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Doris Bischof-KhlerEmpathy and Self-Recognition in Phylogenetic and Ontogenetic Perspective

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Emotion ReviewVol. 4, No. 1 (January 2012) 40 48

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The development of empathy in small children is a rather neglected topic in contemporary psychology. Much more attention is directed to theory of mind, which is also referred to as common sense mentalism. What is meant by this concept and whether or when it can be attributed to very young chil-dren is still a matter of debate. Some researchers assume a theory of mind already in babies in the first year whenever their behavior shows reference to the mental state of another, as for instance in social referencing and shared attention; some even attribute the ability to animals below the primate level (for a survey, see Suddendorf & Corballis, 2007). As we will see here, empathic responses, too, are sometimes considered the outcome of theory of mind.

The problem with such a broad application of theory of mind is that it treats mechanisms of different complexity all alike. For example, in several studies with looking-time paradigms, babies in their second year expected an agent to look for an objectwhich had been transferred to another location during her absencewhere she had seen and handled it before she left the scene. However, when in another trial the agent was reaching for the object in its new location, the babies looked longerthat is, they seemed to be astonished that she knew what she could

not know having been absent during the relevant event (Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005; Southgate, Senju, & Csibra, 2007). From these and similar findings (for a survey, see Caron, 2009; Sodian, 2010) it is argued that babies already understand the concept of false belief that has traditionally been considered crucial for the development of a theory of mind in the fourth year (for a survey, see Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). A more parsimonious explanation would be that the babies follow a behavior rule that does not imply mental-state understanding. This aligns with a proposal by Povinelli and Vonk (2003) in their debate on chimpanzees theory of mind. According to this rule, the babies associate an agents gaze orientation or reaching toward an object with the objects location, and this association causes them to anticipate where they will going to be active upon their return (Bischof-Khler, 2011; Perner, 2009; Perner & Ruffman, 2005; Sodian, 2010). Just the same, very young babies tendency to interpret an agents gaze, reaching, and pointing as goal directed can be explained by a similar behavior rule and does not necessarily imply that they attribute intentions to the agent (for a survey, see Sodian, 2010). Altogether, the explanatory value of theory-of-mind attributions to young children remains equivocal. I, personally, sympathize with a position that ascribes

Empathy and Self-Recognition in Phylogenetic and Ontogenetic Perspective

Doris Bischof-KhlerDepartment of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich, Germany

Abstract

Empathy means understanding another persons emotional or intentional state by vicariously sharing this state. As opposed to emotional contagion, empathy is characterized by the selfother distinction of subjective experience. Empathy develops in the second year, as soon as symbolic representation and mental imagery set in that enable children to represent the self, to recognize their mirror image, and to identify with another person. In experiments with 126 children, mirror recognition and readiness to empathize with a distressed playmate were investigated. Almost all recognizers showed compassion and tried to help, whereas nonrecognizers were perplexed or remained indifferent. Several motivational consequences of empathy are discussed and its special quality is outlined in comparison with theory of mind and perspective taking.

Keywordsaltruism, empathy, selfother distinction, self-recognition, synchronic identification, theory of mind

Corresponding author: Doris Bischof-Khler, Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich, Leopoldstr. 13, D-80802 Munich, Germany. Email: [email protected]

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Bischof-Khler Empathy and Self-Recognition 41

a theory of mind only in cases where children explicitly under-stand the representational character of representations, that is, conceptualize mental experience as caused by mental acts (Bischof-Khler, 2000a, 2011; Perner, 1991; see also Figure 2). According to current knowledge, this capacity is not yet present in the great apes or in children younger than 3 years old. Does this mean that neither understands the mental state of others? In this paper, I propose that empathy is the first mechanism in phy-logeny and ontogeny that conveys insight into the subjective experience of another, and that it can be explained without the abilities necessary for a theory of mind.

