676297
SGOXXX10.1177/2158244016676297SAGE OpenCargile
research-article2016
Article
Can Video Engender Empathic Concern
for Others? Testing a Positive Affect
Arousing Intervention
SAGE Open
October-December 2016: 1–10
© The Author(s) 2016
DOI: 10.1177/2158244016676297
sgo.sagepub.com
Aaron Castelán Cargile1
Abstract
Empathy is widely recognized as the psychological foundation for prosocial behavior, yet very little is known about methods
to increase affective empathy in students and trainees. The present research sought to assess the reliability and potential
boundary conditions of one such intervention—a brief emotional video featuring a boy diagnosed with cancer. Study 1 found
that the video succeeded in indirectly increasing empathic concern for an African American victim of police abuse among
an ethnically diverse student sample in a classroom setting. Study 2 replicated the effect in an online environment among a
population of near-racially homogeneous adults. The effect of this brief, convenient, positive-affect intervention is in line with
other practice-based and negative-affect interventions.
Keywords
emotion, experimental psychology, psychology, social sciences, applied psychology, educational research, education, positive
psychology
Over recent decades, psychological research has shifted from
a narrow focus on the negative and dysfunctional (e.g.,
Castillo, 1997; Stueber, 2006; Williams, Watts, MacLeod, &
Mathews, 1988) to broader inquiries that now regularly
include the study of positive and prosocial phenomena (e.g.,
Mikulincer & Shaver, 2010; Seligman, Steen, Park, &
Peterson, 2005). Within this emerging domain of positive/
prosocial research, empathy has become a central and wellstudied construct. As detailed by Rosan (2012), philosophers
have long discussed empathy in a variety of ways, including
as affective resonance (Hume, 1739/1978), as “feeling with”
(A. Smith, 1759/2006), as “feeling in” (Vischer, 1873/1994),
or as an inner imitation (Lipps, 1903/1935). More recently,
psychological study has developed its own conceptualizations grounded in these long-standing discussions. As a result,
the construct has been used in at least eight distinct ways (see
Batson, 2009a) across various investigations in psychology;
thus, empathy has no universally accepted definition. Even
so, this research has typically focused on affective aspects of
empathic responding (i.e., sharing the emotional experience
of another; see Decety & Jackson, 2004), though a great deal
of attention has also been devoted to its cognitive characteristics as well (i.e., taking the perspective of another; e.g.,
Bakker, Shimazu, Demerouti, Shimada, & Kawakami, 2011;
Schnell, Bluschke, Konradt, & Walter, 2011).
When it comes to the affective aspects of empathy, modern
psychology researchers typically distinguish between selforiented and other-oriented feelings (e.g., personal distress vs.
empathic concern; see Davis, 1983). Both types of feelings are
believed to be triggered by emotional contagion—a process
through which people converge emotionally with one another,
as if one individual “catches” another’s emotion (Hatfield,
Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1992). If an individual encounters and is
affected by another’s distress, self-oriented feelings produce
an “aversive emotional reaction . . . that is associated with the
egoistic motivation of making oneself feel better” (Eisenberg,
2010, p. 126). Conversely, if another’s distress is shared in the
form of other-oriented feelings, the experience is undergirded
by motivation to help that other feel better. As Bernhardt and
Singer (2012) describe it, “emotional contagion underlies
affect sharing; this can be followed by other-oriented feelings
such as compassion, sympathy, and empathic concern, which
may further promote prosocial behavior” (p. 3). Such otheroriented affective states do not constitute the whole of empathy, of course, but are central nonetheless because they are
believed to motivate prosocial behaviors (cf. Kim & Kou,
2014). Moreover, they are a key component of most descriptions of empathy (e.g., Scheler, 1954; Stein, 1989), including
psychotherapeutic ones (Bozarth, 2009). In Stueber’s (2006)
1
California State University, Long Beach, USA
Corresponding Author:
Aaron Castelan Cargile, Department of Communication Studies,
California State University, Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Blvd. Long Beach,
CA 90840-2407, USA.
Email: aaron.cargile@csulb.edu
Creative Commons CC-BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
(http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of
the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages
Downloaded from by guest on November 22, 2016
(https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
2
SAGE Open
words, “psychologists are not primarily interested in empathy
as a specific cognitive mechanism of inner imitation . . .
Instead, they tend to be interested in empathy as the psychological foundation for social relations and altruistic behavior”
(p. 27). Provided this conceptual centrality then, affective
empathy’s ability to motivate prosocial behavior has been
widely studied.
Although the connection between affective empathy and
altruism is complex, it has nevertheless been found to be
demonstrably valid (Batson, Lishner, & Stocks, 2015;
Eisenberg, Eggum, & Di Giunta, 2010). Among the most
typical findings, laboratory participants with greater otheroriented concern express greater interest in and willingness to
help others (e.g., Batson, Chang, Orr, & Rowland, 2002;
Batson, Eklund, Chermok, Hoyt, & Ortiz, 2007; Eisenberg
et al., 1989). Longitudinal studies have helped to corroborate
this relationship outside the laboratory (e.g., Yoo, Feng, &
Day, 2013), and functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) studies have helped to identify several neurological
mechanisms of this relationship. Empathic concern has been
associated with activity in particular neural regions (i.e.,
medial prefrontal cortex [MPFC] and anterior insula), and
studies have linked enhanced activation of these regions to,
among other things, a greater willingness to endure physical
pain on behalf of a fellow ingroup member (Hein, Silani,
Preuschoff, Batson, & Singer, 2010), and the authoring of
more prosocial emails to victims of social exclusion (Masten,
Morelli, & Eisenberger, 2011). In these myriad ways then, the
central status and importance of empathic concern (i.e., otheroriented affect) have been corroborated. In light of that significance, it is worth investigating what motivates empathic
concern.
Empathic concern can be influenced by a number of
both “trait” and “state” factors. Beginning with the former,
numerous individual difference variables have been linked
to greater empathic concern, including age (e.g., Sze,
Gyurak, Goodkind, & Levenson, 2012), gender (e.g., Van
der Graaff et al., 2014), genetic variation (e.g., K. E. Smith,
Porges, Norman, Connelly, & Decety, 2014), emotion regulation style (e.g., Lebowitz & Dovidio, 2015), cultural
background (e.g., Cassels, Chan, & Chung, 2010), and selfreported dispositional empathic concern (e.g., Singer et al.,
2008). Similarly, a fair number of situational conditions
have also been linked to increased affective empathy,
including autobiographical memory sharing (Bluck, Baron,
Ainsworth, Gesselman, & Gold, 2013), perceiving the other
as in need (e.g., Lishner, Batson, & Huss, 2011), valuing
the other’s welfare (e.g., Batson et al., 2007), detailed processing (Woltin, Corneille, Yzerbyt, & Förster, 2011), and,
most prominently, active imagining of the other’s plight
(i.e., perspective taking; see Batson, 2009b). Given the
variety of pathways to expanding empathy suggested by
this research, a host of trainings and interventions have
attempted to do just that: increase participant empathic concern for others.
