scholarly journals Empathy as a driver of prosocial behaviour: highly conserved neurobehavioural mechanisms across species

2016 ◽  
Vol 371 (1686) ◽  
pp. 20150077 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Decety ◽  
Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal ◽  
Florina Uzefovsky ◽  
Ariel Knafo-Noam
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Prosocial Behaviour ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Proximate Mechanisms ◽  
Genetic Mechanisms ◽  
Distress Cues ◽  
Atypical Development ◽  
Kinship Bonds

Empathy reflects the natural ability to perceive and be sensitive to the emotional states of others, coupled with a motivation to care for their well-being. It has evolved in the context of parental care for offspring, as well as within kinship bonds, to help facilitate group living. In this paper, we integrate the perspectives of evolution, animal behaviour, developmental psychology, and social and clinical neuroscience to elucidate our understanding of the proximate mechanisms underlying empathy. We focus, in particular, on processing of signals of distress and need, and their relation to prosocial behaviour. The ability to empathize, both in animals and humans, mediates prosocial behaviour when sensitivity to others' distress is paired with a drive towards their welfare. Disruption or atypical development of the neural circuits that process distress cues and integrate them with decision value leads to callous disregard for others, as is the case in psychopathy. The realization that basic forms of empathy exist in non-human animals is crucial for gaining new insights into the underlying neurobiological and genetic mechanisms of empathy, enabling translation towards therapeutic and pharmacological interventions.

Assessment of health related issues in individuals’, couples’, and families’ daily life

2008 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 146-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meinrad Perrez ◽  
Michael Reicherts ◽  
Yves Hänggi ◽  
Andrea B. Horn ◽  
Gisela Michel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Ecological Validity ◽  
Reliability And Validity ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Lower Variability

Abstract. Most research in health psychology is based on retrospective self reports, which are distorted by recall biases and have low ecological validity. To overcome such limitations we developed computer assisted diary approaches to assess health related behaviours in individuals’, couples’ and families’ daily life. The event- and time-sampling-based instruments serve to assess appraisals of the current situation, feelings of physical discomfort, current emotional states, conflict and emotion regulation in daily life. They have proved sufficient reliability and validity in the context of individual, couple and family research with respect to issues like emotion regulation and health. As examples: Regarding symptom reporting curvilinear pattern of frequencies over the day could be identified by parents and adolescents; or psychological well-being is associated with lower variability in basic affect dimensions. In addition, we report on preventive studies to improve parental skills and enhance their empathic competences towards their baby, and towards their partner.

Challenges and opportunities for the affective sciences.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew S. Fox ◽  
Regina Lapate ◽  
Alexander J. Shackman ◽  
Richard J Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Core Feature ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Improved Methods ◽  
Health And Well Being

Emotion is a core feature of the human condition, with profound consequences for health, wealth, and wellbeing. Over the past quarter-century, improved methods for manipulating and measuring different features of emotion have yielded steady advances in our scientific understanding emotional states, traits, and disorders. Yet, it is clear that most of the work remains undone. Here, we highlight key challenges facing the field of affective sciences. Addressing these challenges will provide critical opportunities not just for understanding the mind, but also for increasing the impact of the affective sciences on public health and well-being.

scholarly journals LINKS BETWEEN EVERYDAY INTERGENERATIONAL PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOUR AND EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING IN OLD AGE

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (suppl_1) ◽  
pp. 966-966
Author(s):  
K Chi ◽  
J Lay ◽  
P Graf ◽  
A Mahmood ◽  
C Hoppmann
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Prosocial Behaviour

scholarly journals Majority and popularity effects on norm formation in adolescence

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana da Silva Pinho ◽  
Lucas Molleman ◽  
Barbara R. Braams ◽  
Wouter van den Bos
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Prosocial Behaviour ◽  
Peer Norms ◽  
Marked Influence ◽  
Personal Norms ◽  
Normative Evaluation ◽  
Adolescent Risk ◽  
Prosocial Behaviours

