The Effects Of Intuitive Processing And Analytical Processing On Accuracy Of Empathic Understanding And Expression

Cultivating successful occupational and intimate relationships requires the ability to accurately understand the emotions and feelings of others.Such ability is known as"empathy" in psychology.Empathy includes not only the affective process,which is accompanied by the emotional arousal and activation,but also the cognitive process——empathic understanding,which requires reflection and careful thinking.Additionally,empathy is a behavioral process——empathic expression,which can convey the empathic understanding to the other person in some way.In theory and practice,there is some evidence that intuitive processing leads to more accurate empathy,but there is also evidence that analytical processing leads to more accurate empathy.The purpose of the present study was to explore the role of intuitive processing and analytical processing in empathic response,and to compare the accuracy of empathic understanding and empathic expression under intuitive processing and analytical processing.Study 1 investigated people’s beliefs about the processing methods used for empathic understanding and empathic expression,and found that people tend to think that analytical processing rather than intuitive processing should be adopted to understand others’ emotions and feelings.The tendency was more evident in empathic expression.In study 2,textual experimental materials containing verbal information were used to explore the accuracy of empathic understanding of the same subject under intuitive processing and analytical processing by referring to the two-response paradigm.At the same time,the variable of having the similar experience or not was introduced to examine the influence of similar experience on the accuracy of empathic understanding.The results showed that compared with the empathic understanding under intuitive processing,the empathic understanding under analytical processing was more accurate,and subjects also showed more confidence.Specifically,under intuitive processing,males’ empathic understanding was more accurate than that of females,and the former’s confidence was also stronger,but such difference was not found under analytical processing.Whether subjects were majoring in psychology did not have a significant influence on the accuracy of empathic understanding.Moreover,whether subjects had the similar experience did not influence subjects’ scores and self-rating of empathic understanding under either intuitive processing or analytical processing.Study 3 used the method of recording,and tried to restore the interpersonal dialogue scenarios in the real life.Two-response paradigm were used to examine the accuracy and possibility of empathic expression under intuitive processing and analytical processing.Besides,the respondents and the targets were asked to evaluate the accuracy of the empathic expression,and the variable of having the similar experience or not was introduced to examine the influence of similar experience on the accuracy of empathic expression.The results showed that there was no significant difference between the accuracy of empathic expression under intuitive processing and that under analytical processing when the scores were given by the targets.When the scores were given by the respondents,the accuracy of empathic expression under analytical processing was higher than that under intuitive processing.Further verification revealed the inconsistency of the rating results of the respondents and the targets.Though the rating of empathic expression under analytical processing showed no difference,the respondents gave a lower rating as to empathic expression under intuitive processing.Last,gender,major and similar experience did not influence others’ rating,self-rating and possibility of empathic expression.