Self-Modification and Empathy in Romantic Passion Berenice

Bi-Annual Conference of the International Society for Research on Emotion July 8-10, 2015

Self-Modification and Empathy in Romantic Passion

Berenice Jiménez Rodríguez, Pérez Pérez Alejandra Elizabeth, Sánchez Aragón Rozzana

National Autonomous University of Mexico

Romantic passion is an emotion characterized by the desire of complete union with another (Hatfield, 1996). Sánchez Aragón (2007) pointed out that passionate love has four phases: the first phase “Attraction” refers to the beginning to the period in which individual wants to be close and to know another person who is attractive; next phase “Infatuation” includes an special link with the other person full of fantasy, sexual attraction and the experience of complete rea- lization; third phase “Obsessive Love” because an important cognitive process is being used to think, be worried and imagine being with a person the most of the time although the person is not there; and the last phase “Desperate Love” is defined by apprehensive and anxious behavior toward the person in order to obtain closeness and reciprocity. Passion implies, in whose experience it, some stress that makes necessary to choose between modify their environment or do themselves. In this regard, Díaz Guerrero (1994) showed that Mexicans prefer to cope with the tension thru self-modification (SM), it is mean; change their attitude/conduct instead of other’s attitudes/conduct in order to avoid relationship difficulties. In this context, thru interaction between the dyad empathy develops and depending of that, the SM will take place. Empathy is a personal trait with cognitive and emotional characteristics that permeates the interaction, dynamic of the romantic relationship (Sánchez Aragón & Martinez Pérez, 2012). For this, the objectives of this study are: 1) to find the relationship between SM, Empathy and Passionate Love, 2) to explore if these relationships are different between men and women. In order to do so, we worked with 400 participants (192 men, 208 women) whose responded voluntary to three scales: 1. Self-Modification in Romantic Relationship (Jiménez Rodríguez & Sánchez Aragón, 2012) with two dimensions SM to Agree and SM by Respect; 2. Empathy in Romantic Relationship (Sánchez Aragón & Martinez Pérez, 2012) with four dimensions: Cognitive Empathy of Emotions, Compassionate care, Self-disturbance and Taking perspective, and 3. Passionate Love Multiphasic Scale (Sánchez Aragón, 2007) with four dimensions: Attraction, Infatuation, Obsessive Love and Desperate Love. Findings confirm the important role self-modification plays in passionate love phases in Mexico. The relationships among empathy and phases of passionate love show interesting effects depending of their phases. Regarding gender differences, results show that men and women respond similarly. Findings will be discussed in terms of their impli- cations, social psychology theories and cross cultural approaches.