Evolved social motivation: empathy and self awareness

Research for my dissertation as part of an Msc in Evolutionary Psychology.

Steve Heigham.Lecturer in Counselling and Psychology.

In private practice in Bristol, using CBT and Integrative approaches.

stevenarroways@lineone.net

Original idea.

Research aim: To investigate the evolutionary relationship between empathy and self awareness, following the common sense proposition that people who are good at working out other people are good at working themselves out.

Original inspiration: An article by Paul Gilbert (2011), showing that mentalizing behaviour is more overtly exhibited in situations of competition rather than in closeness, but that attachment feelings may play a part in calming the mind so that mentalizing can be engaged in. This, he suggests, shows that empathic behaviour probably has a complex evolutionary history.

My curiosity: we are using empathy to try to help clients to become self aware. It would be useful to know if clients level of empathy for others as a personality trait impacts on this endeavour, and makes it easier for some to attain self insight more quickly in therapy.

5 Definitions of empathy, proposed by Preston & DeWaal (2002)

Emotional contagion, where the subject ‘s emotion results directly, and usually unconsciously, from the perception of the other's emotional state. Common to many species.

Sympathy, where the subject feels sorry for the object person in their situation; again, a mostly unconscious reactions (eg: giving consolation, found in mammals).

Empathy, where the subject’s emotonal state is more objective; this is a more conscious perception of, and attention to the emotional state of the object person.

Cognitive empathy, where the subject represents the internal state of the other person through perspective taking, but with no effect on the subject’s internal state. This is often what had previously been referred to as having ‘Theory of Mind’.

Prosocial or altruistic behaviours, where the subject strategically directs action to alleviate the suffering of the other, usually at a more conscious, decisional level.

Research definitions of self awareness/metacognition

Within Behavioural Ecology, researchers have investigated the phenomenon of Mirror Self Recognition(MSR) in various species,

Metacognitive (MC) research shows some species have the ability to reflect on their own inner processes and modify their behaviour through this. Eg: In uncertain experimental conditions they make use of cued interventions to reach specified goals.

More recent research focusses on how SR/ MC impacts behavioural decision making. Efklides defines self awareness as a multi-level process where metacognitive experiences feed into metacognitive knowledge that then mediates social emotions and cognitions through recruitment of meta cognitive skills. Metacognitive monitoring, in this model, is proposed to be active much of the time at a subconscious level, and experienced as rising to conciousness particularly in situations of high ambiguity or low predictability. (Efklides 2008).

Meta cognitive experiences often happen through shame, guilt and embarassment.

Brief summary of Evolutionary research on empathy

Empathy has evolved through stages as an adaptive behaviour trait.

It is highly controlled by a suite of other emotion regulatory systems, eg: attachment in mammal species. This concurs with fossil evidence of evolutionary changes to the brain size and layout.

Much of this later evolved regulatory pathways recruit areas of prefrontal cortex, which is the area that has grown most rapidly in the last 2 million years of hominid evolution. This area is highly implicated in cognition and language. It is noticeably different in us than in our nearest relatives, the higher primates.

Rapid modulation of empathic responding:

findings from neuroscience.A priori attitudes affect empathy levels; eg towards Aids sufferers, depending on if they were seen to be careless, or blamable, and is modulated by perceptions of fairness. Reactions to other’s pain is contextually modulated: doctors react very differently to lovers

More empathy is shown for others similar to ourselves, particularly through the mirror neurons (also seen in certain monkey species).

Thus, group membership affects empathy levels, and the instant experience of shadenfreude can reverse empathy levels, eg; in football fans of different clubs in a match. Studies also show that this extends to revenge as a sought after goal.

This is highly implicated in many social exchanges, involving guilt shame and embarassment, the social emotions which are triggers to self awareness.

Methods.Study design, hypotheses and predictions.

The hypothesis is that there will be a moderate correlation between an individual’s level of empathy and self awareness (Lockl & Schneider 2007).

Prediction 1. Levels of empathy and self awareness can be predicted to rise with age.(Decety et al 2010).

Prediction 2. Women’s level of empathy and, by implication, self awareness, can be predicted to be slightly but significantly higher than men’s. (Baron Cohen 2011).

Prediction 3. Having older siblings can be predicted to be correlated with higher levels of empathy and self awareness. (Dunn et al 1990, Perner at al 1994)

104 participants completed the two questionnaires and related questions. No participants scores were ruled out.