In a review of 29 studies assessing seven different training
methodologies, Lam, Kolomitro, and Alamparambil (2011)
concluded that although cognitive empathy can be reliably
improved, “very little is known about the trainability of the
affective [empathy]” (p. 163). For example, although mindfulness training develops present moment awareness believed
to encourage empathy-inducing perceptions (e.g., perceptions of need or detailed processing), studies have failed to
reliably demonstrate its effect on affective empathy (e.g.,
Birnie, Speca, & Carlson, 2010; Block-Lerner, Adair, Plumb,
Rhatigan, & Orsillo, 2007). Since 2011, however, a handful
of studies have shown that other sorts of interventions can
increase affective empathy, if only slightly.
One potential pathway to increased empathic concern is
the development of empathic habits. Although empathic
responding is, in part, genetically grounded, there is a large
socio-cultural component as well. Thus, it is conceivable that
levels of empathic concern could be shifted with practice. A
study by Konrath et al. (2015) has recently assessed such a
practice-based intervention, called “text to connect.”
Participants in the “text to connect” group received a “high
empathy” text message 6 times a day for 14 days (e.g.,
“Reflect on somebody close to you. What makes them feel
happiest?”), while those in a control group were either sent
similar, but self-focused messages (e.g., “Reflect on this
question. What makes you better than others?”), or were not
sent any text messages. Participants who were prompted to
practice empathy during the 2-week period reported higher
levels of emotional empathy for a distressed individual than
those in either control group. The increase was small, yet it
was significant and persisted after controlling for individual
differences in dispositional empathy. A similarly small
increase in empathic concern was observed among nursing
students who underwent 3.5 hours of professional nonviolent
communication training (Nosek, Gifford, & Kober, 2014).
Through both instruction and role-play practice, this training
was designed to help participants tune into others’ perspectives (see Rosenberg, 1999). It succeeded in this instance,
and the results help demonstrate that affective empathy can
indeed be increased through practice.
Alongside practice, research also suggests that affective
empathy can also be increased through affect arousal. As
mentioned earlier, emotional contagion appears to underlie
empathic concern; thus, certain emotional states may trigger
subsequent affective empathy (see Forgas, 2001). For example, Mallinckrodt et al. (2013; Study 1) found that an attachment security prime (i.e., imagine a loved one coming to
your assistance) contributed to a small increase in participants empathic feelings beyond those engendered by a positive affect prime (i.e., imagine that you won the lottery). This
study did not include a no-prime control group, but previous
research suggests that positive affect itself may also increase
affective empathy (Nelson, 2009). Affective empathy has
also been observed to trigger additional affective empathy
with respect to a second target (Cargile, 2016). Specifically,
Downloaded from by guest on November 22, 2016
3
Cargile
this study found that an emotional video about a boy with
cancer increased participants’ affective empathy for the boy
(relative to a neutral video) which, in turn, engendered additional affective empathy for an African American man
recounting a true story of discrimination.
Just as some forms of positive affect have been found to
increase affective empathy, so too have some forms of negative affect. For example, hypothesizing that personal pain
would facilitate other-pain empathy, Xiao, Zhu, and Luo
(2015; Study 1) exposed participants to ice-induced physical
pain. Results showed that participants in the pain group
reported slightly higher levels of state empathy (including
affective empathy) than those in a no-pain, control group.
Similarly, negative affect induced by psychosocial stress has
been found to engender a small-to-moderate increase in emotional empathy for people pictured in emotional social scenes
(Wolf et al., 2015). The explanation is that elevated levels of
affective empathy may be the result of a prosocial-behaviorafter-stress process (von Dawans, Fischbacher, Kirschbaum,
Fehr, & Heinrichs, 2012). Thus, although it is still the case
that we know relatively little about reliably enhancing affective empathy, this recent research adds to our understanding
and suggests several potential methods that merit additional
investigation.
Given the above-described candidate methods to enhance
affective empathy, it is worth noting that not all are easily
(e.g., professional nonviolent communication training) or
ethically (e.g., personal pain) implemented. One method,
however, shows promise as a convenient intervention: the
emotional video. Emotional videos have been used in the lab,
in classrooms, and across cultures to great effect (e.g.,
Hagemann et al., 1999; von Leupoldt et al., 2007). Provided
this, as well as the mediated impact that one video has already
demonstrated (Cargile, 2016), the aim of the present research
is to further investigate the effect of this brief emotional
video on empathic concern for a secondary other. Specifically,
this article will address (a) whether this effect can be replicated across different educational settings (i.e., in a classroom setting and online) with different participant
populations, (b) whether the effect persists when relevant
covariates are controlled, and (c) whether the effect degrades
over time.
Study 1
To address the above-listed questions, Study 1 was designed
to replicate the previous findings of mediated impact for an
emotional video in a classroom setting (Cargile, 2016).
Unlike the prior study, however, the present one engaged relevant controls and conditions to help ensure that any difference in empathic concern for the secondary other was best
explained by affect arousal, and not by some other mechanism. Specifically, this study controlled for dispositional
empathic concern, as well as perceptions of police racial
bias—an individual difference variable directly relevant to
the stories told by the secondary others (see the Appendix).
In addition, situational empathic concern was assessed in
relation to two different (secondary) others at 2 different
times to detect the possible degradation of effect.
Although this study was not designed to identify the specific mechanism of affect arousal (i.e., no physiological data
were collected), there are several possibilities, which all presumably degrade over time. For example, the emotional
video used here has been demonstrated to increase viewers’
levels of oxytocin (Barraza & Zak, 2009)—a neurohormone
with robust links to empathy (Hurlemann et al., 2010;
Rodrigues, Saslow, Garcia, John, & Keltner, 2009). If oxytocin were the mechanism of effect, it should fade entirely after
3 min (Zak, 2012). Alternatively, if the affective impact
depended upon short-term memory, this too should decay
(Ricker, Vergauwe, & Cowan, 2014) or be subject to interference (Lewandowsky, Oberauer, & Brown, 2009) over a short
period of time. It is thus important to establish whether the
hypothesized effect disappears after 10 min or whether it
unexpectedly endures.
