In praise of empathic AI.

In this article we investigate the societal implications of empathic artificial intelligence (AI), asking how its seemingly empathic expressions make people feel. We highlight AI's unique ability to simulate empathy without the same biases that afflict humans. While acknowledging serious pitfalls, we propose that AI expressions of empathy could improve human welfare.

Adversity-based identities drive social change.

Adversity experiences have been linked to empathy and prosocial behavior. Here, we argue for unique additional advantages of such experiences, namely, the identity memberships that arise and their links to collective action and harmonious intergroup relations. We discuss challenges and future directions for the study of adversity as a source of identity.

Empathic choices for animals versus humans: the role of choice context and perceived cost.

People appear to empathize with cases of animal suffering yet to disregard such suffering when it conflicts with human needs. In three studies, we used an empathy regulation measure - the empathy selection task - to test whether people choose or avoid sharing in experiences of animals versus humans. In Study 1, when choosing between sharing experiences of animals or humans, participants preferred humans and rated sharing animal (versus human) experiences as more cognitively costly. In Studies 2a-2b, the choice to share experiences or be objective was done without a forced choice between animals and humans. When empathy opportunities for humans and animals were not contrasted against each other, participants avoided experience sharing for humans but not for animals. Manipulations of prosocial cost in these studies did not consistently moderate choice differences. Freeing people from contexts that pit empathy for animals against empathy for humans may diminish motivated disregard of animals' experiences.

Stereotypes about compassion across the political spectrum.

To what extent are ideological differences in compassion real or exaggerated, and who is more likely to engage in stereotyping about such differences? In five studies, including three online studies and two field studies of voters at the Iowa Caucus and U.S. Presidential Election in 2016, we found evidence for political stereotyping about compassion. Although Democratic and Republican participants did not consistently rate themselves as feeling different amounts of compassion on a single-item self-assessment, there was a stereotype that the average Democrat/liberal is more compassionate than the average Republican/conservative. Importantly, this stereotype exaggerated the extent of self-reported differences in compassion across parties in these samples, and Democratic participants engaged in stronger stereotype exaggeration. These results suggest that although there can be ideological variability in compassion, the perceived difference may exaggerate this reality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Empathy regulation, prosociality, and moral judgment.

In this review, we examine relationships between empathy, prosocial behavior, and moral judgment. We focus on recent evidence for these relationships, with a focus on motivated empathy regulation as an important process that shapes empathic and moral outcomes. In particular, we highlight tradeoffs in contexts that involve competing victims with different needs, such as in large-scale suffering situations and sacrificial moral dilemmas, as well as on effects on punishment and recursive effects of morality on empathy. Our aim is to integrate motivation frameworks in empathy regulation and social cognition with prosocial and moral judgments.

Caring is costly: People avoid the cognitive work of compassion.

Compassion-the warm, caregiving emotion that emerges from witnessing the suffering of others-has long been considered an important moral emotion for motivating and sustaining prosocial behavior. Some suggest that compassion draws from empathic feelings to motivate prosocial behavior, whereas others try to disentangle these processes to examine their different functions for human prosociality. Many suggest that empathy, which involves sharing in others' experiences, can be biased and exhausting, whereas warm compassionate concern is more rewarding and sustainable. If compassion is indeed a warm and positive experience, then people should be motivated to seek it out when given the opportunity. Here, we ask whether people spontaneously choose to feel compassion, and whether such choices are associated with perceiving compassion as cognitively costly. Across all studies, we found that people opted to avoid compassion when given the opportunity, reported compassion to be more cognitively taxing than empathy and objective detachment, and opted to feel compassion less often to the degree they viewed compassion as cognitively costly. We also revealed two important boundary conditions: first, people were less likely to avoid compassion for close (vs. distant) others, and this choice difference was associated with viewing compassion for close others as less cognitively costly. Second, in the final study we found that with more contextually enriched and immersive pleas for help, participants preferred to escape feeling compassion, although their preference did not differ from also escaping remaining objectively detached. These results temper strong arguments that compassion is an easier route to prosocial motivation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Psychological Science in the Wake of COVID-19: Social, Methodological, and Metascientific Considerations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has extensively changed the state of psychological science from what research questions psychologists can ask to which methodologies psychologists can use to investigate them. In this article, we offer a perspective on how to optimize new research in the pandemic's wake. Because this pandemic is inherently a social phenomenon-an event that hinges on human-to-human contact-we focus on socially relevant subfields of psychology. We highlight specific psychological phenomena that have likely shifted as a result of the pandemic and discuss theoretical, methodological, and practical considerations of conducting research on these phenomena. After this discussion, we evaluate metascientific issues that have been amplified by the pandemic. We aim to demonstrate how theoretically grounded views on the COVID-19 pandemic can help make psychological science stronger-not weaker-in its wake.

