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Running Head: EMPATHY and SELF-CONSCIOUS EMOTIONS

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Running Head: EMPATHY and SELF-CONSCIOUS EMOTIONS 1 Running head: EMPATHY AND SELF-CONSCIOUS EMOTIONS Associations between Empathy and Self-Conscious Emotions during Social Interactions Jenna D. Gilchrist, PhD1,2 David E. Conroy, PhD1,3 Aaron L. Pincus, PhD4 Nilam Ram, PhD5,6 1Department of Kinesiology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 2Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, University of Toronto, Canada 3Department of Preventive Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL 4Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 5Department of Human Development & Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 6German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Berlin, Germany This work was supported by the National Institute on Aging grant AG035645, the National Institute on Health grants R01 HD076994, P2C HD041025, UL TR00012, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The content of this article is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Aging, the National Institutes of Health, or the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jenna D. Gilchrist, Department of Kinesiology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, e-mail: [email protected] Original article Word count: 4901 Table 1: Correlations between Study Variables Table 2: Results from Multilevel Models Examining Associations between Empathy and Self- Conscious Emotions in Social Contexts 2 Running head: EMPATHY AND SELF-CONSCIOUS EMOTIONS This manuscript does not represent the official copy of record. Draft Version March 15th, 2019. Abstract Empathy can alter the emotional state of an individual, yet little is known about how empathy impacts emotions in daily life. This study investigated how cognitive and affective empathy experienced during social interactions was associated with pride and shame. Participants (N = 150) between 19-89 years of age (M = 47.64, SD = 18.85) completed three 21-day measurement bursts of experience sampling every 4.5 months. Following each of 64,111 interactions, participants rated the intensity of two emotional states (proud, ashamed) and their experience of cognitive and affective empathy for their interaction partner. Results from multilevel models indicated that, at the within-person level, greater momentary cognitive empathy was associated with dampened shame and increased pride whereas greater momentary affective empathy was associated with increased shame and pride. At the between-person level, people who reported more cognitive empathy overall reported less shame and greater pride, and people who reported more affective empathy overall also reported greater shame but not any more or less pride. The emotional consequences differ based on the valence of the emotion experienced for cognitive empathy but not for affective empathy. Empathy is a dynamic process with different underlying processes for cognitive and affective empathy. Keywords: pride, shame, self-conscious emotions, emotion regulation, experience sampling 3 Running head: EMPATHY AND SELF-CONSCIOUS EMOTIONS Associations between Empathy and Self-Conscious Emotions during Social Interactions The emotions we experience in daily life serve important functions, from orienting our attention and guiding our behavior to facilitating our interactions with others. As much as 98% of emotion regulation occurs in the presence of other people (Gross, Richards, & John, 2006). Thus, emotional experiences – and the processes that shape them - need to be investigated in explicitly interpersonal contexts (Zaki & Williams, 2013). Self-conscious emotions such as shame and pride may provide a useful model for such investigations because they are inherently social emotions that function to promote the attainment of social goals (Keltner & Buswell, 1997; Tracy & Robins, 2004). One interpersonal process that may impact these goals is the individual’s experience of empathy for their interaction partner. This study investigated how empathy experienced during naturalistic social interactions was associated with experiences of shame and pride. Self-Conscious Emotions: Shame and Pride Self-conscious emotions are emotional reactions to the self - they emerge when attention is turned inward, and the self is the object of evaluation (Tracy & Robins, 2004). Experiences of shame stem from appraisals that the self has not lived up to a set of standards or that the self has violated some sort of social norm and generally signals incompetence (Lazarus, 1991). Shame is experienced as highly aversive, difficult to alleviate, and is associated with avoidant motivational tendencies as people seek to hide from attention drawn to their perceived defects or shortcomings (Lewis, 1971). Whereas shame is largely elicited as a result of failure, pride is a pleasant self- conscious emotional response to success or mastery experiences (Lazarus, 1991) that functions to promote and maintain social status and acceptance within a group (Cheng, Tracy, & Henrich, 2010). 4 Running head: EMPATHY AND SELF-CONSCIOUS EMOTIONS Empathy As researchers recognize the inherently social aspect of emotions, increased attention is being given to the ways in which emotions are shaped in social contexts (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994; Rimé, 2009; Van Kleef, 2009). Given the social nature of self-conscious emotions, one overlooked but potentially important part of emotional experiences in social contexts is the empathy that one has for another during an interaction in shaping one’s own emotional experience. Empathy is generally regarded as the process through which individuals come to understand and share how others are feeling and is thus an inherently social process with direct implications for interpersonal emotion experiences and regulation (Batson & Ahmed, 2009). Empathy comprises overlapping cognitive and affective components (Cuff, Brown, Taylor, & Howat, 2014; Preston & De Waal, 2002). Cognitive empathy, also referred to as mentalizing, refers to the cognitive aspect of empathy that involves making inferences about other people’s internal states based on one’s own understanding of the situation and the other individual’s outward expression – an understanding of how the other person is feeling (Blair, 2005). Affective empathy, also referred to as experience sharing, is the affective component of empathy that involves taking on others’ emotions – ‘I feel what you feel’ (Blair, 2005; Vachon & Lynam, 2016). Research on empathy has generally examined the prosocial and antisocial behaviors associated with levels of empathy and little empirical research has examined how empathy is associated with emotional responding following social interactions, specifically the inherent social emotions of pride and shame. Anderson and Keltner (2002) argue that the primary function of empathy is to promote the formation and maintenance of social bonds so 5 Running head: EMPATHY AND SELF-CONSCIOUS EMOTIONS consideration of how empathy shapes emotion experiences in interpersonal contexts is warranted. Associations between Empathy and Social Emotions There are competing hypotheses about how empathy alters emotional responses. One argument is that empathy directs attention toward others and away from the self so it is likely to alter what people appraise about their context (Batson, Fultz, & Schoenrade, 1987). This is similar to the antecedent-focused emotion regulation strategy of attentional deployment in which individuals regulate their emotions by directing attention either toward or away from an emotion- eliciting feature (Gross, 1998). In this case, one’s perspective is oriented outward toward a target and away from the self. Because pride and shame are self-conscious emotions that rely on self- reflection and self-evaluation for their elicitation, attention oriented toward others may serve to dampen self-conscious emotional responses. Researchers have also put forth a motivated account of empathy with the central tenet that people are motivated to engage or not engage with the emotions of others (Zaki, 2014). For example, the personal distress that accompanies negative emotions like shame may lead people to avoid empathizing with others experiencing this emotion while people may be more likely to open themselves up to share experiences of pleasant emotions like pride (Rimé, 2009). This argument suggests a motivated account of empathy based on the pleasant/unpleasant valence of the emotion expressed on behalf of the target. Alternatively, research on emotional contagion generally supports that people tend to experience and express the same emotions of others around them, regardless of valance, in line with prior theorizing on the role of ‘motor mimicry’ in empathy (Eisenberg & Strayer, 1987; 6 Running head: EMPATHY AND SELF-CONSCIOUS EMOTIONS Hatfield et al., 1994). Such processes are relatively automatic, thereby circumventing the complex cognitive requirements involved in the elicitation of pride and shame. Empathy as a Dynamic Process Typically, investigations into empathy have focused on differences between people who are more or less empathic and how those differences are associated with various outcomes (e.g., prosocial behaviors). Researchers have also demonstrated that empathy is a dynamic process that varies across contexts and time (Nezlek, Feist, Wilson, & Plesko, 2001; Roche, Jacobson, & Pincus, 2016; Toomey
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