Can’t get you out of my mind: empathy, distress, and recurring thoughts about a person in need

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• 作者：Eric L. Stocks ; Belén López-Pérez ; Luis V. Oceja
• 关键词：Rumination ; Empathy ; Distress ; Cognition ; Prosocial
• 刊名：Motivation and Emotion
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：41
• 期：1
• 页码：84-95
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Behavioral Science
• 刊物主题：Psychology, general; Personality and Social Psychology; Clinical Psychology;
• 出版者：Springer US
• ISSN：1573-6644
• 卷排序：41

文摘

Research suggests that empathic concern and distress give rise to different patterns of helping behavior. It has been proposed that this difference is caused by the effects of these emotions on recurrent thoughts about the person in need. However, no research has directly investigated this potential explanation. To remedy this, we tested the hypotheses that distress, but not empathic concern, is associated with both anticipated recurring thoughts (Study 1) and experienced recurring thoughts (Study 2) about a victim. We also tested the hypothesis that distress is associated with thoughts about the victim, whereas empathic concern is associated with thoughts about the victim’s situation (Study 3), which is potentially a consequence of the motives associated with each emotion. Lastly, we assessed the causal relations between distress, empathic concern, and recurrent thoughts (Study 4). Overall, results demonstrate a distinctive, and important, pattern of associations among empathic concern, distress, and different forms of recurrent thoughts about the emotion-eliciting stimulus.