Empathy is a process in which an observer vicariously shares the emotion or intention of another person and thereby understands what this other person feels or intends (Bischof-Khler, 1991). The empathic response may be caused by the expressive behavior of the other or by the persons situation. Although primarily an emotional response, empathy should not be confused with emotional contagion, in which the emotion of another person takes possession of the observers without them being aware of the fact that the shared emotion originates in another persons emotion. Examples of emotional contagion are: contagious yawning, laughter, mass panic, or breaking into tears simply by watching other people crying. In empathy, the observers remain aware of the fact that the emotion or intention they participate in is actually the others emotion or intention. Thus, empathy is comprised of emotional as well as cognitive components. It means vicarious sharing of emotion while simultaneously recognizing that one shares the emotion without necessarily being able to conceptualize that emotion. It is an emotional response that mediates insight.

Empathy must further be distinguished from another mecha-nism of social cognition, perspective-taking. This ability means imagining oneself in another persons place and, on this basis, conceptualizing the others point of view, thinking, and feeling. Perspective taking is merely a rational mechanism in which emotional participation is of no importance. In perspective tak-ing, one can imagine the emotion of another person but that does not imply sharing the emotion.

Empathy in the Second Year

Before going into a detailed analysis of the process of empathy, results from our own investigations with 126 boys and girls, ages 16 to 24 months, will be presented to give an impression of what children will do when empathizing with a person in need (Bischof-Khler, 1988, 1991, 1994).

Empathy was investigated in two different settings:In the broken spoon experiment, the child played with a

grown-up playmate who had already been familiarized with the child in an earlier play session. After a while, both ate a dessert and the playmate accidentally broke her spoon. She said she could not eat anymore and demonstrated grief by sobbing a little (for about 2 minutes). A third spoon was lying on the table in case the child might offer it as a substitute. The mothers of the children sat in the background and were instructed to intervene only upon the childrens request.

In the teddy bear experiment, with different children of the same age, the playmate brought a teddy bear along. After a while, she appeared to accidentally break the teddy bear causing it to lose its arm. After the accident, she started sobbing and mourning and verbalized her grief: Mein Teddy ist kaputt (My teddy is broken).

We distinguished four patterns from the childrens responses:The helpers showed concern and compassion. All stayed

close to the playmate most of the time. In the spoon experiment, they stopped eating. They tried to help or consoleoffering a substitute toy or spoon. In the teddy bear experiment some chil-dren attempted to repair the teddy bear, others went to their mothers and tried to draw their attention to the playmate.

In a second groupthe perplexedchildren also stopped play-ing or eating, but they did not intervene. They stayed with the play-mate and kept their attention focused on her. They appeared not to know what to do or to not quite understand what was going on.

In a third group, the children showed emotional contagion. They burst out crying and sought consolation from their mothers.

A fourth group showed indifference. These children looked momentarily startled but soon lost interest in the playmate and went on playing or eating.

Helpers were classified as empathic; perplexed children seemed more worried than empathic. Indifferent children and children displaying contagion were classified as nonempathic, the latter because their grief remained centered on themselves rather than on the person in need.

We considered several possibilities for these behavioral dif-ferences, for instance, the relationship to the playmate, or inter-est in the teddy bear. They turned out to be irrelevant. We did, however, find a strong correlation to an ability which at first glance appeared to have little connection with empathy, namely, the ability of children to recognize themselves in a mirror. This was tested by another experimenter (who did not know the results of the empathy test) with the so-called Rouge Test (Amsterdam, 1972). First, the children were exposed to a mir-ror. Then a mark was inconspicuously placed on their cheek and they were placed in front of the mirror again. Children that dem-onstrated an awareness of the mark were identified as recogniz-ers. They also grimaced and experimented while watching their body movements in the mirror. Nonrecognizers treated their mirror image as a playmate whom they smiled at or tried to find behind the mirror. There was a third group of children who showed a striking tendency to avoid their mirror image by going away or turning their heads abruptly when catching their own gaze. Some of them identified the mark on their face, some did not. They appeared to be in a prestage of self-recognition and were, therefore, called transitionals.

The results of our investigation were rather straightforward: All empathic children recognized themselves in the mirror. Not all nonrecognizers were empathic. Figure 1 shows the results in detail: Indifferent children were predominantly nonrecognizers. Perplexed and children showing contagion were mainly in the mirror transitional stage. Helpers all recognized themselves; a few were transitionals who identified the mark on their faces. Recognizers that did not empathize do not contradict the results


42 Emotion Review Vol. 4 No. 1

because self-recognition is a necessary but not sufficient pre-condition for empathy; other variables can override the empathic response. The correlation between self-recognition and empathy remains consistent when age is partialed out.

