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Results for “empathic behavior”

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PubMed2004

[Somatoform disorders--what must the general practitioner know?].

Somatoform disorders are common conditions. Provided that the diagnostic criteria are known, however, they are not difficult to diagnose. In this connection, the family doctor has it within his power, by initiating empathic client-centred (conversation) therapy with the patient, to create a basis for a confidence-building and a long-lasting physician-patient relationship. In addition to a psychotherapeutic intervention or psychodynamic treatment or behavioral treatment, we now have the first positive results of a psychopharmacological treatment regimen with opipramol and the St. John's Wort extract LI 160.

Adult↗

PubMed2007

Social exclusion decreases prosocial behavior.

In 7 experiments, the authors manipulated social exclusion by telling people that they would end up alone later in life or that other participants had rejected them. Social exclusion caused a substantial reduction in prosocial behavior. Socially excluded people donated less money to a student fund, were unwilling to volunteer for further lab experiments, were less helpful after a mishap, and cooperated less in a mixed-motive game with another student. The results did not vary by cost to the self or by recipient of the help, and results remained significant when the experimenter was unaware of condition. The effect was mediated by feelings of empathy for another person but was not mediated by mood, state self-esteem, belongingness, trust, control, or self-awareness. The implication is that rejection temporarily interferes with emotional responses, thereby impairing the capacity for empathic understanding of others, and as a result, any inclination to help or cooperate with them is undermined.

Altruism↗

PubMed2006

Involuntary defection and the evolutionary origins of empathy.

An occasional involuntary defection (IVD)--being unable, rather than unwilling, to donate help to others--is an intrinsic attribute of reciprocal cooperation (2003. J. Theor. Biol. 225-285). In fact, it is easy to see that--barring special circumstances--individuals that can donate help whenever requested do not need help of the same kind from others. That is, it is by no means clear why such individuals should participate in symmetric reciprocity interactions. In this paper, I analyse the consequences of introducing IVD into direct reciprocity modeling and show that a simple form of empathy--not retaliating after being punished for IVD--is a prerequisite for evolutionarily stable cooperation. Furthermore: we will see that the stability of this, empathic retaliator, strategy increases with the number of opportunities for cooperative exchanges in the life of an average individual.

Biological Evolution↗

PubMed1991

[Mood and state of mind].

Man's basic mood is of far greater significance than commonly assumed. It is communicated to his fellow man from afar, by his facial expression, and thus can cast a long shadow upon human relations. As this is an unconscious phenomenon, the pre-existing mood is reconfirmed by each encounter--a self fulfilling prophesy. The realization that a pre-existing mood determines our experience more than the reality of the experience itself is nothing new. It is pointed out in both ancient Greek and far Eastern philosophy, in the Bible, and in modern psychology. Every human being has the ability to influence his mood through self-own awareness. If he fails to do this, his features become frozen and unalterable, like the Person, the mask of the classic Greek theatre. While alterations of mood are considered normal phenomena, depression must be seen as a manifestation of pathological affect, usually accompanied by somatic symptoms. Depressions have been known and described since the dawn of mankind. 15 bis 25% of all depressives commit suicide. They are treated preferably by a combination of pharmaco- and psychotherapy. In the realm of the latter, Beck's Cognitive Therapy has proven to be especially efficacious. As this is a common and dangerous illness, it is very important for every physician to be familiar with it. Not only to save lives by instituting adequate treatment, but to open one's heart and to empathize with the patient, to see in him a brother rather than merely an object of scientific exploration.

Affect↗

PubMed2002

[Schizophrenia and the family: difficulties, burdens, emotions, needs].

Treating patients with schizophrenia mostly in the community causes more problems for the families. Shame, guilt, fear, helplessness, hopelessness, and anger are feelings frequently experienced by families. The main difficulties are financial problems, intra-familial conflicts, negative effects on social life, and the rejecting attitude of the community towards the patients. Negative symptoms are especially burdensome for the families. Families with inadequate social support, with high expressed emotion, and who cannot use effective coping styles have heavier burdens. When the relationship between schizophrenia and family is investigated in a historical context, it is seen that most investigators supporting psychological theory consider the family to be the cause of the disease. These theories, which depend mostly on clinical observations and which have damaged the relationship between the clinicians and the family members, have lost their validity during the last thirty years. Family should be included in the treatment plan. Hospitalization due to the first psychotic episode or further psychotic recurrences is the most convenient period for establishing contact with the families. One should approach the family in a supportive and empathic manner, without putting any blame on them. If maladaptive coping styles are being used, one should help the family to change to adaptive ones. In addition to educative and supportive groups, more specific methods like cognitive-behavioral therapies can be used. Families should be supported in terms of forming non-governmental organizations.

English Abstract↗

PubMed2001

Reality and fugues in physicians facing death: confrontation, coping, and adaptation at the bedside.