With the above-described aims and design, Study 1 tested
the following two hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1: Participants shown the emotional video
will report greater empathic concern (relative to control
group participants) for a secondary other that is both
mediated by empathic arousal and which is not explained
by correlated individual differences.
Hypothesis 2: The controlled, mediated effect of the
emotional video on empathic concern for secondary others will be significant for the assessment made immediately after showing the video and non-significant for the
assessment made approximately 10 min later.
Method
Participants and Procedures
Participants were 118 undergraduate students at a large urban
university in the Western United States, recruited in class to
take part on a voluntary basis. Participants reported a mean
age of 22.03 (SD = 2.11) and included 43 males and 73
females (two declined to state) from a variety of racial/ethnic
backgrounds (31 Caucasian, 43 Hispanic, 23 Asian, 10
African American, 5 mixed ethnicity, 3 “Other,” and 3
declined to state). After signing a statement of informed consent, participants completed demographic items and two trait
measures in a brief survey packet (i.e., empathic concern and
perceptions of police bias), after which they were randomly
assigned to view either the control (n = 65) or experimental
(n = 53) version of the video.
Following this, the control group was excused from the
lecture hall while the experimental group viewed the video
clip, listened to Speaker 1’s story, and completed measures
of state empathic concern. Afterward, the experimental
Downloaded from by guest on November 22, 2016
4
SAGE Open
group was excused, and the control group engaged in identical procedures—except that they were shown the control
version of the video. Finally, after approximately 10 min had
passed, the experimental group returned to the classroom
and, together, both groups listened to Speaker 2’s story and
completed a measure of state empathic concern. Following
this protocol meant that the control group was provided only
an approximate 4-min gap between their evaluations of
Speaker 1 and Speaker 2, whereas the experimental group
was provided 10 min. This unbalanced designed was deemed
suitable because the null impact of the control video was not
expected to change in relation to the time gap.
Materials and Measures
Video stimuli. Because they have been successfully used in
studies of affective empathy (Cargile, 2016) and subsequent altruism (Barraza, Alexander, Beavin, Terris, & Zak,
2015; Barraza & Zak, 2009), the experimental (i.e., emotional) and control (i.e., non-emotional) videos used here
were clips edited from a brief feature produced by St. Jude
Children’s Research Hospital. Both videos portray the
father of a 2-year-old boy who is dying of brain cancer.
However, the experimental video (79 s duration) includes
scenes of the child in the hospital and the father who is
nearly brought to tears, whereas the control video (56 s
duration) includes scenes of the child at a zoo with no
mention of his illness.
As described earlier, affective empathy includes both selforiented (i.e., personal distress) and other-oriented (i.e.,
empathic concern) reactions. The experimental video used
here has been shown to increase both types of affective
empathy in participants relative to the control video (Barraza
& Zak, 2009). However, only other-oriented affective empathy has been linked to subsequent altruistic behavior (Barraza
et al., 2015) and additional affective empathy with respect to
a second target (Cargile, 2016). Thus, although the experimental video potentially engenders a complex emotional
reaction, the focus here was on manipulating and studying
the effects of other-oriented affective empathy (i.e., empathic
concern).
Stories of police racial bias. As this study focused on enhancing empathic concern, a relevant question became, “empathic
concern for whom?” Although there are many secondary
others for whom enhanced empathic concern could be
assessed, I chose individuals with stories most relevant to
ongoing racial tensions in the United States: two African
American men recounting true stories of discrimination and
abuse at the hands of police officers. Frank and Reginald’s
stories were taken from a video series of oral histories (The
Southern Coalition for Social Justice, n.d.). To make the storytellers as comparable as possible, only the audio was used,
and both stories were edited to approximately 2 min in length
(see the appendix).
Study measures. Following Barraza and Zak’s (2009) protocol,
empathic feelings for the boy (EFB) with cancer (i.e., otheroriented affective empathy) experienced in response to the
video presentation were assessed by six adjectives (sympathetic, compassion, moved, tender, warm, soft-hearted) used
especially in economic research and derived from A. Smith
(1759/2006). Participants rated these adjectives from 0 (did
not feel this way at all) to 4 (felt this way very much; α = .94).
Empathic concern for the storyteller was measured using
seven items adapted from the Empathic Concern subscale of
the most widely used measure of empathy—the Interpersonal
Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1983). The IRI is a measure of
trait empathy and the seven-item Empathic Concern subscale
was used as intended, without alteration, at the outset of
study participation (α = .77). Previous research indicates that
this subscale is the best, if not the sole (e.g., Krueger et al.,
2013) predictor of state empathic concern among the four
IRI subscales (i.e., Perspective Taking, Fantasy, Personal
Distress, and Empathic Concern). As a result, only this subscale was used here. In addition, following the lead of others
who have measured state empathic concern (e.g., Xiao et al.,
2015), the seven IRI trait items were slightly modified to
measure empathy for the storytellers; for example, the item
“I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me” became “I had tender, concerned feelings for
the speaker.” The resulting state version of the Empathic
Concern subscale exhibited even greater reliability than the
trait version across both speakers (Speaker 1, α = .88;
Speaker 2, α = .92).
Finally, to control for participant beliefs about police discrimination that would most likely affect their empathic concern for the specific speakers featured here, four items were
used to measure trait perceptions of police racial bias (PPRB;
Weitzer & Tuch, 2005). Unfortunately, the four-item measure
exhibited poor reliability (α = .62). Although dropping the
reverse-coded item would improve reliability (α = .68), all
four items were retained to maintain consistency with respect
to Study 2 (in which the measure exhibited high reliability).
Finally, as noted in the literature review, age and gender are
often associated with greater empathic concern, so they were
assessed as potential covariates alongside both PPRB and
trait empathic concern. Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations for all study variables are presented in Table 1.
Results
As indicated in Table 1, all potential covariates except age
(i.e., PPRB, trait empathic concern, and gender) were significantly correlated with empathic concern for Speaker 1
(ECS1). Consequently, age was dropped from the analysis,
and mediation models were estimated both with and without
covariates. A series of independent sample t tests indicated
that although there were no significant differences between
the control and experimental groups with respect to PPRB
and gender, the experimental group had higher levels of trait
Downloaded from by guest on November 22, 2016
5
Cargile
Table 1. Correlations Among and Descriptive Statistics for Study 1 Variables.
