Empathic accuracy

Neuroscience research has shown that brain activation associated with empathic accuracy overlaps with both the areas responsible for affect sharing and mentalizing.

In it, he created three guidelines for psychologists to follow in a therapeutic session with a client: to have unconditional positive regard, empathy, and genuineness.

[10] The mentalizing system involves areas dependent upon task demands but converges in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.

[8] William Ickes and colleagues developed a method to measure the accuracy of a perceiver's inferences about the content of a target person's reported thoughts and feelings.

This method has been adapted for neuroscience research by including fMRI scanning of participants while watching videos of others.

[14] Work on empathic inaccuracy and aggression toward spouses has shown that men who are more likely to be aggressive toward their wives are also less accurate at reading emotional states of women who they do not know, and more likely to inaccurately label those women's states as critical or rejecting, suggesting a basic cognitive bias within these men.

[16] Research on gender differences has been mixed, with effects mainly showing up when participants are made aware of gender-role expectations and of the fact that empathy is being measured.

Research with opposite-gender couples found significant differences between genders: women were better at reading their partner's emotions.

These differences, however, were dramatically diminished when the couples were told that they would receive money for each emotion they correctly identified in their partner.

[18] Social neuroscience has located regions of the brain correlated with empathic accuracy, which helped clarify the debate regarding simulation theory and theory-theory.

[19] Oxytocin, known for its role in regulating prosocial behavior, selectively improved the empathic accuracy of those individuals who scored higher on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), meaning that increased levels of oxytocin helped people with poorer social skills but not those who were already socially skilled.

[19] Similar findings have been found in clinical populations, with those on the autism spectrum experiencing greater difficulty with empathic accuracy tasks.

[24] A more recent summary is available in a single-author book titled Everyday Mind Reading: Understanding What Other People Think and Feel (2009).