This paper addresses the psychological effects and fears of physicians in their private and professional lives. It specifically looks at their experiences, perceptions, behavior, and vulnerability, especially when confronted with death and dying. The concepts of empathy, fears of oncologists, the mechanisms used for adaptation and coping, recommendations and interventions are presented. The success of a physician can be measured by the empathic yet objective relationship he/she establishes with the patient, while simultaneously building clear emotional and professional boundaries.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1990

Emotions and the process of ethical decision-making.

Emotions play a central role in our daily lives. They influence our behavior as well as the development and direction of our relationships. Clinically, emotions may signal the presence of ethical conflicts between patients, physicians, and others involved in the patients' care. Emotions need to be recognized as physicians work toward empathic interactions, while both reason and emotion need to be integrated into the process of ethical decision making to ensure balanced outcomes.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗

PubMed1999

Giving up the car: older women's losses and experiences.

Numerous activities, often life-long patterns, are based on driving and access to a car. When driving ceases, the challenge to change and develop new behavior patterns occurs. Women in this study had many losses and challenges to usual ways of doing things. Various coping strategies were described, including types, benefits, and potential challenges of both informal and formal helpers. Implications for health care providers include empathic awareness of the nature and extent of loss initiated by giving up driving and determining how best to support older adults in coping. More work needs to be done to develop strategies that support optimal function and ease this difficult transition for older adults.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1977

The family physician as a "therapeutic instrument".

The doctor-patient relationship is the matrix of the family physician's diagnostic-therapeutic activity. To enhance the curative potential inherent in this relationship, the physician has to be able to make contact with the person in the patient. To achieve this, the physician must develop his potential for empathic observation, empathic listening, and introspective self-awareness. The use of these skills in a non-judgmental, non-condemning, and non-manipulative climate creates an optimum therapeutic setting. Rather than focusing upon the body of knowledge available in the behavioral sciences, or upon the pursuit of learning "psychiatry" or "psychotherapy," the family physician should first develop his own personal skills. He should then apply them to his own patients, in his own setting, in order to discover the therapeutic approaches appropriate to this patients and their problems. The psychiatrist, psychologist, or any other behavioral scientist can be most helpful to the family physician if he is prepared to aid him in his own discoveries rather than attempt to teach him the accumulated knowledge from his own field.

Education, Medical, Graduate↗

PubMed1983

An analysis of the impact of authorship on the image of the nurse presented in novels.

Content analysis of 201 novels published from 1843 to 1980 with important nurse characters was used to identify variables associated with nurse, physician, and nonhealth care provider authorship and the quality of the resultant image of nurses and nursing. Nurse authors were more likely to depict nurses as contributing to patients and other persons, being commended, using autonomous judgment, taking greater satisfaction in their career, exhibiting drive, and being engaged in the performance of nursing care activities. They also portrayed novel nurses as more nurturant, empathic, powerful, and intelligent, and as valuing service to others and scholarliness to a greater extent than other authors. Of all authors, physicians presented the most negative nurse images; they were the least likely to endow nurse characters with positive personality and behavior traits. On the other hand, physicians were the most likely to show nurses valuing and being engaged in sexual activities. The fact that nurse authors, who were more prominent during the first 60 years of this century, have given way to a dominance of physician authors during the past 20 years demands intervention by the nursing profession in encouraging nurses to become more active in this form of artistic popularization of scientific ideas and professional health care roles.

Authorship↗

PubMed1975

Empathy and attribution: turning observers into actors.

A laboratory experiment was conducted to test Jones and Nisbett's information-processing explanation of the often-observed tendency for individuals (actors) to provide relatively more situational and less dispositional causal attributions for their behavior than those provided by observers of the same behavior. According to this explanation, aspects of the situation are phenomenologically more salient for actors, whereas characteristics of the actor and his behavior are more salient for observers. To test this explanation, the phenomenological perspective of observers are altered without making available any additional information. Subjects watched a videotape of a get-acquainted conversation after instructions either to observe a target conversant or to empathize with her. As predicted, taking the perspective of the target through empathy resulted in attributions that were relatively more situational and less dispositional than attributions provided by standard observers. The results support Jones and Nisbett's information-processing explanation of actor-observer attributional differences, and shed additional light on the process of empathy.

Empathy↗

PubMed2002

Relationship quality and relationship context as antecedents of person- and task-focused interpersonal citizenship behavior.

A model hypothesizing relationship quality and relationship context as antecedents of two complementary forms of interpersonal citizenship behavior (ICB) was tested. Measures with coworkers as the frame of reference were used to collect data from 273 individuals working in 2 service-oriented organizations. As hypothesized, variables reflecting relationship quality were associated with person-focused ICB, as mediated by empathic concern. Also as hypothesized, a relationship context variable, network centrality, exhibited a direct relationship with task-focused ICB. Unexpectedly, network centrality was directly associated with person-focused ICB. and empathic concern was associated with task-focused ICB. The results are discussed, and implications for research and practice are offered.