Self-Recognition and EmpathyNow, to the reasons that led us to expect a connection between self-recognition and empathy: Self-recognition is due to the onset of mental imagery at about the middle of the second year of life. Children now become able to symbolically represent reality, allowing them to solve problems using their imagination (Piaget, 1975). This process could be compared to the use of a flight simulator. One would scarcely allow an inexperienced student pilot to use a real airplane to try landing. Instead, he would be seated in a flight simulator where he can commit any blunder without really risking his neck. Mental imagery is such a simulator. It allows for imaging behavioral goals and figuring out the best way to reach them.

Mental imagery requires a novel form of representation as depicted in Figure 2. It shows a person seeing an object and her perception of this object. Additionally, at a second level, an image of this object can be generated by imagination. This representation can be experienced independent of reality. It can

be generated at any time, shifted around in the imagination and be put into relation to other objects. Under an epistemological perspective, the perception itself also is a representation, but its representative characteristic is not experienced. To the person the perception is reality as such. Only on the second level is the person aware of the representative character of the image. Therefore, it will be called symbolic representation. Symbolic representations are experienced as referring to reality, not as being reality. That is, phenomenologically, they differ in quality from perceptual representations. This qualitative differentiation allows us to separate real experience from imagination: Even 3-year-olds know that a cookie one thinks of cannot be eaten. On this level, the representative character of imagery need not be reflected upon.

Conscious reflection would presuppose a theory of mind. To understand theory of mind, let us focus on the person at the left in Figure 2 who also perceives the object. The first person not only perceives this second person, but can also imagine how the second person represents the object and manipulates it in her imagination. And, in the exact same way, the first person could also represent her own act of perceiving and representing, as well as other mental acts. Reflecting on mental operations is what is meant by theory of mind; some authors call this a meta-representation. To explain empathy, however, the meta-representation level is not requiredthe levels of perception and symbolic representation will do.

In primate phylogeny, there is evidence that imagery only appears at the level of the great apes. Incidents of true mental problem solving in apes were first documented by Wolfgang Khler (1921) and David Premack (Premack & Premack, 1983). For instance, chimpanzees piled boxes on top of each other and climbed on top of them in order to reach a banana suspended from the ceiling. In clear contrast to solving the problem by trial and error, they acted in a straightforward fash-ion after obviously having figured out the solution in their imagination. As this example shows, mental problem solving could not be efficient without a representation of the self, as well. The ape has to be equipped with an image of himself that he can shift around mentally, just like the images of other objects involved in the problem. There is evidence that apes

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Figure 1. Empathy and self-recognition (Teddy-Bear and Broken Spoon Experiment)

Figure 2. Perception, symbolic representation in imagination, and meta-representation (theory of mind)



form a rudimentary self-representation, as demonstrated by their ability to recognize themselves in the mirror (Gallup, 1970). Consequently, one would expect apes to be able to empathize comparably to a 2-year-old child.

To understand the connection between empathy and self-recognition, we next have to ask: What does it mean to recognize oneself?

When we try to imagine how a child in the first year experi-ences herself, we can assume that her perceptual world is filled with relevant objects, but she (herself as a person) is not yet the subject of her perception. That could lead us to conclude that something like an ego feeling is still lacking at this developmen-tal stage. However, the baby can already well distinguish whether an event is caused by herself or by somebody else. Already, 3-month-old babies enjoy events much more when they are self-created than when they are only passively observed (Papousek & Papousek, 1977). The own ego is thus already sensed as a kind of subject-related quality of the perceived events.