AbstractPersonal norms consist of individuals’ attitudes about the appropriateness of behaviour. These norms guide adolescents’ behaviour in countless domains that are fundamental for their social functioning and well-being. Peers are known to have a marked influence on adolescent risk-taking and prosocial behaviour, but little is known about how peers shape personal norms underlying those behaviours. Here we show that adolescents’ personal norms are decisively moulded by the norms of the majority and popular peers in their social network. Our experiment indicates that observing peer norms substantially impacts adolescents’ normative evaluation of risk-taking and prosocial behaviours. The majority norm had a stronger impact than the norm of a single popular peer, and norm adjustments were largest when adolescents observed strong disapproval of risk-taking or strong approval of prosocial behaviour. Our study suggests that learning about peer norms likely promotes adolescents to hold views and values supporting socially desirable behaviour.

scholarly journals An approach to assess stress in response to drive hunts using cortisol levels of wild boar (Sus scrofa)

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Justine Güldenpfennig ◽  
Marion Schmicke ◽  
Martina Hoedemaker ◽  
Ursula Siebert ◽  
Oliver Keuling
Keyword(s):  
Wild Boar ◽  
Stress Hormones ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Lower Saxony ◽  
Cortisol Levels ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Effect Of Age

AbstractHunting can easily be linked to stress in wildlife. Drive hunts performed two to three times in one area during the respective hunting period, are thought to decrease the pressure hunting places on wildlife. Nevertheless, the expression of cortisol—one of the main mammalian stress hormones—is considered to have negative impacts on animals’ well-being if expressed excessively, which may occur during some (especially repeated) hunting events. We explored the effect of drive hunts on cortisol levels in wild boar in Lower Saxony, Germany, compared these cortisol levels to reference values given by a similar study, and investigated the effect of age, sex, and pregnancy. Blood collected from wild boar shot on drive hunts was analysed using a radioimmunoassay. As expected, we observed elevated cortisol levels in all samples, however, we still found significant differences between age groups and sexes, as well as an influence of pregnancy on cortisol levels. The effect of drive hunts on cortisol levels appears to be weaker than predicted, while the effects of other variables, such as sex, are distinct. Only half of the evaluated samples showed explicitly increased cortisol levels and no significant differences were found between sampling months and locations. Group living animals and pregnant females showed significantly higher cortisol levels. The impact of hunting is measurable but is masked by natural effects such as pregnancy. Thus, we need more information on stress levels in game species.

Understanding and Counseling the Chronic Drug User

1975 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-35
Author(s):  
Wayne W. Dyer ◽  
John Vriend
Keyword(s):  
Drug User ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Emotional States

Effectively understanding and counseling the chronic drug user and others who are dependent upon agents and substances outside themselves to bring about affects of well being and more positive emotional states in their lives requires that the counselor understand how emotions and sensations occur, and what their relationship is to internal and external thinking. The authors present a paradigm of external and internal thinking as these apply as causes for positive and negative emotional shifts. The concepts of internally and externally oriented thinking and behaving are discussed, and these are related to counseling the dependent drug user. Finally, strategies for dealing with the dependent drug user, always an externally oriented person, are presented.

scholarly journals School Dropout Intention and Self-esteem in Immigrant and Native Students Living in Poverty: The Protective Role of Peer Acceptance at School

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dora Bianchi ◽  
Elisa Cavicchiolo ◽  
Fabio Lucidi ◽  
Sara Manganelli ◽  
Laura Girelli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Immigrant Students ◽  
Peer Acceptance ◽  
School Dropout ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Protective Role ◽  
Drop Out ◽  
Multilinear Regression ◽  
Immigrant Background

AbstractThe psychological well-being at school of immigrant students living in poverty is currently an understudied topic in developmental psychology. This is an important shortcoming because this population, which is rapidly increasing in many western countries, is in a double minority condition and has a greater risk of experiencing psychological distress at school, in comparison with their native peers. In order to improve our understanding on this issue, the present two-wave study investigated the prospective relationships between peer acceptance and two aspects of well-being at school—intention to drop out of school and negative self-esteem—specifically focusing on the differential effect of having (vs. not having) an immigrant background. The participants were 249 preadolescents and adolescents living in poverty (Mage = 12.76; SDage = 2.34; 41.8% girls; 19.3% immigrants) who were attending educational centres for disadvantaged minors. The poverty status of the participants was an inclusion criterion. A multilinear regression model with multigroup analysis was tested. As expected, the results showed that peer acceptance had a significant negative association with school dropout intentions and negative self-esteem only for immigrants, but not for natives. For immigrant students, the protective effect of peer acceptance was comparable to the stability over time of dropout intention and self-esteem, a result that has promising implications for prevention programs. The applied implications of the study for educational and clinical contexts are discussed.

