Prosocial behavior, defined as any action taken to benefit another, has maintained persistent interest in regarding its intricate relationship with loneliness and apathy. Loneliness, conceptualized...Show moreProsocial behavior, defined as any action taken to benefit another, has maintained persistent interest in regarding its intricate relationship with loneliness and apathy. Loneliness, conceptualized as a subjective feeling of social isolation is often found comorbid with apathy; one’s reduced motivation to put in effort for others’ benefit relative to one’s own benefit. Although all three variables demonstrate a relationship to one another, research remains scarce regarding their shared impact. However, findings show a positive influence of prosocial behaviors on social connections, consequently decreasing experiences of isolation as well as apathy. This investigation aims to uncover the potential mediating effect of prosocial behavior on the bidirectional relationship of loneliness and apathy. To fill the gap in the literature, assessing both models helps highlight intervention approaches aiming to effectively break the cycle – ultimately improving well-being. Higher levels of loneliness are expected to indicate higher levels of apathy, whereas prosocial behaviors may mediate and limit the negative affect. Ultimately, it is also expected higher levels of apathy lead to higher levels of loneliness, with prosocial behavior possibly mitigating this negative affect. 287 participants underwent a behavioral task assessing their prosocial tendencies, as well as questionnaires measuring their level of loneliness and apathy. Both mediation analyses revealed a significant total effect between the variables. This was indicative of a negligible mediating role of prosocial acts. These results underline the specific gaps left for future research, ranging from exploring the nuanced relationships and contextual factors involved affecting the constructs over time.Show less
This 3-wave study aims to examine the relationship between cognitive empathy (awareness and understanding of another’s emotion), affective empathy (experience of emotions consistent with those of...Show moreThis 3-wave study aims to examine the relationship between cognitive empathy (awareness and understanding of another’s emotion), affective empathy (experience of emotions consistent with those of the observed person), and self-perception of close friendships (one’s perception of the ability to form and maintain close friendships), both directly and indirectly through prosocial behavior (voluntary behavior intended to benefit another person) from late childhood to early adolescence. Participants were 127 adolescents aged between 10 and 14 years old who reported on their empathy, prosocial behavior, and self-perception of close friendships in three consecutive years, respectively. Simple mediation analyses revealed that cognitive and affective empathy did not have a significant positive effect on adolescents’ self-perception of close friendships two years later. Considering these findings, prosocial behavior was not found to be a mediator between adolescents’ cognitive or affective empathy and their self-perception of close friendships from late childhood to early adolescence. Moreover, cognitive and affective empathy did not significantly predict prosocial behavior one year later, whereas prosocial behavior did significantly predict the self-perception of adolescents’ close friendships one year later. These results underline the significance of developing tailored intervention programs targeting prosocial behavior to foster adolescents’ self-perception as close friends, a competence that is crucial during this developmental period considering the greater influence of peers.Show less
Psoriasis patients frequently report feelings of stigmatization. While many studies have been done on self-stigma, perceived stigma and on the impact of stigmatization on patients with psoriasis,...Show morePsoriasis patients frequently report feelings of stigmatization. While many studies have been done on self-stigma, perceived stigma and on the impact of stigmatization on patients with psoriasis, few studies have focused on the extent and predictors of public stigma towards psoriasis. This cross-sectional study is the first study to date to focus on the extent of public stigma towards psoriasis in the Dutch population, as well as to examine the possible predictive value of four subscales of empathy as assessed by the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI); perspective taking, PT; fantasy, FS; empathic concern, EC; and personal distress, PD. Respondents (N = 121) were asked to watch video vignettes, after which public stigma was measured with the Impact of Chronic Skin Disease on Daily Life (ISDL). A paired-samples t-test and multiple regression analysis were conducted. Results suggests that that there is public stigma towards psoriasis in the Dutch population (t(119) = -6.55, p < .001). A weak positive relation between personal distress (PD) and public stigma was found (B = .08, p = .04), while the other three empathy subscales (PT, FS and EC) were not found to be significant predictors for public stigma towards psoriasis (all p-values >.05). These results add to the theoretical knowledge about psoriasis and theory development and suggest that interventions against public stigma towards psoriasis might not focus on eliciting empathy, as other mechanisms would possibly be more beneficial in reducing public stigma. Future studies should replicate the study with other measurement instruments.Show less
