title: Enhanced emotional empathy after psychosocial stress in young healthy men.
abstract: Empathy is a core prerequisite for human social behavior. Relatively, little is known about how empathy is influenced by social stress and its associated neuroendocrine alterations. The current study was designed to test the impact of acute stress on emotional and cognitive empathy. Healthy male participants were exposed to a psychosocial laboratory stressor (trier social stress test, (TSST)) or a well-matched control condition (Placebo-TSST). Afterwards they participated in an empathy test measuring emotional and cognitive empathy (multifaceted empathy test, (MET)). Stress exposure caused an increase in negative affect, a rise in salivary alpha amylase and a rise in cortisol. Participants exposed to stress reported more emotional empathy in response to pictures displaying both positive and negative emotional social scenes. Cognitive empathy (emotion recognition) in contrast did not differ between the stress and the control group. The current findings provide initial evidence for enhanced emotional empathy after acute psychosocial stress.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Cognitive Psychology , Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Ruhr-University Bochum , Germany .
authors.forename: Oliver T
authors.initials: OT
authors.lastname: Wolf
authors.affiliation: a Department of Cognitive Psychology , Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Ruhr-University Bochum , Germany .
authors.forename: Judith M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Schulte
authors.affiliation: b Department of Social Cognition , Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität Berlin , Berlin , Germany , and.
authors.forename: Hanna
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Drimalla
authors.affiliation: b Department of Social Cognition , Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität Berlin , Berlin , Germany , and.
authors.forename: Tanja C
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Hamacher-Dang
authors.affiliation: c Social Psychology and Social Neuroscience, Institute of Psychology, University of Bern , Switzerland.
authors.forename: Daria
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Knoch
authors.affiliation: b Department of Social Cognition , Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität Berlin , Berlin , Germany , and.
authors.forename: Isabel
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Dziobek
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D004645:Empathy / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D006854:Hydrocortisone / Q000032:analysis; D008297:Male; D012463:Saliva / Q000737:chemistry; D055291:Salivary alpha-Amylases / Q000032:analysis; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D055291:Salivary alpha-Amylases; D006854:Hydrocortisone
keywords: Affect; cognitive empathy; cortisol; emotional empathy; stress