Results

Main hypothesis was supported, with medium to strong correlation found.(r = .509, n=104, p < .001)

Prediction 1, No significant relationship was found.

Prediction 2, There was a significant difference in EQ scores for men (M=43.7, SD=10.3) and women (M=48.0, SD=10.5); t= -2.055, p< .05.

Prediction 3, Women having older siblings scored significantly higher (M=49.83, SD=9.20) than women who did not (M=45.25, SD= 11.99). Men having older siblings scored significantly lower (M=41.64, SD=8.30) than men who did not (M=47.64, SD=12.87)

Sub scores of the two questionnairesEQ can be broken down into scores for:Emotional reactivity, Cognitive empathy and Social skills

SRIS breaks down into: Need for SR, Engagement in SR, & Insight gained from SR

Independent groups t-tests were used to explore these:a) There was significant higher scores for emotional reactivity

in women,b) There was also a significantly higher score for need for and

engagement in Self reflection in women

Discussion:

Main effect: Medium to high correlation of the two traits, linked with the fact that age plays no significant role in empathy, and Simon B C's research on heritability in ASD supports the hypothesis that these traits are stable over life, like most personality traits, and likely to be at least moderately heritable. Changes in empathy may happen most in early childhood and teenage.

Empathy and gender: results show that women tend to be more emotionally reactive, and have a greater overall tendency to self reflection. Suggests possible connection to greater rumination over relationships.

Empathy and siblings: result suggests different interaction patterns develop early on, men being more competitive.

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Implications for practice:1.Empathy is rapidly modulated by social experiences; this

normalizes and explains the experience of guilt, shame etc.

2. Self reflection is a fairly stable trait that may be difficult for some to learn.

3. Levels of empathy and self reflection may very well affect the process of therapy, and particularly the rapidity of outcomes, eg: in 51 out of 100 cases, high EQ scores were correlated with high SR scores.

4. Slightly different approaches may be useful in individual and couple therapy. Eg: focus for women more on boundaries towards other’s emotions, and avoidance of rumination, and for men on consciously developing emotional reactivity, rather than intellectualized cognitive empathy.

Implications for practice continued:

Much of our empathy is at an unconscious level, eg: emotional reactivity. I have found it is useful to measure these tendencies, and clients and other participants have found feedback on the sub scores very illuminating.

I actively use evolutionary psychological explanations of mental health difficulties with clients in a psycho educational way in the psychotherapeutic process.

Using an evolutionary approach helps to integrate concepts across a range of different schools and perspectives. This present research project integrates elements of psychodynamic, humanistic, cognitive, behavioural and psychiatric perspectives to explain human behaviour.

Limitations and future research:Limitations: 1) Self report through questionnaires can be biased towards self enhancement,

so need for many participants- in this case many of my findings are in line with Simon B C's, over larger numbers.

2) Not enough variables were operationalised to clearly distinguish between innate tendencies and learned/socialized behaviour traits. Correlation is not causation.

3) There was inevitably some bias in sampling –eg: under representation from some social classes, and a bias towards students.

Future research directions: 1) Experimental investigation of the role of self conscious emotions in triggering

greater self awareness. 2) More focussed study on self control as a mediating influence between self

awareness and empathy, and as an influence on outcomes from therapy. 3) Correlation of initial level of these traits to outcome/ process measures in

research into psychotherapy.

References:

1.Baron-Cohen, S. (2011). Zero degrees of empathy. London: Penguin.

2. Decety, J. (2010). To what extent is the experience of empathy mediated by shared neural circuits? Emotion Review, 2(3)

3.Dunn, J. Stocker, C, Plomin, R. (1990). Assessing the relationship between young

siblings.Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry & Allied Disciplines. 31, 6, 983-991.

4.Efklides, A. (2008). Metacognition defining its facets and levels of functioning in relation to self-regulation and co-regulation. European Psychologist, 13(4), 277-287.

5.Gilbert,P. & Liotti, G. (2011). Mentalizing, motivaton, and social mentalities. Psychology and psychotherapy. 84, (1) 9-25.

6.Lockl, K., & Schneider, W. ( 2007). Knowledge about the mind: Links between theory of mind and later metamemory. Child Development, 78, 148 167.�

7.Perner, J., Ruffman, T., & Leekam, S. R. (1994). Theory of mind is contagious: You catch it from your sibs. Child Development, 65(4), 1228-1238.

8.Preston, S., & de Waal, F. (2002). Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25(1), Lead article.