In social interactions, individuals often mimic each other’s emotional expressions, such as pupil size and facial expressions, or yawns. This phenomenon is known as mimicry. The mechanisms and...Show moreIn social interactions, individuals often mimic each other’s emotional expressions, such as pupil size and facial expressions, or yawns. This phenomenon is known as mimicry. The mechanisms and functionality of mimicry, particularly its role in empathy formation, remain debated. Contagious yawning and facial mimicry are two interesting but poorly understood phenomena within this context. They, however, exhibit several similarities that could hint at an underlying relationship between them. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between contagious yawning and facial mimicry, as well as the influence of empathy on this relationship. An experiment was conducted with 41 participants using a repeated-measure within-subjects design across three blocks: facial mimicry, pupil mimicry, and contagious yawning. Measurements included facial electromyography, pupil size, and electrocardiogram readings. Contagious yawning was assessed through covert video recordings, and empathy was measured using the Empathy Quotient. A logistic regression with a moderation effect was performed. Contrary to the hypotheses, no significant relationship between contagious yawning and facial mimicry was found, and empathy did not moderate this relationship. The findings of the current study suggest that the underlying processes of contagious yawning and facial mimicry are distinct, complex, and influenced by a multitude of unexplored factors. Future research should explore the relationship between contagious yawning and other forms of mimicry, integrating various theoretical perspectives to achieve a better understanding of mimicry phenomena.Show less
Conventional animal farms often lead to suffering for animals. Since animal-friendly farming can reduce the negative situation for livestock, this research aims to explore the mechanisms behind...Show moreConventional animal farms often lead to suffering for animals. Since animal-friendly farming can reduce the negative situation for livestock, this research aims to explore the mechanisms behind choosing animal-friendly products. Evidence suggests people have more empathy for animals which are evolutionarily closer to us, so we aimed to see how empathy and evolutionary proximity affect animal-friendly choices. We first hypothesized that people would have more empathy for cows (mammals) rather than chickens (birds) due to their evolutionary distance from humans. Secondly, we hypothesized that the difference in empathy between the two animals would predict whether participants made a cow-friendly or chicken-friendly choice. After being informed of the conditions on conventional and animal-friendly farms, participants (N= 42) were given a questionnaire to assess their empathy levels for both animals, as well as a choice to choose either a cow-friendly or chicken-friendly product. As hypothesized, people possessed more empathy for cows rather than chickens. However, alogistic regression analysis revealed that empathy did not significantly predict this choice. While empathy was not a significant predictor, more participants chose the cow-friendly rather than chicken-friendly product. The current results show that empathy alone may not be enough to explain the mechanism behind what motivates people to make choices that are positive for the animals which are evolutionarily closer to us. Therefore, directions for future research are discussed.Show less
Child abuse remains a significant and current issue that many individuals experience during their childhood. The literature suggests that the development of empathy can be hindered by experiencing...Show moreChild abuse remains a significant and current issue that many individuals experience during their childhood. The literature suggests that the development of empathy can be hindered by experiencing child abuse, as victims often struggle more with recognizing and understanding other’s emotions. Rumination, a maladaptive form of emotion regulation, may potentially mediate this relationship. The present study examines whether individuals who have experienced child abuse score lower on empathy and whether this relationship is mediated by a higher degree of rumination. The sample, consisting of the parents of the adolescents, included 74 men and 79 women with an average age of 49 years. Parental empathy was measured through the subjective experience of the child using a reminiscence task, where the adolescent shares a distressing experience with the parent. Child abuse and rumination were measured via self-report questionnaires. The multiple regression analysis found no significant effect between child abuse and empathy, and no mediating role of rumination. However, it was found that individuals who have experienced child abuse ruminate more than those who have not experienced child abuse (b = 0.24, p < .05). This research can provide more insight into the socio-emotional development of parents who have experienced child abuse and improve potential interventions. A longitudinal study is necessary to gain more insight into the underlying mechanisms.Show less