William James (1892/1961) distinguished two kinds of self-experience: the I and the Me. The I denotes the self as the subject of experience becoming aware of itself in a kind of unre-flected self-sensing (Figure 3). The Me is the objectified self giving rise to ego-conciousness. Because the I is unreflected, it is difficult to grasp. It is embedded in carrying out activities, in producing effects, and in having sensations. In their first year infants are still confined to the I stage. Although they already distinguish whether effects are internally controlled or exter-nally caused, they are not yet able to draw this distinction between the subjective experience of self and others. Babies, it is true, from the first months on not only experience distinct emotions such as joy, anger, sorrow, fear (Izard, 1991), they also respond appropriately to the expressions of emotions in others. And, in episodes of emotional contagion, they share these emo-tions. Newborns join in crying as soon as they hear other babies crying. A little later, emotional contagion can also be evoked by other emotions, such as happiness or sadness, prompted by the expressions of their caregivers (Hoffman, 1977; Thompson, 1987). Some authors consider this phenomenon to be the out-come of intersubjectivity and argue that babies already sense others as like me, thereby giving them access to the subjective

experience of others (Meltzoff & Brooks, 2001; Stern, 1985; Tomasello, 1999; Trevarthen, 1979). This interpretation remains questionable when we look at the origins of contagion (for a survey, see Preston & de Waal, 2002).

Contagion is phylogenetically an old mechanism known as mood induction from ethology. It has an important function in synchronizing divergent motivations in the group (Bischof, 2009). The expressive behavior of conspecifics triggers the same behavior in the observers who, as a consequence, join together for instance for eating, drinking, sleeping, or taking flight. Mirror neurons may well explain this phenomenon (Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia, 2008). However, they can only explain the arousal of the same motivation in the observer. They do not explain how the observer comes to know that their experience originates in the subjective state of another individual. This is the case with infants, as well; they cannot yet attribute the source of a shared emotion to its original carrier. Phenomenologically speaking, their entire subjective experience is colored by the emotion shared by contagion.

SelfOther Distinction and Synchronic Identification

The cognitive changes in the second year that provide empathy with true insight into the mental state of another are selfother distinction and synchronic identification.

Selfother distinction in this context does not apply to a physical boundary that is already experienced in the first months (Stern, 1985). Some authors assume selfother distinction in 3- to 9-month-old babies because they can distinguish the mirror image of self-created movements from the mirrored movements produced by somebody else (Rochat & Striano, 2002). This again fails to sufficiently explain empathy because it only refers to the babys ability to distinguish self-produced effects from effects produced by someone else.

Selfother distinction, prerequisite to empathy, only becomes possible after the Me emerges. The Me (Figure 3) is a symbolic representation of the self in the imagination. It has the character of an object with a boundary that becomes the carrier of attrib-utes. It can be conceived of as if it were another person. From this perspective, one can realize that the self has an outside appear-ance which can be encountered in ones own mirror image. At the same time, other persons are symbolically represented as well by the You, which also has an object-like characteristic with a bound-ary. This condition allows for selfother distinction that provides the cognitive component to the empathic experience.

Figure 4 demonstrates the process in a flow diagram. On the left side, we have what the observer perceives: a person crying over a broken teddy bear. To the right, all components playing a role in the empathic process are represented separately in little boxes, although in the real empathic experience they are not separate, of course, they merge. The observer may become completely overtaken by the distressed persons grief and respond with emotional contagion. In a kind of fusion, this grief is not perceived as the others emotion.

IMeYou

Figure 3. I (unreflected self sensing), Me and You (symbolic representations)



This state of affairs changes as soon as self-representation, which allows one to recognize oneself in a mirror, develops. Due to self-representation, one is aware of oneself as being some-body separate from the other, not just physically, but on a psy-chological level as well. Thus, self and other appear as separate carriers of their own inner experience (selfother distinction). This allows the empathic observer to remain aware of the fact that the shared emotion is actually another persons emotion.

Since the mechanism of emotional contagion is already pre-sent at the beginning of life, it could well be the emotional basis for empathy as soon as one is aware of a selfother distinction. This explanation, however, does not suffice to explain situation-induced empathy. Emotional contagion is only released when grief, or any other emotion, is exhibited in the expressive behav-ior of a person. Empathy may also be evoked by a persons situ-ation. A sad story or event happening to a person can already lead to compassion in 2- and 3-year-olds, even when the children do not know or perceive the persons response (Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, & Kind, 1979).

Furthermore, expression-induced empathy could not explain how an observer comes to understand the intention of another person who tries to reach a goal, but does not succeed. What motivates us to cooperate and to help to complete their action? To understand the aim/the desire/the need of another and to fig-ure out a solution for their problem, the observer has to take that persons entire situation into consideration; their expressive behavior alone would not convey the relevant information.