M (SD), range
ECS1
ECS2
EFB
EC
PPRB
Gender
Age
5.73 (1.09)
3.29-7.00
5.56 (1.18)
1.43-7.00
2.76 (1.01)
0-4.00
5.46 (0.86)
2.86-7.00
5.36 (1.06)
3.00-7.00
1.63 (0.49)
1.00-2.00
22.03 (2.11)
18-31
ECS1
ECS2
EFB
EC
PPRB
Gender
Age
.73**
.45**
.53**
.26**
.23*
−.02
.34**
.39**
.23*
.15
.02
.61**
.08
.21*
.11
.26**
.32**
.14
.12
.04
−.12
Note. For Study 1, ns range from 116 to 118 due to occasional missing data. ECS1 = empathic concern for Speaker 1; ECS2 = empathic concern for
Speaker 2; EFB = empathic feelings for the boy; EC = trait empathic concern; PPRB = perception of police racial bias.
*p < .05. **p < .01.
empathic concern (n = 53, M = 5.68, SD = 0.87) than the
control group, n = 65, M = 5.29, SD = 0.82; t(116) = 2.55, p
= .012, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [.08, .71]. For this
reason, trait empathic concern was never excluded as a
covariate in the analyses.
To test whether the emotional video had a mediated effect
on ECS1, Model 4 in SPSS PROCESS (Hayes, 2013) was
estimated using unstandardized coefficients and bootstrapping with 10,000 resamples (including only trait empathic
concern as a covariate). The emotional video was found to
influence EFB (b = .65, SE = .14, p = .000, 95% CI = [.36,
.92]), which in turn affected ECS1 (b = .24, SE = .12, p =
.041, 95% CI = [.010, .470]). The model did not produce a
significant direct effect of the emotional video on ECS1 (b =
−.089, SE = .19, p = .64, 95% CI = [−.47, .29]), but did indicate a significant indirect effect (b = .15, SE = .084, 95% CI
= [.029, .374]). When PPRB and gender were included as
covariates, the non-significant result (i.e., video direct effect
on ECS1, b = −.092, SE = .19, p = .63, 95% CI = [−.48, .29]),
as well as the significant results remained unchanged (i.e.,
video effect on EFB, b = .67, SE = .14, p = .000, 95% CI =
[.38, .95]; EFB effect on ECS1, b = .26, SE = .12, p = .028,
95% CI = [.030, .498]; and video indirect effect on ECS1; b
= .18, SE = .092, 95% CI = [.022, .385]).
The same approach was used to assess the impact of the
emotional video on empathic concern for Speaker 2 (ECS2),
who was evaluated approximately 10 min after seeing the
video. In this case (and controlling only for trait empathic
concern), EFB did not affect ECS2 (b = .21, SE = .13, p =
.11, 95% CI = [−.055, .489]). Consequently, the emotional
video had neither a significant direct (b = .11, SE = .23, p
= .64, 95% CI = [−.34, .56]) or indirect (b = .14, SE = .09,
95% CI = [−.009, .373]) effect on empathic concern for
the speaker. When PPRB and gender were included as
covariates, the indirect effect of the video on empathic concern for the speaker remained non-significant (b = .16, SE =
.10, 95% CI = [−.012, .392]).
Discussion
This study replicated a small but significant indirect effect of
the emotional video on empathic concern for a secondary
other found in earlier research (Cargile, 2016). Moreover, it
confirmed both Hypotheses 1 and 2 by finding both that this
effect persisted when controlling for relevant covariates and
that the effect diminished over time. Despite the fact that
experimental and control group participants possessed
unequal levels of dispositional empathic concern, the use of
covariates in this study has helped confirm the first hypothesis by demonstrating a mediated effect caused by the video
and not by the measured individual differences. In addition,
these results also confirmed the second hypothesis by demonstrating a degradation of this mediated effect over an
approximate 10-min period. This suggests that affect arousal
is the mechanism likely responsible for the video’s effect on
speaker empathic concern. Even so, it is worth noting that
the size and significance of the effect degraded only minimally over this period.
Although this study successfully addressed questions
about the source and time frame of this mediated effect, it is
important to determine whether this effect can be replicated
in other pedagogical contexts, with different participant populations. Specifically, as more learning and training shifts
from traditional classrooms to online environments, an emotional video may have less (or perhaps more) success in
arousing affect and engendering subsequent empathic concern. In addition, it is worth assessing the generalizability of
the effect shown here; will it be observed among a less
Downloaded from by guest on November 22, 2016
6
SAGE Open
Table 2. Correlations Among and Descriptive Statistics for Study 2 Variables.
M (SD), range
ECS1
EFB
EC
PPRB
Gender
Age
4.57 (1.34)
1.33-6.43
2.85 (1.15)
0-4.00
5.22 (1.59)
1.00-7.00
4.82 (1.62)
1.00-7.00
1.41 (0.49)
1.00-2.00
35.01 (10.08)
20-67
ECS1
EFB
EC
PPRB
Gender
Age
.54**
.56**
.23**
.24**
−.11
.69**
.24**
.17*
−.08
.09
.19*
−.02
.04
−.01
.16*
Note. For Study 2, n = 145. All variables are scored such that larger values indicate increased levels of the construct. ECS1 = empathic concern for
Speaker 1; ECS2 = empathic concern for Speaker 2; EFB = empathic feelings for the boy; EC = trait empathic concern; PPRB = perception of police racial
bias. Gender: 1 = male; 2 = female.
*p < .05. **p < .01.
ethnically diverse and older participant population? To
address these questions, a second study was conducted.
Study 2
As described above, Study 2 was designed to reassess the first
hypothesis in an online environment with a different participant population. To do this, the following method was engaged.
Method
Participants were 145 adults living in the United States and
recruited via Amazon MTurk to participate in the study in
exchange for payment. The study was hosted online and
administered via Qualtrics. Participants reported a mean age
of 35.01 (SD = 10.08) and included 85 males and 60 females,
85% of whom identified as Caucasian (124 Caucasian, 4
Hispanic, 6 Asian, 8 African American, 2 mixed ethnicity, 1
“Other”). After completing a statement of informed consent,
participants completed demographic items and the two trait
measures (i.e., empathic concern, α = .96; and four-item perceptions of police bias, α = .91), after which they were randomly assigned to view either the control (n = 61) or
experimental (n = 84) version of the video. After viewing the
video, participants reported their EFB using the same sixitem measure as in Study 1 (α = .98) and then immediately
listened to the audio recording of Speaker 1 (Frank) featured
in the first study. Finally, they completed the seven-item state
empathic concern measure in relation to Speaker 1 (α = .81).
