On the interaction of social affect and cognition: empathy, compassion and theory of mind

By Katrin Preckel, Philipp Kanske, Tania Singer. 2018

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Empathy, compassion and Theory of Mind (ToM) are central topics in social psychology and neuroscience. While empathy enables the sharing of others’ emotions and may result in empathic distress, a maladaptive form of empathic resonance, or compassion, a feeling of warmth and concern for others, ToM provides cognitive understanding of someone else's thoughts or intentions. These socio-affective and socio-cognitive routes to understanding others are subserved by separable, independent brain networks. Nonetheless they are jointly required in many complex social situations. A process that is critical for both, empathy and ToM, is self-other distinction, which is implemented in different temporoparietal brain regions. Thus, adaptive social behavior is a result of dynamic interplay of socio-affective and socio-cognitive processes.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/79c151866cf07f384ba5d29d8665adff0c22052b