title: Emotional reactions to dramatic film stimuli: the influence of cognitive and emotional empathy.
abstract: The idea that empathy may best be considered a multidimensional construct, consisting of both cognitive and emotional facets, has recently been gaining in popularity. To date, however, little research explicitly based on such a view has been carried out. We conducted the present experiment to explore the different influences of cognitive and emotional empathy on two types of responses to dramatic stimuli: positive and negative emotional reactions. Consistent with a multidimensional view of empathy, the two types of empathy exhibited different effects; positive emotional reactions were affected primarily by cognitive empathy, and negative emotional reactions were most heavily influenced by emotional empathy. The results are discussed in terms of their relevance to a multidimensional approach to the study of empathic responding.
mesh_terms: D003071:Cognition; D004644:Emotions; D004645:Empathy; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008297:Male; D009040:Motion Pictures; D012938:Social Perception