Social performance monitoring can be defined as one’s ability to detect errors and to adjust one’s behavior accordingly while performing actions in a social context. As such, it might require...Show moreSocial performance monitoring can be defined as one’s ability to detect errors and to adjust one’s behavior accordingly while performing actions in a social context. As such, it might require perspective taking abilities. The present study thus explores the relationship between social performance monitoring and empathy in children and adolescents across different contexts. Participants (N= 107) aged 9-19 completed self-report measures of empathy and engaged in a performance monitoring task (i.e., shooting a moving cannon whenever it lined up with a target) in individual, cooperative, and competitive settings. Results showed that the older children were, the better they performed in the cannonball task, pointing to age-related improvements in performance monitoring capabilities. Surprisingly, task performance did not differ between individual and social contexts. Moreover, neither cognitive nor affective empathy significantly predicted task performance in any condition. Regarding changes in empathy dimensions across development, our results revealed that, in line with our hypotheses, cognitive empathy increased with age, while affective empathy remained stable. Moreover, as expected, no effects of gender on cognitive empathy were found, while girls did report significantly higher levels of affective empathy than boys. Our behavioral study adds new insights to existing literature mostly consisting of electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies, suggesting that children and adolescents’ performance monitoring behavior is possibly neither influenced by the social context, nor by how empathetic they are. Further behavioral research on the potentially complex interplay between empathy and social performance monitoring in children and adolescents is thus warranted.Show less
Background: Psoriasis is a common chronic skin condition characterized by red plaques, itching, scaling, and thickened skin. Stigma from the general public against people with psoriasis is a...Show moreBackground: Psoriasis is a common chronic skin condition characterized by red plaques, itching, scaling, and thickened skin. Stigma from the general public against people with psoriasis is a prevalent issue. Stigma in psoriasis has been studied mostly from the patient's perspective, while very little research has been done on public stigma from the perspective of the general population. There are several factors that may play a role in the stigmatization of people with psoriasis, such as knowledge, familiarity and empathy. Understanding these factors is crucial for developing effective interventions to tackle stigmatizing attitudes. Aims: the aim of this study was to explore potential factors that are related to stigmatizing attitudes from the general public towards individuals with psoriasis and to investigate how these factors were linked. Methods: This study was a sub-project of a bigger study and had a cross-sectional repeated measures within-subjects design. The sample consisted of 150 respondents from the Dutch population, with an average age of 33 years (SD = 13.1), comprising 48 men and 118 women. The respondents had to read a vignette about an encounter with a man with psoriasis after which we measured stigmatizing attitudes towards this person. The study assessed various factors related to these stigmatizing attitudes, including knowledge, familiarity, and empathy. Results: Less knowledge was associated with higher levels of stigmatizing attitudes (R² = 0.16, F(1, 149) = 29.11 , p < .001), as well as less familiarity with other people that have skin diseases (R² = 0.06, F(1, 149) = 10,04, p = .002). However, these relationships were not mediated by empathy. Discussion: This study highlights the potential significance of knowledge and familiarity in reducing stigmatizing attitudes towards people with psoriasis, suggesting the importance of interventions aimed at increasing public understanding and interactions between individuals with and without psoriasis. While empathy did not mediate the relationship between knowledge, familiarity, and stigmatizing attitudes, it is too early to conclude that empathy is irrelevant. By reviewing other studies, we found that empathy could be examined more extensively in several ways. Therefore, by considering different ways of measuring empathy, we can potentially see its role. Consequently, future research should further investigate and expand the ways in which empathy is assessed.Show less