The goal-dependence of level-1 and level-2 visual perspective calculation.

Does tracking another agent's visual perspective depend on having a goal-albeit a remote one-to do so? In 5 experiments using indirect measures of visual perspective taking with a cartoon avatar, we examined whether and how adult perceivers' processing goals shape the incidental tracking of what objects the avatar sees (Level-1 perspective taking) and how the avatar sees those objects (Level-2 perspective taking). Process dissociation analyses, which aim to isolate calculation of the avatar's perspective as the process of focal interest, revealed that both Level-1 and Level-2 perspective calculation were consistently weaker when the avatar's perspective was less relevant for participants' own processing goals. This pattern of goal-dependent perspective tracking was also evident in behavioral analyses of interference from the avatar's differing perspective when reporting one's own perspective (i.e., altercentric interference). These results suggest that, although Level-1 and Level-2 visual perspective calculation may operate unintentionally, both also appear to depend on perceivers' processing goals. More generally, these findings advance understanding of processes underlying visual perspective taking and the conditional automaticity with which those processes operate. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Empathy choice in physicians and non-physicians.

Empathy in medical care has been one of the focal points in the debate over the bright and dark sides of empathy. Whereas physician empathy is sometimes considered necessary for better physician-patient interactions, and is often desired by patients, it also has been described as a potential risk for exhaustion among physicians who must cope with their professional demands of confronting acute and chronic suffering. The present study compared physicians against demographically matched non-physicians on a novel behavioural assessment of empathy, in which they choose between empathizing or remaining detached from suffering targets over a series of trials. Results revealed no statistical differences between physicians and non-physicians in their empathy avoidance, though physicians were descriptively more likely to choose empathy. Additionally, both groups were likely to perceive empathy as cognitively challenging, and perceived cognitive costs of empathy associated with empathy avoidance. Across groups, there were also no statistically significant differences in self-reported trait empathy measures and empathy-related motivations and beliefs. Overall, these results suggest that physicians and non-physicians were more similar than different in terms of their empathic choices and in their assessments of the costs and benefits of empathy for others.

Empathy is hard work: People choose to avoid empathy because of its cognitive costs.

Empathy is considered a virtue, yet it fails in many situations, leading to a basic question: When given a choice, do people avoid empathy? And if so, why? Whereas past work has focused on material and emotional costs of empathy, here, we examined whether people experience empathy as cognitively taxing and costly, leading them to avoid it. We developed the empathy selection task, which uses free choices to assess the desire to empathize. Participants make a series of binary choices, selecting situations that lead them to engage in empathy or an alternative course of action. In each of 11 studies (N = 1,204) and a meta-analysis, we found a robust preference to avoid empathy, which was associated with perceptions of empathy as more effortful and aversive and less efficacious. Experimentally increasing empathy efficacy eliminated empathy avoidance, suggesting that cognitive costs directly cause empathy choice. When given the choice to share others' feelings, people act as if it is not worth the effort. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Time pressure disrupts level-2, but not level-1, visual perspective calculation: A process-dissociation analysis.

Reasoning about other people's mental states has long been assumed to require active deliberation. Yet, evidence from indirect measures suggests that adults and children commonly display behavior indicative of having incidentally calculated both what other agents see (level-1 perspective taking) and how they see it (level-2 perspective taking). Here, we investigated the efficiency of such perspective calculation in adults. In four experiments using indirect measures of visual perspective taking, we imposed time pressure to constrain processing opportunity, and we used process-dissociation analyses to isolate perspective calculation as the process of focal interest. Results revealed that time pressure weakened level-2, but not level-1, perspective calculation-a pattern that was not evident in error-rate analyses. These findings suggest that perspective calculation may operate more efficiently in level-1 than in level-2 perspective taking. They also highlight the utility of the process-dissociation framework for unmasking processes that otherwise may go under-detected in behavior-level analyses.

The Upside of Outrage.

A debate has emerged across disciplines about why people engage in costly helping. Empathy is one mechanism. We highlight a second, more controversial motivator: moral outrage. Integrating findings from moral psychology and intergroup literatures, we suggest outrage is a critical force for collective action and highlight directions for future research.

Damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is associated with impairments in both spontaneous and deliberative moral judgments.

