Topczewski, J. (2019). Influence of perspective taking and pain intensity on empathy for pain in people with high and low levels of experiential avoidance (Niepublikowana praca magisterska napisana pod kierunkiem dr Kamili Jankowiak-Siudy). Institute of Cognitive and Behavioural Neuroscience, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland.
Background: Empathy can be conceptualized either as a trait (dispositional empathy) or as a response in particular situation (situational empathy). According to The Flexible Connectedness Model, experiential avoidance plays crucial role in healthy social functioning, allowing people to develop interpersonal closeness in spite of difficult experiences that accompany empathizing with others. No research, however, investigated the relationship between experiential avoidance (EA), perspective taking and empathy in the context of pain. Our aim was to fill this gap.
Method: 42 individuals with high experiential avoidance (H-EA) and 42 individuals with low experiential avoidance (L-EA) (as measured by AAQ-II) had their dispositional cognitive and affective empathy assessed with IRI. Situational empathy was measured using movies evoking empathic reactions to physical pain and three scales measuring perceived pain intensity (cognitive empathy), personal distress (self-focused affective empathy) and empathic concern (other-focused affective empathy). We used specific instruction to elicit perspective taking (self/other). MANOVA and repeated measures ANOVA were performed. Perspective taking was a within-subjects factor and experiential avoidance was a between-subjects factor. Results: L-EA group reported lower level of personal distress (dispositional and situational) than H-EA group. Moreover, results showed that taking perspective of other evokes greater empathic concern than taking perspective of self. No interaction between EA and perspective taking was found.
Discussion: Capitalizing on previous research showing that empathic concern, personal distress, EA and perspective taking are related to prosocial behavior, this study further highlights usefulness of ACT and perspective taking training in clinical and social contexts.