Externalizing behavior in childhood is considered an important predictor for behavioral disorders and antisocial behavior in adolescence and early adulthood. Knowledge of which factors are related...Show moreExternalizing behavior in childhood is considered an important predictor for behavioral disorders and antisocial behavior in adolescence and early adulthood. Knowledge of which factors are related to the presence of externalizing behavior could help create effective interventions for reducing externalizing behavior. Previous research indicated that there is a negative relation between emotion recognition, empathy with externalizing behavior, but the results are inconsistent. The present study aimed to examine whether externalizing behavior could be predicted by emotion recognition and empathy within a sample of children showing externalizing behavior (n = 130). Externalizing behavior was measured with the TRF, nonverbal emotion recognition with the FER, verbal emotion recognition with the ANT prosody task, and cognitive empathy with questions about different emotional video clips. Results showed that non-verbal and verbal recognition of emotions did not correlate significantly with externalizing behavior, except when there was less non-verbal emotion recognition of happy feelings there was slightly more externalizing behavior. Externalizing behavior was not predicted by verbal-, and non-verbal emotion recognition, and cognitive empathy. There also was no partial mediation from verbal- and non-verbal emotion recognition on the relationship between cognitive empathy and externalizing behavior. It seems that children that show less cognitive empathy and correct verbal and non-verbal emotion recognition do not show more externalizing behavior. It is possible that this is different for certain emotions, because children who were slightly better at recognizing the non-verbal emotion happy showed slightly less externalizing behavior. Future research should include the possible effect of age on the relationship between emotion recognition and cognitive empathy with externalizing behavior and the possible difference of externalizing behavior reported by teachers and parents should be taken into account.Show less
Ingroup bias is the inclination of people to favor members of their group compared to those of an outgroup. One possible underlying mechanism behind ingroup bias is individual differences in...Show moreIngroup bias is the inclination of people to favor members of their group compared to those of an outgroup. One possible underlying mechanism behind ingroup bias is individual differences in empathy levels. Individuals high in empathy are usually more prosocial towards others. Yet, they may still act more prosocially towards members of their own group than outgroup members, leading to a specific type of ingroup bias, termed intergroup empathy bias. It is a well-established fact that gender differences exist in how individuals show empathy. This study aimed to find whether there may also be gender differences in intergroup empathy bias. This question was investigated in a university population using the dot game to divide people into minimal groups, and the dictator game to compare ingroup and outgroup giving. The results demonstrated that ingroup bias can occur in the presence of minimal groups, and females have higher empathy levels compared to males. However, these results did not translate to gender differences in intergroup empathy bias. Despite not finding a link between intergroup empathy bias and gender, this research proposes novel ideas for further testing, such as using empathy questionnaires that distinguish between different facets of empathy. It attracts attention to the importance of gender differences in empathy, especially in today’s male-centered society.Show less
A majority of research in social sciences has been focused on peer preference throughout childhood and adolescence. Different factors have been found to be related to peer preference such as...Show moreA majority of research in social sciences has been focused on peer preference throughout childhood and adolescence. Different factors have been found to be related to peer preference such as emotion recognition, empathy, and prosocial behavior. In addition, prior research has shown possible sex differences regarding peer preference and the mechanisms and factors that influence how girls and boys choose which peers they prefer. In the present study participated 135 normally developing preschoolers, aged three to five, from different areas of Portugal, with the aim to investigate the socio-emotional factors that are related to peer preference. In detail, data for peer preference were gathered through the use of peer nomination techniques. Data on emotion recognition, empathy, and prosocial behavior- the social-emotional factors in this research- were gathered with parent questionnaires. The results were not as expected, as there were no correlations found between peer preference with empathy and prosocial behavior in the sample. However, a small negative correlation was found between peer preference and emotion recognition. Furthermore, none of the three factors could predict peer preference. Lastly, there were no significant differences between boys and girls regarding the relationship of preference with emotion recognition, empathy, and prosocial behavior. There is a possibility that the results were unexpected as the measuring techniques that were used were inappropriate for the variables that needed to be measured. Additionally, the cognitive and emotional level of preschoolers might not be yet advanced to the degree that is required to demonstrate empathy and prosocial behavior at a level that will influence the formation of peer preference. Still, peer preference during preschool years is of the utmost importance as it influences not only the present developmental level but also the future socio-emotional development of children.Show less
