Articles: empathy.
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Although direct experience and verbal instruction are important sources in the development of pain-related beliefs and behaviors, accumulating evidence indicates that observation of others in pain may be equally as important. Taking a contemporary view on learning as a starting point, we discuss available evidence on observational learning in the context of pain, highlight its importance for both development and management of chronic pain problems, and discuss potential moderators of observational learning effects. We argue that the capacity to understand and appreciate the experience of another person is fundamental to observational learning, including use of this information to establish the association between pain and antecedent or consequent stimuli. A main objective of this paper is to stimulate research on the role of learning about pain from others. Several lines for further research, including clinical applications, are delineated. ⋯ Based upon a contemporary view on learning, this focus article delineates how pain-related beliefs and behaviors may be learnt by observing others. It is discussed how further research on the acquisition of pain-related beliefs/behaviors might further our understanding of pain and disability.
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Pers Soc Psychol Bull · Feb 2011
Attachment and the management of empathic accuracy in relationship-threatening situations.
The current studies tested how attachment orientations are related to empathic accuracy (i.e., the accuracy with which one infers a partner's private thoughts and feelings) during attachment-relevant discussions. In Study 1, married couples were videotaped discussing a severe or a less severe relationship issue that involved intimacy or jealousy. ⋯ Relative to less anxious persons, highly anxious individuals were more empathically accurate when discussing intimacy issues that posed a potential threat to their relationship (in Study 1) and when they were rated as more distressed when discussing a relationship conflict (in Study 2). The findings are discussed in terms of how highly anxious and highly avoidant people differentially manage empathic accuracy to regulate negative affect and facilitate their interpersonal goals.
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A growing number of studies in exploring empathic modulation have revealed the neural substrates of how social stimuli are represented in the human brain, especially the pain of others. The empathic response of observing other's gains and losses, however, remains not clearly characterized. In the current study, we carried out two experiments with a gamble task to investigate how the effects of interpersonal familiarity and self-participation work on modulating the temporal neural response towards gain and loss of a friend or a stranger using scalp-recorded event-related potentials (ERPs). ⋯ But the distinction of differentiated feedback-related negativity (d-FRN) between friends and strangers was only observed when the player was not involved in the game. These results indicated that the participants exerted more motivational relevance toward their friends than strangers, but the participants' empathic response toward friends was only salient when they were not involved in the gamble directly. Therefore, both familiarity and self-engagement are factors that influence the empathy towards others, complementing the recent research on empathic modulation.
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The Leadership in Compassionate Care programme aims to embed compassionate care in practice and education. This article describes a project within the programme that explores with staff, patients and families the meaning of compassion and how this can be measured. The project has involved developing practice statements from noticing the aspects of compassionate care that work well. Staff were provided with support to consider, develop and implement actions that would help ensure consistency in developing compassionate care.
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Am J Hosp Palliat Care · Feb 2011
End-of-life experiences: reaching out for compassion, communication, and connection-meaning of deathbed visions and coincidences.
A recent study shows that the greatest fear for many Britons is to die alone. More than half the complaints received by the UK National Health Service (NHS) concern end-of-life care, with an emphasis on spiritual matters. ⋯ They lack the confidence and/or training to recognize or discuss spiritual aspects of death and dying or to affirm the spiritual needs of the dying person. Our end-of-life experience (ELE) research suggests that deathbed visions (DVs) and deathbed coincidences (DCs) are not uncommon, and that the dying process appears to involve an instinctive need for spiritual connection and meaning, requiring compassionate understanding and respect from those who provide end-of-life care.