A Relational Frame Theory Account of Empathy.

The term empathy comes from the Greek "empatheia" which is a composite of the words "en" and "pathos", and translates into "being in some sort of suffering, feeling or emotion". This term was incorporated to western culture by the Germans at the beginning of the 20th century in the context of theories of art appreciation, and it became used in psychology by Titchener as a form of pespective-taking that referred to the psychological process of objectively perceiving another person's situation. The current literature on empathy has evolved after that original conceptualization. As discussed by Batson (1991, p. 87), although Titchener originally conceptualized empathy in its cognitive dimension, research during the 60s and 70s emphasized its emotional side, with perspective-taking as a precursor of that ability. Empathy as a result came to have an important emotional component and it was defined as a set of congruent vicarious emotions that were other-oriented and barely distinguishable from pity, compassion and tenderness. In contrast with that social emphasis , other authors proposed that when those emotions are oriented towards reducing someone else's suffering those should be called sympathy, and empathy should be simply defined as "an affective response that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of another's emotional state or condition and is similar to what the other person is feeling or would be expected to feel" (Eisenberg, 2000, p.671). For these authors, pure empathy turns into sympathy or personal distress after some "cognitive processing" where the individual learns to differentiate between his own emotional states and those of others. A third main approach to empathy conceptualizes it as a multidimensional phenomenon, resolving the dispute by integrating the cognitive and the emotional dimensions of empathy and arguing that empathy is a composite of perspective-taking, fantasy orientation, empathic concern and personal distress (Davis, 1983). Fantasy orientation is the individuals' tendency to identify with fictitious characters, empathic concern refers to the feelings of sympathy and concern for others, and personal distress to the feelings of anxiety and difficulty in interpersonal settings. Nonetheless, there seems to be a strong consensus about the relationships between those psychological processes and other important areas of functioning. For example, it has been reported that those processes are strongly related to general well functioning (Eisenberg, 2000, p.672) , pro-social behaviors (Underwood & Moore, 1982; Batson, 2002; Scaffidi-Abbate, Isgro, Wicklund, & Boca, 2006b) , conflict resolution (Corcoran & Mallinckrodt, 2000; Drolet, Larrick, & Morris, 1998) , and marital adjustment (Long, 1993), whereas a lack of them has been observed in autism and mental retardation (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985; Charlop-Christy & Daneshvar, 2003; Blacher-Dixon & Simeonsson, 1981), and in some psychological disorders (Imura, 2002; Rupp & Jurkovic, 1996; Schiffman et al., 2004; Wells, Clark, & Ahmad, 1998). The evidence seems to indicate not only that a lack of emotional and cognitive perspective taking skills is associated with the development of those problems, but that when we manipulate or try to change this ability, children become more intelligent, understanding, productive, capable of solving problems and less impulsive (Saltz, Dixon, & Johnson, 1977; Rosen, 1974). Perspective taking has also shown to reduce delinquency (Chandler, 1973), group conflicts (Corcoran et al., 2000) and stigma (Galinsky & Ku, 2004). However, as stated by Eisenberg, "empirical work in the field is starting to move from attention to mere correlation to concern about moderating influences, mediational processes, and the direction of causality between morally relevant variables and emotionality and regulation" (2000, p.688). …