In level 3 automated vehicles, drivers are not required to pay attention to the road but are still expected to respond quickly to a Take Over Request (TOR) in unexpected conditions. As this...Show moreIn level 3 automated vehicles, drivers are not required to pay attention to the road but are still expected to respond quickly to a Take Over Request (TOR) in unexpected conditions. As this presents a danger to road safety, exploring design solutions for the TOR is imperative. Research has shown that reaction times can be made faster by manipulating the perceived ownership of an avatar by making it glow in synchrony with a participant’s physiology. Interestingly, this effect was increased for those with high empathy. We investigated whether this manipulation could be used to reduce reaction times to a TOR. Furthermore, we investigated whether reaction times would decrease more in those with high empathy and whether the manipulation would increase perceived ownership of the vehicle, as measured by a self-identification questionnaire. Participants were in a driving simulation in virtual reality, where ambient lighting pulsed around them in synchrony with their breathing. Unfortunately, the results found did not support our hypothesis. There was not enough evidence to conclude that visuo-respiratory synchronization facilitates faster responses to a TOR in a Level 3 automated vehicle. In line with these results, we did not find evidence of self-identification with the vehicle after visuo-respiratory synchronization. However, we found promising results about the relationship between empathy and reaction times during visuo-respiratory synchronization. A post hoc analysis revealed a clear negative relationship. As empathy increased, reaction times to the TOR decreased, indicating that the effect of our manipulation increased as empathy got higher.Show less
Research master thesis | Developmental Psychopathology in Education and Child Studies (research) (MSc)
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Affective empathy and emotion recognition deficits are hypothesized to underlie impaired social interaction in children exhibiting antisocial behaviour. However, few studies have examined the...Show moreAffective empathy and emotion recognition deficits are hypothesized to underlie impaired social interaction in children exhibiting antisocial behaviour. However, few studies have examined the possible emotion recognition deficits and affective empathy. This study compared facial affect recognition, vocal emotion recognition and affective empathy of children at risk for criminal behaviour to that of normally developing children. It was expected that children at risk of criminal behaviour had impaired emotion recognition and affective empathy, and that emotion recognition deficits and affective empathy were partially related to each other. The high-risk children were recruited through and intervention project connected to several municipalities in the Netherlands, focusing on the underage siblings or children of delinquents and those exhibiting antisocial and disruptive behaviour according to teachers. Facial and vocal recognition of happy, sad, angry and fearful emotions were respectively measured with the Facial Emotion Recognition (FER) test and the Prosody test of the Amsterdam Neuropsychological Tasks (ANT). Affective empathy was assessed by recording heart rate (HR) while showing video clips with neutral and emotional content (happiness, fear, pain and sadness). It was found that the high-risk group were less able to recognize fear and sadness in still-faces, and had an overall lower percentage corrected when recognizing emotions from voices, compared to healthy controls. The high-risk group also showed reduced HR to pain and fear, but this was not related to emotion recognition deficits. These findings suggest that children that engage in antisocial behaviour have impaired emotion recognition and reduced affective empathy, but that lack of empathy cannot solely be explained by a less ability to recognize emotions.Show less
Contemporary police officers often lack a proper understanding of civilian’s mental states required to deliver an appropriate empathic response. Recently, virtual reality (VR) emerged as a...Show moreContemporary police officers often lack a proper understanding of civilian’s mental states required to deliver an appropriate empathic response. Recently, virtual reality (VR) emerged as a promising medium to promote empathy, offering several crucial advantages over traditional methods. However, as research is limited on VR empathy training, its effectiveness and practical utility for the police remains unclear. This study investigated the effectivity and utility of two VR empathy tools for the Dutch police force. In this study, 11 Dutch police officers were immersed in two simulations of the perspectives of a child victim of domestic violence (DV) and a person living with a mild intellectual disability (MID), in counterbalanced order. Results showed that, in line with the hypotheses, for the DV simulation, participants’ illusionary feeling of presence in the virtual world predicted their