Results
As before, all potential covariates except age (i.e., PPRB,
trait empathic concern, and gender) were significantly correlated with ECS1 (see Table 2). Consequently, age was
again dropped from the analysis, and mediation models were
again estimated both with and without covariates. Unlike
Study 1, a series of independent sample t tests indicated that
there were no significant differences between the control and
experimental groups with respect to PPRB, gender, or trait
empathic concern; thus, no statistical controls were implemented in the model without covariates.
To test whether the emotional video had a mediated effect
on ECS1, Model 4 in SPSS PROCESS (Hayes, 2013) was
estimated using unstandardized coefficients and bootstrapping with 10,000 resamples. The emotional video was found
to influence EFB (b = .46, SE = .19, p = .016, 95% CI = [.088,
.839]), which in turn affected ECS1 (b = .62, SE = .08, p =
.000, 95% CI = [.45, .79]). The model did not produce a significant direct effect of the emotional video on ECS1 (b =
.097, SE = .20, p = .62, 95% CI = [−.29, .49]), but did indicate
a significant indirect effect (b = .29, SE = .13, 95% CI = [.074,
.578]). When PPRB, gender, and trait empathic concern were
included as covariates, the non-significant result (i.e., video
direct effect on ECS1, b = .25, SE = .19, p = .19, 95% CI =
[−.12, .63]), as well as the significant results remained
unchanged (i.e., video effect on EFB, b = .50, SE = .13, p =
.000, 95% CI = [.23, .76]; EFB effect on ECS1, b = .24, SE =
.12, p = .044, 95% CI = [.007, .466]; and video indirect effect
on ECS1, b = .12, SE = .070, 95% CI = [.006, .288]).
Discussion
Study 2 replicated the small but significant indirect effect of
the emotional video on empathic concern for a secondary
other, this time in an online context with a predominantly
White, non-student sample. The mediated path in the uncontrolled model indicated that this video intervention increased
participant empathic concern scores about one third of a
point (b = .29). Although the size of this effect was reduced
Downloaded from by guest on November 22, 2016
7
Cargile
in the controlled model, it nevertheless remained statistically
significant, thereby indicating that individual differences
correlated with empathic concern cannot fully explain the
observed differences in participants’ empathic reactions to
Frank’s story of race-based discrimination.
General Discussion
Five years ago, Lam et al. (2011) noted that very little was
known about reliably increasing affective empathy in students
and trainees. Since that time, research has pointed to several
different methods that can increase empathic concern through
practice, negative affect arousal, or positive affect arousal.
Despite the uniformly small effect sizes of such interventions,
the present research sought to assess the reliability and potential boundary conditions of one such intervention—a brief
emotional video featuring a boy diagnosed with cancer.
Study 1 demonstrated that the video succeeded in indirectly increasing empathic concern for an African American
victim of police abuse among an ethnically diverse student
sample. When controlling for three relevant trait characteristics (i.e., perceptions of police racial bias, gender, and trait
empathic concern), participants who viewed the emotional
video reported more EFB with cancer, and greater subsequent empathic concern for the victim of police abuse, compared with participants who saw an unemotional version of
the video. When, approximately 10 min later, participants
rated their empathic concern for a second African American
victim of police abuse, the difference across conditions was
marginally non-significant. This seems to suggest that the
potency of positive affect arousal degrades over time, though
not as much as anticipated. This merely marginal degradation suggests that the potency of positive affect arousal may
be somewhat sustainable.
By finding the same mediated effect in the same classroom
setting as previous research (Cargile, 2016), Study 1 demonstrated the reliability of this emotional video to engender
empathic concern for secondary others. In addition, analysis
of covariance indicated that individual differences could not,
by themselves, account for all of the between-group variation.
The use of control variables here thus further implicated the
emotional video as a source of the increased empathic concern. This, however, still left open the question about whether
the effect of the video would replicate in other settings and
among other populations. To address this question, Study 2
was conducted online among a population of near-racially
homogeneous adults. Again, the results were similar, thereby
establishing the consistency of this small effect.
Together, these studies clearly demonstrate that increasing empathic feelings for a boy with cancer through use of an
emotional video subsequently leads to a slight increase in
empathic concern for an African American victim of police
discrimination. The effect of this brief, convenient, positiveaffect intervention is in line with other practice-based and
negative-affect interventions. Five years ago, we knew very
little about the trainability of affective empathy. Today, we
know that there are perhaps several mechanisms by which to
engender it and that the impact of these interventions appears
to be limited.
Despite the limited size of this positive-affect intervention,
the duration of impact may be longer than anticipated.
Although the specific mechanism of affect arousal is unknown
here, it was hypothesized not to endure beyond a 10-min
period because the possibilities that were initially imagined
(i.e., oxytocin, short-term memory) degrade, decay, or are
interfered with in relatively quick succession. Thus, although
Hypothesis 2 was confirmed (i.e., the effect was indeed insignificant at Time 2), questions remain. In particular, it is worth
considering what exactly constitutes the state of positive
affect engendered here and, relatedly, how long it may last.
Physiologically speaking, positive affect is associated
with many different body states. It has been tied to lower
systolic blood pressure (Steptoe, Gibson, Hamer, & Wardle,
2007), increased heart rate variability (Kop et al., 2011),
diurnal cortisol decline (Lai et al., 2005), and increases in
secretory immunoglobulin A (Hucklebridge et al., 2000),
among other indices (see Dockray & Steptoe, 2010). Thus, it
is possible that the emotional video engendered a host of
body state changes that endured up to 10 min.
In addition, the video may have also served as a prime for
subsequent empathic responding that was not subject to the
limits of short-term memory. As Custers and Aarts (2005)
note, “positive affect [primes play] a key role in nonconscious goal pursuit” (p. 129), and consciously perceived
primes can show effects after a 24-hr period (Srull & Wyer,
1980). Thus, it is possible that the video engendered a mode
of empathic responding that was accessible both immediately after the presentation, as well as 10 min later. Future
research should address plausible mechanisms of the somewhat enduring effect seen here, as well as investigate possibilities of increasing its effect size. Although the small effect
was handily achieved (i.e., via a brief video) and is consistent
with other affective empathy interventions, it would be beneficial to augment it, perhaps via longer presentations, different subject matter, and/or different message characteristics
(e.g., music, editing features, etc.).