Implicit moral evaluations-spontaneous, unintentional judgments about the moral status of actions or persons-are thought to play a pivotal role in moral experience, suggesting a need for research to model these moral evaluations in clinical populations. Prior research reveals that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is a critical area underpinning affect and morality, and patients with vmPFC lesions show abnormalities in moral judgment and moral behavior. We use indirect measurement and multinomial modeling to understand differences in implicit moral evaluations among patients with vmPFC lesions. Our model quantifies multiple processes of moral judgment: implicit moral evaluations in response to distracting moral transgressions (Unintentional Judgment), accurate moral judgments about target actions (Intentional Judgment), and a directional tendency to judge actions as morally wrong (Response Bias). Compared to individuals with non-vmPFC brain damage and neurologically healthy comparisons, patients with vmPFC lesions showed a dual deficit in processes of moral judgment. First, patients with vmPFC lesions showed reduced Unintentional Judgment about moral transgressions, but not about non-moral negative affective distracters. Second, patients with vmPFC lesions showed reduced Intentional Judgment about target actions. These findings highlight the utility of a formal modeling approach in moral psychology, revealing a dual deficit in multiple component processes of moral judgment among patients with vmPFC lesions.

Constructing contempt.

Gervais & Fessler argue that contempt is a natural kind and that its experience cannot be explained by a constructionist account of emotion. We dispute these claims and offer a positive constructionist model of contempt that accounts for the existing evidence and unifies conflicting findings in the literature on contempt.

How to think about emotion and morality: circles, not arrows.

Emotion and morality are powerful conscious experiences. There are two ways to think about their psychological basis: arrows and circles. Arrows ground each experience in its own specialized mechanism (mechanism x causes phenomenon x; mechanism y causes phenomenon y). Examples of arrows include when feelings of disgust are attributed to a specialized 'disgust circuit' and when judgments of impurity are attributed to a specialized 'purity foundation.' In contrast, circles - Venn diagrams - describe experiences as emerging from the overlap of more fundamental domain-general processes (different combinations of processes a, b, c cause both phenomena x and y). Circles are used by constructionist theories of emotion and morality, including the Theory of Dyadic Morality, which grounds moral judgment in the combination of norm violations, negative affect, and perceived harm. Despite the intuitive popularity of arrows, we show that scientific evidence is more consistent with circles.

The paradox of group mind: "People in a group" have more mind than "a group of people".

Three studies examine how subtle shifts in framing can alter the mind perception of groups. Study 1 finds that people generally perceive groups to have less mind than individuals. However, Study 2 demonstrates that changing the framing of a group from "a group of people" to "people in a group," substantially increases mind perception-leading to comparable levels of mind between groups and individuals. Study 3 reveals that this change in framing influences people's sympathy for groups, an effect mediated by mind perception. We conclude that minor linguistic shifts can have big effects on how groups are perceived-with implications for mind perception and sympathy for mass suffering. (PsycINFO Database Record

The empathy impulse: A multinomial model of intentional and unintentional empathy for pain.

Empathy for pain is often described as automatic. Here, we used implicit measurement and multinomial modeling to formally quantify unintentional empathy for pain: empathy that occurs despite intentions to the contrary. We developed the pain identification task (PIT), a sequential priming task wherein participants judge the painfulness of target experiences while trying to avoid the influence of prime experiences. Using multinomial modeling, we distinguished 3 component processes underlying PIT performance: empathy toward target stimuli (Intentional Empathy), empathy toward prime stimuli (Unintentional Empathy), and bias to judge target stimuli as painful (Response Bias). In Experiment 1, imposing a fast (vs. slow) response deadline uniquely reduced Intentional Empathy. In Experiment 2, inducing imagine-self (vs. imagine-other) perspective-taking uniquely increased Unintentional Empathy. In Experiment 3, Intentional and Unintentional Empathy were stronger toward targets with typical (vs. atypical) pain outcomes, suggesting that outcome information matters and that effects on the PIT are not reducible to affective priming. Typicality of pain outcomes more weakly affected task performance when target stimuli were merely categorized rather than judged for painfulness, suggesting that effects on the latter are not reducible to semantic priming. In Experiment 4, Unintentional Empathy was stronger for participants who engaged in costly donation to cancer charities, but this parameter was also high for those who donated to an objectively worse but socially more popular charity, suggesting that overly high empathy may facilitate maladaptive altruism. Theoretical and practical applications of our modeling approach for understanding variation in empathy are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Valence and arousal-based affective evaluations of foods.

We investigated the nutrient-specific and individual-specific validity of dual-process models of valenced and arousal-based affective evaluations of foods across the disordered eating spectrum. 283 undergraduate women provided implicit and explicit valence and arousal-based evaluations of 120 food photos with known nutritional information on structurally similar indirect and direct affect misattribution procedures (AMP; Payne et al., 2005, 2008), and completed questionnaires assessing body mass index (BMI), hunger, restriction, and binge eating. Nomothetically, added fat and added sugar enhance evaluations of foods. Idiographically, hunger and binge eating enhance activation, whereas BMI and restriction enhance pleasantness. Added fat is salient for women who are heavier, hungrier, or who restrict; added sugar is influential for less hungry women. Restriction relates only to valence, whereas binge eating relates only to arousal. Findings are similar across implicit and explicit affective evaluations, albeit stronger for explicit, providing modest support for dual-process models of affective evaluation of foods.