In order to explain situation-induced empathy, we have to refer to the second cognitive requirement mentioned earlier synchronic identification (Bischof, 1978). Identification in this context is not to be understood in the sense it is considered in psychoanalysis: wanting to be like another person. Synchronic identification is a mode of perception (Figure 5) due to which two phenomena given at the same time, but separated in space, are perceived as being the same. Here an essential differentia-tion has to be made. To be identical is often confounded with being equal. That is incorrect. One egg looks just like another, yet they are not necessarily the same: You can eat onethe

other one can still be hatchedso they are not identical. Equality of appearance is neither a necessary nor sufficient con-dition of identity. Rather, being identical has to be understood in the sense of sharing the same fate.

Synchronic identification is a necessary requirement of men-tal imagery because it connects symbolic representations with reality. We must be able to realize that the ideal object, which we tentatively shift in mental simulation to another place, is identi-cal with the real objectunmoved at its original site. Second, synchronic identification relates verbal concepts to the facts they denote. At about 18 months, children demonstrate a kind of word explosion in their language acquisition. They now under-stand that objects are, in a way, the same as their names, as Karl Bhler (1930) put it. Verbal concepts are not just associated with facts; they represent them symbolically. Third, synchronic iden-tification may relate two real facts in such a way that one appears as a symbol of the other, as in the case of a photograph and its original. In development, this is the starting point for pretend play. Finally, synchronic identification yokes the I to the Me, thereby allowing that I recognize my mirror image as me.

With respect to empathy, synchronic identification also changes the mode in which the other person is perceived. Me and You appear essentially identical (Figure 4). The subjective I then relates to You similarly to the way it relates to Me. The I is mirrored in the You, as it were. The others experience is, in essence, the same as mine. Thus, the other person qualifies as an object of synchronic identification. Consequently, everything that happens to the other is perceived as something concerning myself, as well. I respond emotionally to the others situation as if I were in that persons place. I experience their problem as if it were my problem. Again, selfother distinction prevents an emotional fusion.

It remains to be emphasized that identification needs no for-mer experience with a similar situation as long as this situation has the potential of becoming relevant to the observer. Nor does empathy mean that the emotional and motivational state of the other must be reflected upon in the sense that the child actively considers, What would I feel if I were in her situation? Rather, the insight lies in the quality of the vicariously felt emotion or intention itself. They arephenomenologicallycentered in the other.

Figure 4. Expression-induced and situation-induced empathy

Figure 5. Synchronic identity

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This differentiation is missing in contemporary literature. Instead, it is thought that empathy only conveys insight when it is completed by a truly cognitive mechanism which is con-sidered to be perspective taking (Feshbach, 1978; Hoffman, 1976). It is argued that empathizers must simultaneously repre-sent the state of the other person beside their own state (Perner, 1991). In this respect we have to distinguish two aspects of the empathic process. The behavioral goal of the other person and the means to reach this goal must be simulated in a kind of vicarious mental problem solving that becomes possible with symbolic representation (compare Figure 2). The desire or intention of the other need not be represented as a mental state because it is induced by empathic identification.

Representation of desires and intentions as mental states (independent of the state one is in) is only available at the fol-lowing stage of development and presupposes the ability to con-sider several perspectives simultaneously. This ability refers to Level II perspective taking as conceptualized by Flavell, who distinguishes it from Level I perspective taking (Flavell, Everett, Croft, & Flavell, 1981). The latter is based on a behavior rule referring to gaze orientation and allows babies already in their second year to be aware of what another person can or cannot see. Level II perspective taking develops with the onset of a theory of mind around the fourth birthday and allows children to imagine how the world appears to another person from his or her perspective. It could scarcely be a necessary component of empathy because empathy already developed 2 years earlier. However, there are situations in which perspective taking is a valuable supplement to empathy. Empathy has a shortcoming. I can only empathize according to my own reactivity. What if I, myself, would feel anxious in a given situation but the other person, unlike me, would not? Only children with a theory of mind can understand that desires and emotions of other people can be different when compared to their own responses and preferences. Or, suppose I am competing with an opponent and the opponent wins. To imagine how he feels, it would be neces-sary to represent his joy although I, myself, feel down at this instant. This kind of problem can only be solved by affective perspective taking which, in combination with empathizing, considerably improves and enlarges the understanding of others mental states in ongoing development.

Considering the evidence that children in their second and third year are already rather competent at inferring another per-sons emotions and desires (Bischof-Khler, 1988, 1994; Buttelman, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2009; Krtner, Keller, & Chaudhary, 2010; Trommsdorff, Friedlmeier, & Mayer, 2007; Vaish, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2009; Warneken & Tomasello, 2006; Wellman & Woolley, 1990; Yuill, 1984; Zahn-Waxler et al., 1979; Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, Wagner, & Chapman, 1992), some authors argue that a theory of mind concerning desires and intentionsdesire psychology precedes belief-psychology (Wellman & Bartsch, 1994). The discrep-ancy in age could mostly be resolved if the role of empathy were to be upgraded that allows children (from the age of 2 upwards) to possess quite an elaborate understanding of another

persons emotional and motivational states even though they are not yet able to reflect on mental processes. Therefore, in many cases, what is meant by desire psychology is actually empathy.

To exemplify this, I refer to an experiment by Repacholi and Gopnik (1997) that is frequently cited as proof for an early onset of desire psychology. In the experiment, a person expressed preference for broccoli and disgust at cookies. Even 18-month-old (but not 14-month-old) infants did not offer cookies to this person; they understood that somebody else did not like cookies, although they, themselves, did. The behavior can well be explained as an empathic response. In the experi-mental setting, the other person showed their liking and disgust by their expressive behavior. By doing this, they offered the appropriate releaser to empathizing, thereby informing the child of their real preference. It is no surprise that the 14-month-olds failed. They were too young to have formed a Me and, therefore, not yet able to empathize.

Motivational Consequences of Empathy

Finally, I want to add some remarks on the motivational conse-quences of empathy (Figure 6). The most common is compas-sion, also referred to as sympathy and sometimes not distinguished from empathy (Batson, 1987). Compassion is considered to play a dominant causal role in prosocial intervention and helping behavior (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998). In our experiments we took it as the main indicator of empathy. In compassion, empathic dis-tress motivates an urge to terminate this distressnot by running away, but by ending the miserable state for the other.

A further consequence of empathy is cooperation. By identi-fication, the observer participates in the intention of the other and thereby becomes motivated to figure out which activity is most appropriate for reaching the goal the other is aiming at. There are quite a few examples of empathic identification in chimpanzees as, for instance, cooperation in hunting and food sharing (de Waal, 2008; Goodall, 1986; Khler, 1921; Menzel,

Mirror

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Figure 6. Motivational consequeneces of empathy



1972). These behaviors are considered to have played an important role in human evolution. Their occurrence in the great apes suggests that empathy was available at a rather early stage in our phylogeny. Recently, helping has been proved in young chimpanzees (Warneken & Tomasello, 2006, 2010).

Feeling guilty is another consequence of empathy (Hoffman, 1976). In this case, a person who caused another persons dis-tress cannot help but empathize with the victim. Already in their second year, children show evidence of guilt feelings (Zahn-Waxler et al., 1979). Hoffman pointed out that empathy also plays an important role in the development of moralityparticularly with respect to its emotional constituents like con-cern, regret, shame, feelings of justice, existential guilt, moral aggression, and retaliation.

Compassion and identification do not necessarily turn into prosocial intervention. Prosocial intervention is costly and the costs may be considered to be too high. Some of the children in our experiments did not realize that there was a substitute spoon and considered giving their own spoon away but were inhibited from doing so because then: How should they, themselves, eat? Further variables influencing the outcome of empathy are auton-omy and competency. High-ranking children are more prepared to help others (Bischof-Khler, 2011). Feeling incompetent may be one reason why bystanders often do not intervene (Staub, 1986). Small children simply may not know what to do, as was the case with some of the perplexed children in our studies.