Finally, as with any study, there are limitations to consider. Although empathic concern can be measured behaviorally (e.g., Moran & Diamond, 2008) and physiologically
(e.g., Silva & Gonçalves, 2011), only self-report measures
were used here. In addition, although the two testimonies
about police racial bias used here were comparable in all
respects, they were nevertheless two different speakers providing two different testimonies. Thus, it is possible that
speaker differences triggered the differences in empathic
concern, and not the difference in time of presentation. It is
also plausible that some variety of compassion or distress
fatigue (Klimecki & Singer, 2012) could have diminished
empathic concern for the second speaker, as participants had
already heard similar story moments earlier. Despite these
Downloaded from by guest on November 22, 2016
8
SAGE Open
limitations, the two studies described here have nevertheless
succeeded in further outlining the promise and possibility of
engendering empathic concern for others, in others.
Appendix
Speaker 1 (Frank’s) Testimony
Well, I was on my way to my second job. Once I arrived there and
exited my car. I happened, I noticed a police car. He came around
to the driver’s side, told me to come out the car. I was like, “For
what? What do I do wrong?” He was like, “Step outside the car. I
gotta take precautions. I gotta put you in cuffs.” And I was like
“For what? What did I do wrong?” Then he was like, “Put your
hands on the car. Spread your legs.” He finally put me in handcuffs; then he told me to lay down on the ground. I said “For
what?” He forcibly pushed me, my whole body on the ground,
lay me all the way on the ground. And that’s when back up had
came and the officer had put the taser to my neck. When I guess I
was completely down, that’s when the officer mushed me down,
you know, dirty up my face. He never told me what I did.
He kept saying, “Is your name such and such?” I was like,
“No, that’s not my name. Why you keep calling me that?
That’s not . . . ” He said some name, I don’t remember the
name, but it wasn’t mine and he had my license so it show
who I was. I think if you stop me, I should be able to ask you
why you stop me and get an answer. So now you just racially
profile me because I’m Black. It’s not the first time. It’s like
every time an officer see me, they want to stop me. How they
searching now it’s like you getting sexually harassed, humiliated, and everything ’cuz now you got everybody coming
out, looking . . . Now you done brandished my name. You
done tarnished my name. Now, everybody’s looking at me,
“oh! he a criminal!”
Speaker 2 (Reginald’s) Testimony
Went to visit my mother and grandmother as I did every day.
I saw the officer ride by. I gave my mother the keys and a
kiss. I got in my SUV, I turned around and I proceeded to go
home. Put my turn signal on, pulled up in the front of the
store, and I had the blue lights on me. The officer got out . .
. I got out of my vehicle and the officer got out his vehicle
and asked me to get back in and I asked him why am I being
stopped and he said get back in the vehicle. And I asked him
why he stopped me again and he told me “shut up!” I think
I have a right to ask you why am I being stopped. He stood
there for a minute and he say, “You know you’re comin’ out
of a known drug area?” I was like, “My mother live in that
neighborhood” And I asked him, “What does that mean?
Everybody ride through a drug neighborhood is subjected to
being stopped?” “You know, you didn’t see me make no
hand transactions, nobody walked up to my vehicle, you
know there’s just no reason for it.” So, I went to light my
cigarette and he grabbed my left arm and pulled it out the
door, when my arm was being bent back toward the back of
my vehicle. And I asked him, “Why you putting your hands
on me?” And I asked him what was my badge number and
before I could get out “badge number,” I was tased. And I
was looking the opposite way, you know.
It felt like I was stopped because I was a Black man coming out of a known drug area. So, uh, to me that’s racial profiling. There was police brutality happened to me for nothing.
I didn’t see the taser coming or nothing, I just felt it. And like
I said, I urinated on myself, um, that was humiliating because
the peoples at the store was watching, and I’m sure they
could see. It was just a humiliating, probably the most humiliating day of my life.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Sasha Kuczynski for her help with
data collection, data entry, and proofing. Additionally, I would like
to thank Dr. Paul Zak for sharing the stimulus and control videos
used in his research.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or
authorship of this article.
References
Bakker, A. B., Shimazu, A., Demerouti, E., Shimada, K., &
Kawakami, N. (2011). Crossover of work engagement among
Japanese couples: Perspective taking by both partners. Journal
of Occupational Health Psychology, 16, 112-125.
Barraza, J. A., Alexander, V., Beavin, L. E., Terris, E. T., & Zak,
P. J. (2015). The heart of the story: Peripheral physiology during narrative exposure predicts charitable giving. Biological
Psychology, 105, 138-143.
Barraza, J. A., & Zak, P. J. (2009). Empathy toward strangers triggers oxytocin release and subsequent generosity. Annals of the
New York Academy of Sciences, 1167, 182-189.
Batson, C. D. (2009a). These things called empathy: Eight related but
distinct phenomena. In J. Decety & W. Ickes (Eds.), The social
neuroscience of empathy (pp. 3-16). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Batson, C. D. (2009b). Two forms of perspective taking: Imagining
how another feels and imagining how you would feel. In K. D.
Markman, W. M. P. Klein, & J. A. Suhr (Eds.), Handbook of
imagination and mental simulation (pp. 267-279). New York,
NY: Psychology Press.
Batson, C. D., Chang, J., Orr, R., & Rowland, J. (2002). Empathy,
attitudes, and action: Can feeling for a member of a stigmatized
group motivate one to help the group? Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1656-1666.
Batson, C. D., Eklund, J. H., Chermok, V. L., Hoyt, J. L., & Ortiz,
B. G. (2007). An additional antecedent of empathic concern: Valuing the welfare of the person in need. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 65-74.
Batson, C. D., Lishner, D. A., & Stocks, E. L. (2015). The empathy–
altruism hypothesis. In D. A. Schroeder & W. G. Graziano (Eds.),
Downloaded from by guest on November 22, 2016
9
Cargile
The Oxford handbook of prosocial behavior (pp. 259-281). New
York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Bernhardt, B. C., & Singer, T. (2012). The neural basis of empathy.
Annual Review of Neuroscience, 35, 1-23.
Birnie, K., Speca, M., & Carlson, L. E. (2010). Exploring self-compassion and empathy in the context of mindfulness-based stress
reduction (MBSR). Stress & Health, 26, 359-371.
