITIVE EMPATHY
    ¡  We found a marginally significant interaction between
    depression and rumination, and there were no significant
    main effects.
    §  Depression once again only had a significant effect in the “No Load”
    condition, and rumination only had an effect for depressed
    individuals.
    §  However, this relationship was not as strong as what was seen on the
    Lexical Decision task.

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  25. 0
    500
    1000
    1500
    2000
    2500
    3000
    3500
    4000
    No Load Breakfast Emotional
    Reaction Time (ms)
    Controls
    Depressed
    READING THE MIND IN THE EYES
    Interaction: F(2,48)
    = 2.92, p = .06
    p = .02

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  26. READING THE MIND IN THE EYES
    Interaction: F(2,48)
    = 2.92, p = .06
    0
    500
    1000
    1500
    2000
    2500
    3000
    3500
    4000
    Controls Depressed
    Reaction Time (ms)
    No Load
    Breakfast
    Emotional
    p = .04
    Non-Significant

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  27. ¡  A MANOVA was conducted on the 5 subscales of the EAI.
    ¡  The rumination condition did not show an effect on responses.
    ¡  Depression did show a significant effect on responses to
    several subscales.
    EMPATHY ASSESSMENT INDEX

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  28. 0
    2
    4
    6
    8
    10
    12
    14
    16
    18
    Affective
    Responsiveness
    Emotion Regulation Perspective Taking Self-Other Awareness Empathic Attitudes
    Subscale Score
    Controls
    Depressed
    EMPATHY ASSESSMENT INDEX
    p < .01
    Depression Main Effect: Pillai’s Trace = .477 (F(5,44)
    = 8.03, p < .001)
    p < .01
    p = .05
    p < .01

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  29. ¡  Our findings support a dissociation between affective and
    cognitive empathy in depression during rumination on
    negative events.
    ¡  The negative rumination only had an effect on depressed
    individuals, and specifically affected the response to happy
    words in the affective empathy task.
    ¡  The differences on cognitive empathy were small, and only
    marginally significant.
    ¡  Findings from self-reports support the behavioral findings.
    CONCLUSIONS

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  30. This research was supported by the Center for Undergraduate
    Research, as well as the University Honors Program.
    A special thanks to Dr. Chrysikou and the Chrysikou Lab for
    their support and guidance throughout the project.
    ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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