A stenography of empathy: Toward a consensual model of the empathic process

[en] Empathy has gained popularity in the general population and the scientific world during the past decade. Recently, several researchers found a significant decrease in empathy scores of healthcare students (notably medical students) and recommend promoting empathy skills in several fields of education. The current paper presents a new model of the empathic process: a stenography of empathy compelling scientific data and contemporary conceptions. Indeed, we combined all pioneer researchers’ conceptions of empathy (Davis, Decety, Batson, Preston & de Waal) into an integrative model. This model is centered on the empathizer (i.e., a person observing a target experiencing emotions) and displays how all empathy components are articulated, explaining the individuals’ general functioning and how the process might become dysfunctional. We illustrated applications of the model with three clinical examples (i.e., burnout, psychopathy, and borderline personality disorders) to display how empathy is related to psychopathological symptoms. We believe this new dynamic and sequential model would be helpful in explaining how empathy works, which is of great interest to clinicians, researchers, and academics.

Disciplines :

Theoretical & cognitive psychology

Author, co-author :

Nasello, Julian ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Unités de recherche interfacultaires > Research Unit for a life-Course perspective on Health and Education (RUCHE)

Triffaux, Jean-Marc ; Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Liège - CHU > > Service de psychiatrie

Language :

English

Title :

A stenography of empathy: Toward a consensual model of the empathic process

Publication date :

February 2023

Journal title :

Encéphale (L')

ISSN :

0013-7006

eISSN :

2589-4935

Publisher :

Elsevier BV

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Additional URL :

https://api.elsevier.com/content/article/PII:S001370062300012X?httpAccept=text/xml

Available on ORBi :

since 15 February 2023

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