Block-Lerner, J., Adair, C., Plumb, J., Rhatigan, D. L., & Orsillo,
S. (2007). The case for mindfulness-based approaches in the
cultivation of empathy: Does nonjudgmental, present-moment
awareness increase capacity for perspective-taking and empathic
concern? Journal of Marital & Family Therapy, 33, 501-516.
Bluck, S., Baron, J. M., Ainsworth, S. A., Gesselman, A. N., &
Gold, K. L. (2013). Eliciting empathy for adults in chronic pain
through autobiographical memory sharing. Applied Cognitive
Psychology, 27, 81-90.
Bozarth, J. D. (2009). Rogerian empathy in an organismic theory: A
way of being. In J. Decety & W. Ickes (Eds.), The social neuroscience of empathy (pp. 101-112). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cargile, A. C. (2016). Can empathy improve concern for secondary
group members? Testing an emotionally engaging video intervention. Communication Research Reports, 33(3), 265-268.
doi: 10.1080/08824096.2016.1186623
Cassels, T. G., Chan, S., & Chung, W. (2010). The role of culture in
affective empathy: Cultural and bicultural differences. Journal
of Cognition and Culture, 10, 309-326.
Castillo, R. J. (1997). Culture & mental illness: A client-centered
approach. Belmont, CA: Thomson Brooks/Cole.
Custers, R., & Aarts, H. (2005). Positive affect as implicit motivator: On the nonconscious operation of behavioral goals.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 129-142.
Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 113-126.
Decety, J., & Jackson, P. L. (2004). The functional architecture
of human empathy. Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience
Reviews, 3, 71-100.
Dockray, S., & Steptoe, A. (2010). Positive affect and psychobiological processes. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 35, 69-75.
Eisenberg, N. (2010). Empathy-related responding: Links with
self-regulation, moral judgment, and moral behavior. In M.
Mikulincer & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Prosocial motives, emotions
and behavior: The better angels of our nature (pp. 129-148).
Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Eisenberg, N., Eggum, N. D., & Di Giunta, L. (2010). Empathyrelated responding: Associations with prosocial behavior,
aggression, and intergroup relations. Social Issues and Policy
Review, 4, 143-180.
Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., Miller, P. A., Fultz, J., Shell, R.,
Mathy, R. M., & Reno, R. R. (1989). Relation of sympathy and
personal distress to prosocial behavior: A multimethod study.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 55-66.
Forgas, J. P. (2001). Feeling and thinking: The role of affect in
social cognition. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Hagemann, D., Naumann, E., Maier, S., Becker, G., Lürken, A.,
& Bartussek, D. (1999). The assessment of affective reactivity using films: Validity, reliability and sex differences.
Personality and Individual Differences, 26, 627-639.
Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1992). Primitive
emotional contagion. In M. S. Clark (Ed.), Emotion and social
behavior (pp. 151-177). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Hayes, A. F. (2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and
conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach.
New York: The Guilford Press.
Hein, G., Silani, G., Preuschoff, K., Batson, C. D., & Singer, T.
(2010). Neural responses to ingroup and outgroup members’
suffering predict individual differences in costly helping.
Neuron, 68, 149-160.
Hucklebridge, F., Lambert, S., Clow, A., Warburton, D., Evans, P.
D., & Sherwood, N. (2000). Modulation of secretory immunoglobulin A in saliva; response to manipulation of mood.
Biological Psychology, 53, 25-35.
Hume, D. (1978). A treatise of human nature. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press. (Original work published 1739)
Hurlemann, R., Patin, A., Onur, O. A., Cohen, M. X., Baumgartner,
T., Metzler, S., . . . Kendrick, K. M. (2010). Oxytocin enhances
amygdala-dependent, socially reinforced learning and emotional
empathy in humans. The Journal of Neuroscience, 30, 4999-5007.
Kim, S.-J., & Kou, X. (2014). Not all empathy is equal: How dispositional empathy affects charitable giving. Journal of Nonprofit
& Public Sector Marketing, 26, 312-334.
Klimecki, O., & Singer, T. (2012). Empathic distress fatigue rather
than compassion fatigue? Integrating findings from empathy
research in psychology and social neuroscience. In B. Oakley,
A. Knafo, G. Madhavan, & D. S. Wilson (Eds.), Pathological
altruism (pp. 368-384). New York, NY: Springer.
Konrath, S. H., Falk, E., Fuhrel-Forbis, A., Liu, M., Swain, J.,
Tolman, R., . . . Walton, M. (2015). Can text messages increase
empathy and prosocial behavior? The development and initial
validation of text to connect. PLoS ONE, 10, e0137585.
Kop, W. J., Synowski, S. J., Newell, M. E., Schmidt, L. A.,
Waldstein, S. R., & Fox, N. A. (2011). Autonomic nervous
system reactivity to positive and negative mood induction: The
role of acute psychological responses and frontal electrocortical activity. Biological Psychology, 86, 230-238.
Krueger, F., Parasuraman, R., Moody, L., Twieg, P., de Visser,
E., McCabe, K., . . .Lee, M. R. (2013). Oxytocin selectively
increases perceptions of harm for victims but not the desire to
punish offenders of criminal offenses. Social Cognitive and
Affective Neuroscience, 8, 494-498.
Lai, J. C., Evans, P. D., Ng, S. H., Chong, A. M., Siu, O. T., Chan,
C. L., . . . Chan, C. C. (2005). Optimism, positive affectivity,
and salivary cortisol. British Journal of Health Psychology, 10,
467-484.
Lam, T. C. M., Kolomitro, K., & Alamparambil, F. C. (2011).
Empathy training: Methods, evaluation practices, and validity.
Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation, 7, 162-200.
Lebowitz, M. S., & Dovidio, J. F. (2015). Implications of emotion
regulation strategies for empathic concern, social attitudes, and
helping behavior. Emotion, 15, 187-194.
Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Brown, G. D. (2009). No temporal decay in verbal short-term memory. Trends in Cognitive
Sciences, 13, 120-126.
Lipps, T. (1935). Empathy, inner imitation, and sense-feelings. In
M. Rader (Ed.), A modern book of aesthetics: An anthology
(pp. 374-382). New York, NY: Henry Hold. (Original work
published 1903)
Lishner, D. A., Batson, C. D., & Huss, E. (2011). Tenderness and sympathy: Distinct empathic emotions elicited by different forms of
need. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 614-625.
Mallinckrodt, B., McNett, A. M. S., Celebi, E., Birks, K. M., Tsai, C.L., & Williams, B. E. (2013). Cognitive primes for attachment
Downloaded from by guest on November 22, 2016
10
SAGE Open
security can increase cultural empathy, but also interact negatively
with attachment anxiety. Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology,
32, 1013-1039.
