Neuroscience
Which of your friends - the happier, or the more melancholy - is better at spotting your excitement that Chris is attending your birthday, or that a B+ has left you disappointed?
Evidence suggests that more upbeat people consider themselves especially empathic, and it would be reasonable to believe them, given that they know more people on average, and tend to form deeper, more trusting relationships. The reality, however, is more complicated. New research led by Yale's Hillary Devlin suggests that cheerful people may think they’re high in empathy, but their confidence outstrips their ability.
Devlin assessed her 121 adult participants' level of trait positive affect - essentially their average happy mood from day to day - and asked them how strong they were at empathising. Happier participants believed they were better empathisers in general.
The researchers next studied videos of people giving a monologue about an autobiographical event. For each of the four videos (two positive events, two negative) participants rated, second-by-second, the level of negative or positive emotion they thought the speaker was currently feeling.
Participants with a more upbeat personality believed their accuracy on this task to be higher than the others. However, the speakers had conducted an identical rating process on their own videos, and it turns out the happier participants were no closer to the true feelings than the more downbeat participants. In fact, happy participants found it harder to judge the emotional tone of a highly negative monologue, in which a participant described the death of a parent.
There was one ray of sunshine for the positive participants: they were marginally more accurate in the two positive videos at spotting upward shifts in the speakers’ emotions, for example as their happiness intensified slightly. This raises the possibility that upbeat people may be more sensitive to shifts in emotion that match their own disposition. But more generally, their high confidence in their own empathy appears unfounded, and they may struggle to drop down into the headspace of someone feeling very low.
In psychology research, measures of empathy are often based on participants' assessments of themselves, so this new study suggests researchers need to be aware that such beliefs may not track reality. For the rest of us, it's useful to know that you don't need to be a Pollyanna to figure out how people are doing. Sometimes, it’s the Eeyores who are more understanding.
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Devlin, H., Zaki, J., Ong, D., & Gruber, J. (2014). Not As Good as You Think? Trait Positive Emotion Is Associated with Increased Self-Reported Empathy but Decreased Empathic Performance PLoS ONE, 9 (10) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0110470
Post written by Alex Fradera (@alexfradera) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Happy people think they're good at empathising with the pain of others. They're wrong
Evidence suggests that more upbeat people consider themselves especially empathic, and it would be reasonable to believe them, given that they know more people on average, and tend to form deeper, more trusting relationships. The reality, however, is more complicated. New research led by Yale's Hillary Devlin suggests that cheerful people may think they’re high in empathy, but their confidence outstrips their ability.
Devlin assessed her 121 adult participants' level of trait positive affect - essentially their average happy mood from day to day - and asked them how strong they were at empathising. Happier participants believed they were better empathisers in general.
The researchers next studied videos of people giving a monologue about an autobiographical event. For each of the four videos (two positive events, two negative) participants rated, second-by-second, the level of negative or positive emotion they thought the speaker was currently feeling.
Participants with a more upbeat personality believed their accuracy on this task to be higher than the others. However, the speakers had conducted an identical rating process on their own videos, and it turns out the happier participants were no closer to the true feelings than the more downbeat participants. In fact, happy participants found it harder to judge the emotional tone of a highly negative monologue, in which a participant described the death of a parent.
There was one ray of sunshine for the positive participants: they were marginally more accurate in the two positive videos at spotting upward shifts in the speakers’ emotions, for example as their happiness intensified slightly. This raises the possibility that upbeat people may be more sensitive to shifts in emotion that match their own disposition. But more generally, their high confidence in their own empathy appears unfounded, and they may struggle to drop down into the headspace of someone feeling very low.
In psychology research, measures of empathy are often based on participants' assessments of themselves, so this new study suggests researchers need to be aware that such beliefs may not track reality. For the rest of us, it's useful to know that you don't need to be a Pollyanna to figure out how people are doing. Sometimes, it’s the Eeyores who are more understanding.
_________________________________
Devlin, H., Zaki, J., Ong, D., & Gruber, J. (2014). Not As Good as You Think? Trait Positive Emotion Is Associated with Increased Self-Reported Empathy but Decreased Empathic Performance PLoS ONE, 9 (10) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0110470
Post written by Alex Fradera (@alexfradera) for the BPS Research Digest.
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We already know from past research that people with social anxiety seem to have a bias towards negative social signals. For instance, they're more likely to notice a frown of disapproval than a smile, which of course only fuels their anxiety. But...
- 10 Studies That Show The Advantages Of Feeling Sad
As human beings, there's no avoiding feeling sad – as R.E.M. put it "everybody cries, and everybody hurts sometimes". We usually think of this as an unpleasant state, and for those of us who want to minimise our miserable moods as much as possible,...
- Why Do Friendly People Usually Lead Happier Lives?
High scorers on the personality trait of agreeableness are eager to please, concerned for others, and compliant to other perspectives. On average, they live happier lives too. A new study suggests a possible reason: when they have the chance, friendly...
- The Digest Guide To ... Happiness
10 years of the Research DigestYou can will yourself happier. Nathaniel Hawthorne likened happiness to a butterfly, "which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." Poetic but probably...
- Can You Will Yourself Happier?
"Happiness is as a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." (Nathaniel Hawthorne)A key question for people hoping to improve their well-being is whether it is counter-productive...