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How automatic and representational is empathy, and why

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2003

Martin L. Hoffman
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003 Hoff@psych.nyu.edu

Abstract

The claim that empathy is both automatic and representational is criticized as follows: (a) five empathy-arousing processes ranging from conditioning and mimicry to prospective-taking show that empathy can be either automatic or representational, and only under certain circumstances, both; (b) although automaticity decreases, empathy increases with age and cognitive development; (c) observers' causal attributions can shift rapidly and produce more complex empathic responses than the theory allows.

Type
Brief Report
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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