Dataset Information

How Situational Context Impacts Empathic Responses and Brain Activation Patterns.

ABSTRACT: Clinical empathy, which is defined as the ability to understand the patient's experience and feelings from the patient's perspective, is acknowledged to be an important aspect of quality healthcare. However, how work experience modulates the empathic responses and brain activation patterns in medical professions remains elusive. This fMRI study recruited one hundred female nurses, who varied the length of work experience, and examined how their neural response, functional connectivity, and subjective evaluations of valence and arousal to perceiving another individual in physical pain are modulated by the situational context in which they occur (i.e., in a hospital or at home). Participants with longer hospital terms evaluated pain as less negative in valence and arousal when occurring in a hospital context, but not in a home context. Physical pain perceived in a hospital compared to a home context produced stronger activity in the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ). The reverse comparison resulted in an increased activity in the insula and anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC). Mediation analysis indicated that reduced personal accomplishment, a symptom of burnout, breaks down the mediation effect of the putamen on context-dependent valence ratings. Overall, the study demonstrates how situational contexts significantly influence individuals' empathic processing, and that perceiving reward from patient care protects them from burnout. Highlights -Differences in behavior ratings and brain activations between medical practitioners perceiving others' pain in a hospital and at home.-Situational contexts significantly influence individual's empathic processing.-Perceiving rewards from patient care protects medical practitioners from burnout.-Empathy is a flexible phenomenon.

SUBMITTER: Cheng Y

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5591329 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

How Situational Context Impacts Empathic Responses and Brain Activation Patterns.

Cheng Yawei Y Chen Chenyi C Decety Jean J

Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience 20170904

Clinical empathy, which is defined as the ability to understand the patient's experience and feelings from the patient's perspective, is acknowledged to be an important aspect of quality healthcare. However, how work experience modulates the empathic responses and brain activation patterns in medical professions remains elusive. This fMRI study recruited one hundred female nurses, who varied the length of work experience, and examined how their neural response, functional connectivity, and subje ...[more]

PMID: 28928643

Similar Datasets

Project description:Accounts of empathy distinguish between cognitive (attribution of mental states to a social target) and emotional (sharing of emotions with a social target) empathy. To date, however, little is known about whether and how (interactions between) person perceptions, situational characteristics, and the observer-target relationship affect these constructs. The current study hence investigated (a) how the perceived warmth and competence of different social targets relate to both types of empathy, (b) whether there are differences in empathic responding to positive vs. negative scenarios, and (c) the impact of identification with the social targets. Eighty-nine participants rated cognitive and emotional empathy regarding four stereotypical target characters (student, elderly person, businessperson, alcoholic person) facing diverse positive and negative events. They also rated how warm and competent these characters appeared to them and how strongly they identified with the social targets. Results for cognitive and emotional empathy were partly overlapping, but demonstrated several significant differences, thereby demonstrating the need to investigate the two concepts separately. Notably, stereotypes of warmth predicted both cognitive and emotional empathic responses more strongly in desirable than in undesirable scenarios, which may relate to greater freedom of response to positive (rather than negative) social outcomes permitted by society. Our data show that scenario valence mattered even more for cognitive (than for emotional) empathy because it additionally moderated the effects of perceived competence and social identification. Finally, both cognitive and emotional empathy increased as a positive function of social identification, and social identification moderated effects exerted by perceived warmth and competence (yet differently for the two types of empathy investigated). Together, these findings speak to empathic responses arising from a complex interplay between perceptions (i.e., warmth and competence), scenario valence, and social identification.

Dataset Information

How Situational Context Impacts Empathic Responses and Brain Activation Patterns.

Publications

How Situational Context Impacts Empathic Responses and Brain Activation Patterns.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets