The self and empathy: Lacking a clear and stable sense of self undermines empathy and helping behavior.

Empathy is fundamental to social functioning. Although empathy involves sharing the emotional experience of another, research also highlights the importance of distinguishing the self from the other for optimal empathic responding. Without adequate self-other distinction, sharing another person's emotions can induce personal distress, a self-focused aversive reaction that often leads to withdrawing from the situation, rather than empathic concern, an other-oriented response of care. To date, no work has examined the psychological factors that might facilitate such self-other distinction in the context of empathy. We show that self-concept clarity (SCC), the extent to which the self is clearly defined, coherent, and temporally stable, predicts empathic responding. In Study 1 (N = 453, student sample), we show that low SCC is associated with more dispositional empathic personal distress and less empathic concern. We replicate these dispositional associations in Study 2 (N = 319, community sample) and, using Batson's classic Katie Banks paradigm, show that these associations hold in an actual empathy-inducing situation. Moreover, in Study 2, SCC predicts helping behavior, an effect that is mediated by feelings of personal distress and empathic concern. Finally, in Study 3 (N = 658, community sample), we again use the Katie Banks paradigm but in an experimental framework; consistent with Study 2, state SCC predicts empathic personal distress, empathic concern and helping behavior. Our findings highlight the importance of a clear, coherent and stable self-concept for empathy, and suggest that interventions aimed at increasing empathy may be futile in the presence of a weak and unclear sense of self. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Body swapping with a Black person boosts empathy: Using virtual reality to embody another.

Perspective-taking, whether through imagination or virtual-reality interventions, seems to improve intergroup relations; however, which intervention leads to better outcomes remains unclear. This preregistered study collected measures of empathy and race bias from 90 participants, split into one of three perspective-taking groups: embodied perspective-taking, mental perspective-taking, and a control group. We drew on virtual-reality technology alongside a Black confederate across all conditions. Only in the first group, participants got to exchange real-time viewpoints with the confederate and literally "see through the eyes of another." In the two other conditions, participants either imagined a day in the life of the Black confederate or in their own life, respectively. Our findings show that, compared with the control group, the embodied perspective-taking group scored higher on empathy sub-components. On the contrary, both perspective-taking interventions differentially affected neither explicit nor implicit race bias. Our study suggests that embodiment of an outgroup can enhance empathy.

Self-Concept Clarity and the Bodily Self: Malleability Across Modalities.

The self has fascinated scholars for centuries. Although theory suggests that the self-concept (cognitive self-understanding) and bodily self (pre-reflective awareness of one's body) are related, little work has examined this notion. To this end, in Study 1, participants reported on self-concept clarity (SCC) and completed the rubber hand illusion (RHI), a paradigm in which synchronous (vs. asynchronous) stimulation between a prosthetic hand and one's own hand leads one to "embody" the prosthetic hand. Whereas participants were equally susceptible to the RHI during synchronous stroking, low-SCC individuals were more vulnerable to the illusion during asynchronous stroking, when the effect is unwarranted. Conceptually replicating and extending this finding, in Study 2, low-SCC individuals were more susceptible to the body-swap illusion-the impression that another person's body is one's own. These findings suggest that a clear sense of self implies clarity and stability of both the self-concept and the bodily self.

Oxytocin Selectively Improves Empathic Accuracy: A Replication in Men and Novel Insights in Women.

BACKGROUND: Previously, oxytocin, a neuropeptide implicated in human social cognition and behavior, was shown to improve people's ability to dynamically track another's emotional state ("empathic accuracy") specifically for less socially proficient individuals-i.e., healthy adults who score higher on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ); conversely, oxytocin had no effect on empathic accuracy for more socially proficient individuals, who performed well following oxytocin and placebo. Here, we aimed to replicate this finding and investigate the effects of oxytocin on empathic accuracy in women. To date, women have been seriously underrepresented in human oxytocin research, and it is not known whether the effects observed in male-only samples apply to women. METHODS: In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial, we administered 24 IU intranasal oxytocin (and, on a separate occasion, a matching placebo) to 31 men and 40 women and then measured empathic accuracy. AQ was assessed at baseline (prior to drug administration). RESULTS: Replicating a 2010 study by Bartz et al., oxytocin selectively improved empathic accuracy for men who scored higher on the AQ, whereas oxytocin did not benefit their lower AQ counterparts. Conversely, we found no effect of oxytocin on empathic accuracy for women (regardless of their AQ score). CONCLUSIONS: In addition to speaking to reliability, this research is important given interest in using oxytocin to augment social functioning in some psychiatric disorders marked by social cognitive impairments. More generally, this research adds to our understanding of the biological systems that support human sociality and provides further evidence for the role of oxytocin therein.

Brief periods of auditory perceptual training can determine the sensory targets of speech motor learning.

The perception of speech is notably malleable in adults, yet alterations in perception seem to have little impact on speech production. However, we hypothesized that speech perceptual training might immediately influence speech motor learning. To test this, we paired a speech perceptual-training task with a speech motor-learning task. Subjects performed a series of perceptual tests designed to measure and then manipulate the perceptual distinction between the words head and had. Subjects then produced head with the sound of the vowel altered in real time so that they heard themselves through headphones producing a word that sounded more like had. In support of our hypothesis, the amount of motor learning in response to the voice alterations depended on the perceptual boundary acquired through perceptual training. The studies show that plasticity in adults' speech perception can have immediate consequences for speech production in the context of speech learning.