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Mirror others to understand them better: A new study on how empathy works
01.09.2023 14:50
Updated: 13.05.2024 21:23
Empathy, our ability to understand and share the feelings of others, often involves mimicking their expressions.
Researchers Naoyoshi Matsuda and Masaki O. Abe from Hokkaido University delved into how inhibiting this mimicry affects our empathy and understanding of others' emotional states.
Their study, published in the journal Cognitive Studies, revealed that imitation-inhibition training enhances the rapid and accurate recognition of emotional expressions.
More about the research
Imitation-inhibition training involves suppressing automatic imitative tendencies.
The researchers divided a group of nine women and forty-one men into two groups.
One group received imitation-inhibition training where participants had to lift a finger contrary to the presented image.
The other group underwent control training.
The study evaluated participants' ability to recognize facial expressions like happiness, surprise, disgust, anger, and sadness using the Facial Expression Recognition (FER) test.
Interestingly, those without imitation-inhibition training were slower to identify facial expressions when mimicry was restricted due to holding chopsticks in their mouths.
However, the trained group experienced no such delay.
Moreover, participants who underwent imitation-inhibition training reported increased empathy.
This training enhanced the ability to differentiate between oneself and others, highlighting its positive effect on interpersonal understanding.
Why it's important
The study underscores the significance of distinguishing between one's own feelings and those of others when aiming to empathize and communicate effectively.
Further research is anticipated to explore the impact of imitation-inhibition training on various social cognitive aspects and potentially delve into neural effects as well.