Quality of Life Change and Individual Differences in Stimulus Screening in Relation to Incidence of Illness

1977 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 267-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Mehrabian ◽  
Marion Ross
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Well Being ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Life Change ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Life Changes ◽  
Comprehensive Description ◽  
High Arousal

A considerable amount of evidence indicates that a high rate of life changes—a source of continued and unavoidable arousal—is detrimental to health and psychological well-being. The present study hypothesized that sustained high-arousal states are unpreferred and that the persistence of unpreferred emotional states is harmful. Using a conceptual framework for a comprehensive description of emotional states and the differential preferences for these, it is possible to make more precise predictions on the illness consequences of emotionally unpreferred life changes. Particular hypotheses which received support were that more arousing life changes are more conducive to illness; that among the more arousing life changes, unpleasant changes are associated with more illness than pleasant ones; that unpleasant life changes are more detrimental to health when combined with dominance-inducing life changes; and that arousing life changes are particularly harmful to more arousable (non-screening) individuals.

scholarly journals Exposure to and recall of violence reduce short-term memory and cognitive control

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (32) ◽  
pp. 8505-8510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Bogliacino ◽  
Gianluca Grimalda ◽  
Pietro Ortoleva ◽  
Patrick Ring
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Cognitive Functions ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Exposure To Violence ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Urban District ◽  
Term Memory

Previous research has investigated the effects of violence and warfare on individuals' well-being, mental health, and individual prosociality and risk aversion. This study establishes the short- and long-term effects of exposure to violence on short-term memory and aspects of cognitive control. Short-term memory is the ability to store information. Cognitive control is the capacity to exert inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Both have been shown to affect positively individual well-being and societal development. We sampled Colombian civilians who were exposed either to urban violence or to warfare more than a decade earlier. We assessed exposure to violence through either the urban district-level homicide rate or self-reported measures. Before undertaking cognitive tests, a randomly selected subset of our sample was asked to recall emotions of anxiety and fear connected to experiences of violence, whereas the rest recalled joyful or emotionally neutral experiences. We found that higher exposure to violence was associated with lower short-term memory abilities and lower cognitive control in the group recalling experiences of violence, whereas it had no effect in the other group. This finding demonstrates that exposure to violence, even if a decade earlier, can hamper cognitive functions, but only among individuals actively recalling emotional states linked with such experiences. A laboratory experiment conducted in Germany aimed to separate the effect of recalling violent events from the effect of emotions of fear and anxiety. Both factors had significant negative effects on cognitive functions and appeared to be independent from each other.

scholarly journals Predicting Stress in Teens from Wearable Device Data Using Machine Learning Methods

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire W. Jin ◽  
Ame Osotsi ◽  
Zita Oravecz
Keyword(s):  
High Stress ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Physiological Signals ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Stressful Event ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Machine Model ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Physiological Indicators ◽  
Physiological Markers

AbstractStress management is a pervasive issue in the modern high schooler’s life. Despite many efforts to support adolescents’ mental well-being, teenagers often fail to recognize signs of high stress and anxiety until their emotions have escalated. Being able to identify early signs of these intense emotional states and predict their onset using physiological signals collected passively in real-time could help teenagers improve their awareness of their emotional well-being and take a more proactive approach to managing their emotions. To evaluate the potential of this approach, we collected data from high schoolers with Empatica E4 wearable health monitors (wristband) while they were living their daily lives. The data consisted of stressful event reports and physiological markers over the course of 4 weeks. We developed a random forest model and a support vector machine model and systematically assessed their performance in terms of predicting the onset of stress events and identifying physiological signals of stress. The models showed strong performance in terms of these measures and provided insights on physiological indicators of adolescent stress.

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