Adult↗

PubMed1992

Expressed emotion: conceptual, clinical, and social policy issues.

Research on schizophrenia has suggested an association between relapse of patients and high expressed emotion (EE), defined as criticism, hostility, or emotional overinvolvement of at least one family member. In international studies, however, the majority of families of persons with schizophrenia demonstrate low expressed emotion. These families are described as empathic, calm, and respectful by EE researchers, who also reject the idea of family schizophrenogenesis. The author discusses expressed emotion as a construct, its validity and stability over time, and the direction of the relationship between relatives' expressed emotion and patients' symptoms and behavior. She reviews studies indicating significant differences in levels of expressed emotion across cultures, examines the social policy implications of programming based on the construct, and suggests research on EE analogues in clinical and rehabilitative environments.

Emotions↗

PubMed1978

Training medical students to empathize: an experimental study.

Research has indicated that patients are greatly concerned about the poor quality of doctors' interpersonal communication skills, but such training is infrequently incorporated into medical education. An experimental study, which used a commercially available training programme, is described. Undergraduate medical students were the subjects of the study, and their ability to empathize was assessed in the actual interview. Results indicated that training was effective in increasing the students' levels of empathy.

Australia↗

PubMed1997

Reinterpreting the empathy-altruism relationship: when one into one equals oneness.

Important features of the self-concept can be located outside of the individual and inside close or related others. The authors use this insight to reinterpret data previously said to support the empathy-altruism model of helping, which asserts that empathic concern for another results in selflessness and true altruism. That is, they argue that the conditions that lead to empathic concern also lead to a greater sense of self-other overlap, raising the possibility that helping under these conditions is not selfless but is also directed toward the self. In 3 studies, the impact of empathic concern on willingness to help was eliminated when oneness--a measure of perceived self-other overlap--was considered. Path analyses revealed further that empathic concern increased helping only through its relation to perceived oneness, thereby throwing the empathy-altruism model into question. The authors suggest that empathic concern affects helping primarily as an emotional signal of oneness.

Altruism↗

PubMed1998

Enhancing motivation for change in treatment-resistant eating disorders.

Denial and resistance to change are prominent features in most patients with anorexia nervosa. The egosyntonic quality of symptoms can contribute to inaccuracy in self-report, avoidance of treatment, difficulties in establishing a therapeutic relationship, and high rates of attrition and relapse. Individuals with bulimia nervosa are typically more motivated to recover, but often ambivalent about forfeiting the ideal of slenderness and the protective functions of binge-purge behavior. Few attempts have been made to assess denial and resistance in the eating disorders, or to examine alternative strategies for enhancing motivation to change. Review of the clinical literature indicates a striking convergence of recommendations across conceptually distinct treatment approaches. Clinicians are encouraged to acquire a frame of reference that can help them understand the private experience of individuals with eating disorders, empathize with their distress at the prospect of weight gain, and acknowledge the difficulty of change. The Socratic method seems particularly well-suited to work with this population because of its emphasis on collaboration, openness, curiosity, patience, focused and systematic inquiry, and individual discovery. Four themes are crucial in engaging reluctant eating-disordered clients in therapy: the provision of psychoeducational material, an examination of the advantages and disadvantages of symptoms, the explicit use of experimental strategies, and an exploration of personal values.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Knowing the patient: a process model for individualized interventions.

A grounded theory method was used to study nurses' clinical decision making. Field notes, in-depth interviews, and documents were analyzed. The beginning process model contained the core concept, knowing the patient, a purposeful action whereby the nurse uses understanding of the patient's experiences, behaviors, feelings, and/or perceptions to select individualized interventions. Familiarity and intimacy were the properties of the core process; the patient-nurse interaction was the context. Three conditions included time, the nurse's experience, and other nurses' input. Four strategies facilitated the core process: empathizing, matching a pattern, developing a bigger picture, and balancing preferences with difficulties. Different strategies were used, as time and familiarity with the patient varied.

Clinical Competence↗

PubMed1984

Personal space of incarcerated offenders.

Administered the proxemic test (Kinzel, 1970) and a psychometric test battery to 49 incarcerated offenders on two occasions. Offenders also were rated by staff on their interpersonal behavior, and a 3-year follow-up was undertaken to assess recidivism. Immediate test-retest reliabilities were extremely high in all four directions (.93 to .97), but lower over a 10-week period (.65 to .89). The Behind distance was largest on both occasions. There were no changes in the four distance measures over time. An algebraic formula was devised to calculate Personal Space Area. Age was related inversely to offender's Personal Space (r = -.32, p less than .03). Personality measures, observation ratings, and follow-up outcome data were related inconsistently to Personal Space Area, although there was some indication that offenders with a large personal space were less empathic, less socialized, less accepting of others, received poor evaluations, and were more likely to recidivate. The utility of personal space in the assessment of offenders is discussed.

Adolescent↗