Titel
The association between acute stress & empathy: A systematic literature review
Autor*in
Jennifer A. Bartz
Department of Psychology, McGill University
Abstract
Empathy is a fundamental component of our social-emotional experience. Over the last decade, there has been increased interest in understanding the effects of acute stress on empathy. We provide a first comprehensive—and systematic—overview identifying emerging patterns and gaps in this literature. Regarding affective empathy, there is abundant evidence for stress contagion—the ‘spillover’ of stress from a stressed target to an unstressed perceiver. We highlight contextual factors that can facilitate and/or undermine these effects. Fewer studies have investigated the effects of acute stress on affective empathy, revealing a nuanced picture, some evidence suggests acute stress can block contagion of other’s emotions; but again contextual differences need to be considered. Regarding cognitive empathy, most studies find no conclusive effects for simplistic measures of emotion recognition; however, studies using more complex empathy tasks find that acute stress might affect cognitive empathy differentially for men and women. This review provides an important first step towards understanding how acute stress can impact social-togetherness, and aims to aid future research by highlighting (in)congruencies and outstanding questions.
Stichwort
Acute stressEmpathyEmotionAffect sharingContagionSocial supportSocial cognitionEmotion recognitionMentalizingSystematic review
Objekt-Typ
Sprache
Englisch [eng]
Persistent identifier
phaidra.univie.ac.at/o:1639124
Erschienen in
Titel
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
Band
144
ISSN
0149-7634
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Publication
Elsevier BV
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Zugänglichkeit
Rechte
Rechteangabe
© 2022 The Author(s)
Universität Wien | Universitätsring 1 | 1010 Wien | T
+43-1-4277-0