Masten, C. L., Morelli, S. A., & Eisenberger, N. I. (2011). An fMRI
investigation of empathy for “social pain”and subsequent prosocial behavior. Neuroimage, 55, 381-388.
Mikulincer, M. E., & Shaver, P. R. (2010). Prosocial motives,
emotions, and behavior: The better angels of our nature.
Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Moran, G., & Diamond, G. (2008). Generating nonnegative attitudes among parents of depressed adolescents: The power
of empathy, concern, and positive regard. Psychotherapy
Research, 18, 97-107.
Nelson, D. W. (2009). Feeling good and open-minded: The impact
of positive affect on cross cultural empathic responding. The
Journal of Positive Psychology, 4, 53-63.
Nosek, M., Gifford, E., & Kober, B. (2014). Nonviolent
Communication (NVC) training increases empathy in baccalaureate nursing students: A mixed method study. Journal of
Nursing Education and Practice, 4, 1-15.
Ricker, T. J., Vergauwe, E., & Cowan, N. (2014). Decay theory of
immediate memory: From Brown (1958) to today (2014). The
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69, 1969-1995.
Rodrigues, S. M., Saslow, L. R., Garcia, N., John, O. P., & Keltner,
D. (2009). Oxytocin receptor genetic variation relates to empathy and stress reactivity in humans. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, 106, 21437-21441.
Rosan, P. J. (2012). The poetics of intersubjective life: Empathy
and the other. The Humanistic Psychologist, 40, 115-135.
Rosenberg, M. B. (1999). Nonviolent communication: A language
of compassion. Del Mar, CA: PuddleDancer Press.
Scheler, M. (1954). The nature of sympathy (P. Heath, Trans.).
London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Schnell, K., Bluschke, S., Konradt, B., & Walter, H. (2011).
Functional relations of empathy and mentalizing: An fMRI
study on the neural basis of cognitive empathy. Neuroimage,
54, 1743-1754.
Seligman, M. E., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005).
Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60, 410-421.
Silva, P. O., & Gonçalves, Ó. F. (2011). Responding empathically: A question of heart, not a question of skin. Applied
Psychophysiological Biofeedback, 36, 201-207.
Singer, T., Snozzi, R., Bird, G., Petrovic, P., Silani, G., Heinrichs,
M., & Dolan, R. J. (2008). Effects of oxytocin and prosocial
behavior on brain responses to direct and vicariously experienced pain. Emotion, 8, 781-791.
Smith, A. (2006). The theory of moral sentiments. Mineola, NY:
Dover Publications. (Original work published 1759)
Smith, K. E., Porges, E. C., Norman, G. J., Connelly, J. J., & Decety,
J. (2014). Oxytocin receptor gene variation predicts empathic
concern and autonomic arousal while perceiving harm to others. Social Neuroscience, 9, 1-9.
The Southern Coalition for Social Justice. (n.d.). Stories of
racial profiling in Durham. Retrieved from https://vimeo.
com/101303607
Srull, T. K., & Wyer, R. S. (1980). Category accessibility and social
perception: Some implications for the study of person memory
and interpersonal judgments. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 38, 841-856.
Stein, E. (1989). On the problem of empathy (W. Stein, Trans.).
Washington, DC: ICS Publications.
Steptoe, A., Gibson, E. L., Hamer, M., & Wardle, J. (2007).
Neuroendocrine and cardiovascular correlates of positive
affect measured by ecological momentary assessment and by
questionnaire. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 32, 56-64.
Stueber, K. R. (2006). Rediscovering empathy: Agency, folk
psychology, and the human sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Sze, J. A., Gyurak, A., Goodkind, M. S., & Levenson, R. W. (2012).
Greater emotional empathy and prosocial behavior in late life.
Emotion, 12, 1129-1140.
Van der Graaff, J., Branje, S., De Wied, M., Hawk, S., Van Lier, P.,
& Meeus, W. (2014). Perspective taking and empathic concern
in adolescence: Gender differences in developmental changes.
Developmental Psychology, 50, 881-888.
Vischer, R. (1994). On the optical sense of form: A contribution to
aesthetics. In H. Mallgrave & E. Ikonomou (Eds.), Empathy,
form, and space (pp. 89-123). Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center.
(Original work published 1873)
von Dawans, B., Fischbacher, U., Kirschbaum, C., Fehr, E., &
Heinrichs, M. (2012). The social dimension of stress reactivity acute stress increases prosocial behavior in humans.
Psychological Science, 23, 651-660.
von Leupoldt, A., Rohde, J., Beregova, A., Thordsen-Sörensen,
I., zur Nieden, J., & Dahme, B. (2007). Films for eliciting
emotional states in children. Behavior Research Methods, 39,
606-609.
Weitzer, R., & Tuch, S. A. (2005). Racially biased policing:
Determinants of citizen perceptions. Social Forces, 83,
1009-1030.
Williams, J. M. G., Watts, F. N., MacLeod, C., & Mathews, A.
(1988). Cognitive psychology and emotional disorders.
Oxford, UK: John Wiley.
Wolf, O. T., Schulte, J. M., Drimalla, H., Hamacher-Dang, T. C.,
Knoch, D., & Dziobek, I. (2015). Enhanced emotional empathy after psychosocial stress in young healthy men. Stress, 18,
631-637.
Woltin, K.-A., Corneille, O., Yzerbyt, V. Y., & Förster, J. (2011).
Narrowing down to open up for other people’s concerns:
Empathic concern can be enhanced by inducing detailed
processing. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47,
418-424.
Xiao, Q., Zhu, Y., & Luo, W.-b (2015). Experiencing physical pain
leads to more sympathetic moral judgments. PLoS ONE, 10,
e0140580.
Yoo, H., Feng, X., & Day, R. D. (2013). Adolescents’ empathy and
prosocial behavior in the family context: A longitudinal study.
Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 42, 1858-1872.
Zak, P. J. (2012). The moral molecule: How trust works. New York,
NY: Random House.
Author Biography
Aaron Castelán Cargile holds a PhD in Communication Studies
(U.C. Santa Barbara). His ongoing particiaption in dialogues about
race have led him to search for humanistic, compassionate, and
pragmatic responses to the challenges of facilitating such interactions. Most recently, his research has appeared in the Journal of
Language and Social Psychology, Race and Social Problems, and
the International Journal of Intercultural Relations.
Downloaded from by guest on November 22, 2016