emotional involvement with the experience, and in turn, this emotional involvement predicted empathy towards victims of domestic violence. Contrary to the hypotheses, for the MID simulation, presence did not predict emotional involvement. Yet, in line with the hypotheses, emotional involvement did predict empathy towards people living with a mild intellectual disability. Combined with insights from post-simulation interviews, both VR empathy tools are concluded to be effective and useful for Dutch police empathy training. These findings highlight VR’s potential to shape scalable and standardardized training opportunities to support the complex role of contemporary policing. Future research could extend our approach by including a control group and by making a direct comparison between VR, traditional perspective-taking tasks, and roleplay empathy training.Show less
This thesis argues that fiction and eventually play, accumulating into the interactive fiction of video games, can offer a toolset to help cultivate familiarity and understanding between cultures....Show moreThis thesis argues that fiction and eventually play, accumulating into the interactive fiction of video games, can offer a toolset to help cultivate familiarity and understanding between cultures. In a world where cultures are living closer together than before, tensions between cultures are sure to rise. These tensions stem from a lack of shared context causing misinterpretations of the other. I will refer to the works of Wilhelm Dilthey and Robin Collingwood, who have both developed theories of hermeneutics that emphasise the importance of context as meaning-giving. Similar contexts provide similar meaning between people and vice versa. A lack in familiarity thus constitutes a lack in understanding, which poses a problem for the cross-cultural encounter. They suggest a hermeneutic method based on empathy in order to increase our understanding of others. In the second chapter, I will illustrate how fiction functions as both a tool to impart knowledge and as an exercise in empathy, which aids the hermeneutic process, drawing on Suzanne Keen’s theory of narrative empathy. When engaging with fiction, audiences temporarily abandon their own context in order to step into the alternate world of fiction. This encourages open-mindedness and empathic understanding of others, which both are of vital importance to the hermeneutic process. In the third chapter, I’ll move on play, showing how it, like fiction, demands a certain openness of mind from the player so they can step into the play-world, which makes play very well-suited to learning by doing. This section on play will be largely informed by Johan Huizinga and Miguel Sicart’s work on play and playfulness respectively. In requiring participation from its audience, they are absorbed into the other, the strange, and the new, and provided with tools to make sense of it. As an immersive and interactive medium, video games thus allow players to gain an intuitive understanding of other cultures on their own terms.Show less
The aim of this cross-sectional study was to examine the relationship between Trait Mindfulness facets and Empathy facets in a sample of Dutch students in higher education. This is the first study...Show moreThe aim of this cross-sectional study was to examine the relationship between Trait Mindfulness facets and Empathy facets in a sample of Dutch students in higher education. This is the first study to date that builds on recommendations in the existing literature by examining the relationship between Trait Mindfulness and Empathy facets whilst considering the potentially relevant variables of age, sex, being an aspirant therapist and meditation experience. The Five-Facet-Mindfulness-Questionnaire and Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) were filled out by a convenience sample of 156 students (69.9% female). This thesis is part of a broader research project, and four more questionnaires were administered assessing various psychological variables. No significant correlation was found between the overarching scores of Trait Mindfulness and Empathy (p = .447). Higher scores on the mindfulness facet Observing were significantly related to higher scores on the empathy facets Perspective Taking and Fantasy, and overall Empathy (r-values ≥ .27; p-values ≤ .001). Higher scores on the mindfulness facet Describing were significantly related to higher scores on Perspective Taking and Fantasy, and lower scores on Personal distress (r-values ≥ .19; p-values ≤ .005). Higher scores on the mindfulness facet Non-Reacting were significantly related to lower scores on Fantasy, Empathic Concern, Personal Distress, and overall Empathy (r-values ≥ .24; p-values ≤ .001). Being older was only related to lower scores on the Empathy facet Fantasy (β= -.296, p = .010), and having the aspiration of becoming a therapist after graduation was significantly related to lower scores on Empathy (β= -.170, p = .016), but not on any of its underlying facets. Neither Acting with Awareness nor Non-Judging were found to be significant predictors of any Empathy facets (p-values ≥.110). Lastly, Meditation Experience was found not to significantly predict Empathy or any of its underlying facets (p-values ≥.287). These findings demonstrate that the relationship between Trait Mindfulness and Empathy emerges when examined on the facet level, but not on the overarching composite level. This highlights the relevance of investigating the relationship between Trait Mindfulness and Empathy accordingly in future research.Show less