Probably the most important determinant influencing the motivational outcome of empathy is familiarity (Hornstein, 1978). In animals, familiarity indicates being related. Due to kin selection, relatives are the potential recipients of altruistic behavior (Hamilton, 1978). In man, too, familiarity facilitates identificationunfamiliarity counteracts it. In small children, an unfamiliar person may evoke a stranger reaction, thus pre-venting them from approaching this person. In adults familiarity is taken, in a much broader sense, as an indicator of whether a person qualifies as a recipient of help. However, personally knowing each other will not suffice in this respect. As is known from experiments, needy persons improve their chances of receiving help and sympathy when they belong to the in-group, that is, when they are relatives, or have the same religion, share the same values and opinions, speak the same idiom, or belong to the same ethnic group.

Finally, contrary to a common opinion, it has to be men-tioned that empathy can also be the basis of socially negative emotions, leading to negative consequences for others. Empathic participation in the grief of another person does not necessarily lead to compassion. In cases where the observer has a grudge against the distressed person, empathy can lead to malicious gloating. In this case, the miserable state of the other is empath-ically shared and, at the same time, enjoyed. Sensation seeking is another example of empathizing. In this case, the observer, without being endangered himself, vicariously shares the thrill of the danger or catastrophe encountered (in reality) by another. Probably the most unpleasant negative consequences of empa-thy manifest themselves when empathy is combined with aggression. If we define aggression as intentionally harming a

person, then we have to keep in mind that intended harming presupposes that the aggressor is aware of how his victim will feel. Aggression in animals below the great apes and in small children is, as it were, innocent because they are not yet able to empathize. Interestingly enough, as soon as children are able to empathize, they not only sympathize with the dis-tressed, they also start committing aggressive acts that are obviously intended to hurt other persons and go on doing so, even if their victims complain (Zahn-Waxler et al., 1979). In sadism, participation in the pain of the suffering victim is the very aim of the experience. This consequence can be observed in our next relatives as well. Jane Goodall (1977) reports behaviors occurring in chimpanzee warfare that cannot be considered anything but cruel.

Development of Empathy

The basic capacity to empathize is an effect of maturation rather than socialization. Empathy is a human potential that evolves in all children as soon as they are able to mentally represent them-selves and to synchronically identify. Along with the refinement of social cognition by developmental processes, the further fate of this potential depends on individual experience as well as on social and cultural influences in general. I cannot delve further into this, so I will leave it with a few remarks. The basic innate understanding of emotional expressions has to be differentiated in a social context. The first steps in this respect are affect attunement (Stern, 1985) and the tendency of caregivers to mir-ror the behavior of babies (Papousek & Papousek, 1977), thereby allowing them to refine the association of inner experience with its outside appearance.

In our subjects, only a few recognizers did not empathize. Most tried to help and almost all showed compassion and con-cern. As we discovered in a separate study, recognizers with nonempathic response were frequently found to be insecurely attached (Bischof-Khler, 2000b). Security of attachment to caregivers was determined by Ainsworths Strange Situation Test (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). Insecurely attached children tended to show emotional contagion or to respond indifferently in the empathy situation.

An American study with 2- and 3-year-olds provides a hint as to which socialization practice may encourage empathy and which one may not (Zahn-Waxler et al., 1979). Children were more often inclined to empathize and show compassion when they had mothers who were empathic and who explained to them that it is not a good thing to hurt somebody else because that person would feel pain and sorrow (inductive method). The children with less empathic mothers, who without explanation only forbade hurting others, showed less empathy themselves.

Socialization certainly influences the degree to which per-sons empathize. It may also be the reason why empathy declines or disappears in some persons or even turns into an inclination for socially negative reactions. The conditions under which developments of this kind occur, however, are still far from being clarified.



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Emotion ReviewVol. 5, No. 1 (January 2013) 116

The Author(s) 2013ISSN 1754-0739DOI: 10.1177/1754073912471619er.sagepub.comErratum

Doris Bischof-Khler (2012), Empathy and Self-Recognition in Phylogenetic and Ontogenetic Perspective, Emotion Review, 4: 4048.

(Original DOI: 10.1177/1754073911421377)

On page 41, the following error was made:

Not all nonrecognizers were empathic. should be correctly written as: All nonrecognizers were not empathic.

SAGE apologises for this error.

471619 EMR5110.1177/17540739124716192013

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