Topic
Perspective-taking
About: Perspective-taking is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 574 publications have been published within this topic receiving 28410 citations.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
TL;DR: The Perception-Action Model (PAM), together with an understanding of how representations change with experience, can explain the major empirical effects in the literature and can also predict a variety of empathy disorders.
Abstract: There is disagreement in the literature about the exact nature of the phenomenon of empathy. There are emotional, cogni- tive, and conditioning views, applying in varying degrees across species. An adequate description of the ultimate and proximate mecha- nism can integrate these views. Proximately, the perception of an object's state activates the subject's corresponding representations, which in turn activate somatic and autonomic responses. This mechanism supports basic behaviors (e.g., alarm, social facilitation, vicar- iousness of emotions, mother-infant responsiveness, and the modeling of competitors and predators) that are crucial for the reproduc- tive success of animals living in groups. The Perception-Action Model (PAM), together with an understanding of how representations change with experience, can explain the major empirical effects in the literature (similarity, familiarity, past experience, explicit teach- ing, and salience). It can also predict a variety of empathy disorders. The interaction between the PAM and prefrontal functioning can also explain different levels of empathy across species and age groups. This view can advance our evolutionary understanding of empa- thy beyond inclusive fitness and reciprocal altruism and can explain different levels of empathy across individuals, species, stages of de- velopment, and situations.
4,078 citations
TL;DR: A model of empathy that involves parallel and distributed processing in a number of dissociable computational mechanisms is proposed and may be used to make specific predictions about the various empathy deficits that can be encountered in different forms of social and neurological disorders.
Abstract: Empathy accounts for the naturally occurring subjective experience of similarity between the feelings expressed by self and others without loosing sight of whose feelings belong to whom. Empathy involves not only the affective experience of the other person’s actual or inferred emotional state but also some minimal recognition and understanding of another’s emotional state. In light of multiple levels of analysis ranging from developmental psychology, social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and clinical neuropsychology, this article proposes a model of empathy that involves parallel and distributed processing in a number of dissociable computational mechanisms. Shared neural representations, self-awareness, mental flexibility, and emotion regulation constitute the basic macrocomponents of empathy, which are underpinned by specific neural systems. This functional model may be used to make specific predictions about the various empathy deficits that can be encountered in different forms of social and neu...
3,096 citations
TL;DR: Three meaningful factors emerged (perspective taking, compassionate care, and standing in the patient's shoes) to provide support for the construct validity of the empathy scale that was found to be internally consistent with relatively stable scores over time.
Abstract: OBJECTIVE: There is a dearth of empirical research on physician empathy despite its mediating role in patient-physician relationships and clinical outcomes. This study was designed to investigate the components of physician empathy, its measurement properties, and group differences in empathy scores. METHOD: A revised version of the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (with 20 Likert-type items) was mailed to 1,007 physicians affiliated with the Jefferson Health System in the greater Philadelphia region; 704 (70%) responded. Construct validity, reliability of the empathy scale, and the differences on mean empathy scores by physicians’ gender and specialty were examined. RESULTS: Three meaningful factors emerged (perspective taking, compassionate care, and standing in the patient’s shoes) to provide support for the construct validity of the empathy scale that was also found to be internally consistent with relatively stable scores over time. Women scored higher than men to a degree that was nearly signifi...
1,340 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that imagining how the other feels produced empathy, but it also produced personal distress, which has been found to evoke egoistic motivation, and that the two imagine perspectives produced the predicted distinct pattern of emotions, suggesting different motivational consequences.
Abstract: Although often confused, imagining how another feels and imagining how you would feel are two distinct forms of perspective taking with different emotional consequences. The former evokes empathy; the latter, both empathy and distress. To test this claim, undergraduates listened to a (bogus) pilot radio interview with a young woman in serious need. One third were instructed to remain objective while listening; one third, to imagine how the young woman felt; and one third, to imagine how they would feel in her situation. The two imagine perspectives produced the predicted distinct pattern of emotions, suggesting different motivational consequences: Imagining how the other feels produced empathy, which has been found to evoke altruistic motivation; imagining how you would feel produced empathy, but it also produced personal distress, which has been found to evoke egoistic motivation.
1,210 citations
TL;DR: It is suggested that the abilities to understand other people's thoughts and to share their affects display different ontogenetic trajectories reflecting the different developmental paths of their underlying neural structures.
1,137 citations
Related Topics (5)
Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2026 | 2 |
| 2025 | 18 |
| 2024 | 32 |
| 2023 | 72 |
| 2022 | 116 |
| 2021 | 48 |