Study: You can increase the level of cognitive empathy, but not emotional empathy

Psychologists distinguish two types of empathy. Cognitive empathy is the ability to adopt the way of thinking of other people and look at the surrounding reality from their point of view. The very term 'empathy' derives from the Ancient Greek word pathos, meaning 'passion' or 'suffering' and relates more to emotional empathy, because it concerns compassion rather than just understanding another person. Strong emotional empathy can cause a person to feel severe pain at the sight of the suffering of another person.

The first author of the study on this topic is Anna Jałoszyńska, a master's student at the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Warsaw. Her supervisor and co -author of the research tool is Dr. Małgorzata Gambin from the same university. Łukasz Szewczyk, president of the 'Cotopaxi' Association and originator of the School of Friendly Imagination workshop, was also involved in the study.

'The aim of the study was to check to what extent our cognitive empathy workshops cause an authentic change and empathy increase. This is associated with our hypothesis that empathy is a trait that can be shaped and measured', explains Łukasz Szewczyk in the release sent to PAP.

The research project lasted from July 2021 to March 2022. The research group were 44 people who participated in the School of Friendly Imagination workshops. The study covered both components of empathy: cognitive and affective (emotional).

The results show that cognitive empathy can be increased during workshops. 'The results clearly show that after participating in the workshop, participants actually achieved higher results in tests measuring cognitive empathy than before the workshop. However, this relationship was not recorded in the case of affective empathy', say the authors of the study.

Anna Jałoszyńska points out that among the participants of the workshop, cognitive empathy improved. They were able to better understand the perspective of another person. 'The workshops, however, did not affect affective empathy, the emotional reception of a given situation. This is consistent with our initial assumptions and allows to assume that cognitive empathy, unlike affective empathy, can be trained', she adds. She admits that these findings require verification whether this effect also occurs under different conditions.

'The most amazing discovery for me was the fact that there was a change in the areas of empathic concern and acceptance of perspective, not personal distress. What does this mean in practice? Our workshops develop cognitive empathy as the ability to adopt the point of view of another person and affect the possibility of reacting to this with an appropriate emotion. However, they do not cause the formation of a sense of depression, sadness, powerlessness, which is associated with affective empathy and may appear when our empathy is focused on receiving the emotions of others', Szewczyk says.

He points out that emotional empathy is associated with the feeling of distress that another person experiences. 'And although we can empathize with that person, we often feel such distress as our own. Such a reaction may hinder our functioning and will not translate into effective help we can offer another person', he believes.

In his opinion, this analysis is groundbreaking and, as he points out, it is the first of its kind in the world. 'There are studies on the level of empathy, and there are quite a lot of tools and scales. However, I do not know any research projects that would check if the few organized programs supporting the development of empathy have proven to be effective. To my knowledge, this is the first study concerning one of the few empathy support programs', says Łukasz Szewczyk.

'The results of research on the effectiveness of empathy workshops conducted under my supervision by Anna Jałoszyńska (as part research for a Master's thesis) in cooperation with Łukasz Szewczyk are interesting and promising. However, I cannot agree with the claim that this analysis is groundbreaking and the first of its kind in the world. There have been many studies in the world (summarized in meta-analyses) showing that empathy can be developed during workshops and training sessions. They indicate that such trainings are more effective in relation to cognitive than emotional empathy. This, however, does not mean that we cannot develop emotional empathy at all', comments Dr. Małgorzata Gambin from the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Warsaw.

'It is not true that our analyses have shown that the level of emotional empathy cannot be increased. Our study was based on Davis' theory that experiencing emotions of another person can lead to empathic concern, feelings 'oriented on others' - compassion for people affected by failure. However, in response to the negative emotions of others, we can also feel personal distress - feelings 'oriented on oneself': fear, anxiety, sadness or discomfort', says Małgorzata Gambin.

She points out that people have different levels of ability to feel the emotions of others and tendency to respond with empathic concern (orientation on others) or personal distress (orientation on themselves). 'Our study showed that after the workshops, the surveyed people had a significantly higher level of cognitive empathy (the ability to adopt the perspective of others, understand their emotions) and empathic concern than before the workshops', she says. She emphasizes that empathic concern is closely related to emotional empathy, and some researchers consider it to be a dimension of emotional empathy.

The psychologist from the University of Warsaw adds that the study did not show differences in the level of personal distress. In addition, workshop participants also had a lower level of depression symptoms before the workshop than after workshop.

In her opinion, the results 'are very interesting, but it would be important to conduct research on this subject in a larger group of respondents, with a control group (for example participating in a different workshop or waiting to participate in the workshop - with participants randomly assigned to groups). It would also be worthwhile to check how long the effects last'.

PAP - Science in Poland, Zbigniew Wojtasiński

zbw/ agt/ kap/

tr. RL