Police officers need hard skills and soft skill during their work. Adequate soft skills are essential for a police officer because they use them during most of their time working, they can prevent...Show morePolice officers need hard skills and soft skill during their work. Adequate soft skills are essential for a police officer because they use them during most of their time working, they can prevent unnecessary use of force and they influence the public perception of police quality. Feedback is less objective for soft skills training and real interactions are too complex to simulate in a classroom. Virtual Reality (VR) soft skills training might be able to create a more realistic training environment. The first part of the study used a survey to research police officers’ feeling of preparedness for different incidents. It was expected that police officers feel more prepared for incidents requiring hard skills compared to incidents requiring soft skills. In the second part of the study, participants tried out two VR empathy simulations and answered questionnaires about their experience. It was expected that the simulations were able to induce empathy towards the protagonist in police officers. It was also expected that self-reported presence predicts how police officers rate the effectivity of the training. Although results show that participants indicated to feel more prepared for incidents requiring hard skills, participants mostly mentioned that soft skills should be better prepared. This contradiction is possibly caused by a relationship between the work experience of the participants and their feeling of preparedness. The VR simulations were unable to induce empathy and no relationship was found between self-reported presence and the effectivity of the training. Future research should investigate the feeling of preparedness of recently graduated police officers. More research is needed into the effectiveness of VR empathy training. Learning more about police officers’ feeling of preparedness and the effectivity of VR contributes to the soft skill adequacy of police officers and possibly other professional fields.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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Background: To alleviate side-effect burden in advanced breast cancer, it is necessary to identify at-risk personality types and effective interventions. Previous research indicates that patients’...Show moreBackground: To alleviate side-effect burden in advanced breast cancer, it is necessary to identify at-risk personality types and effective interventions. Previous research indicates that patients’ pessimism and trait anxiety may be risk factors for experiencing side-effects. To reduce their side-effect burden, optimizing patients’ side-effect expectations is suggested as a novel strategy. Doctor-patient communication strategies, such as expressing empathy (i.e. reassurance of nonabandonment) and explaining psychological mechanisms behind side-effects (i.e. a nocebo explanation), are most promising for optimizing patients’ expectations. In this experimental video-vignette study, we aimed to determine (1) whether clinician-expressed empathy and/or a nocebo explanation is effective in reducing expected side-effect burden, (2) whether generalized pessimism and trait anxiety relate to expected side-effect burden, and (3) whether there is an interaction between the effectiveness of these interventions and these personality characteristics. Methods: Using a two-by-two experimental video-vignette design, 159 cancer patients/survivors and healthy women watched one out of four videos with a nocebo explanation (present/absent) and empathy manipulation (present/absent). The effect of the interventions, the personality characteristics, and the interaction between these two were assessed using regression analyses. Differences between specific (e.g. hair loss) and nonspecific side-effects (e.g. fatigue) were investigated. Results: Clinician-expressed empathy, but not the nocebo explanation (p>.025), was successful in reducing expected side-effect occurrence (p=.008) and intensity (p=.003). Next, pessimistic patients expected side-effects to be more intense (p=.010), which was more profound in predicting the intensity of specific (p=.004), rather than nonspecific side-effects (p=.038). Moreover, results indicate an adverse effect of the nocebo explanation for pessimistic patients, as they expected nonspecific side-effects to be more intense after receiving this intervention (p=.014). Anxious patients expected a higher occurrence of nonspecific side-effects (p=.024), but not of specific side-effects (p=.435). No moderating role was found regarding patients’ anxiety and the effectiveness of the interventions. Conclusions: Short expressions of empathy by an oncologist can improve side-effect expectations. Generalized pessimism may cause patients to be vulnerable to expecting more intense side-effects, and to experiencing adverse effects from the nocebo explanation. Clinical follow-up studies need to investigate whether these results hold in clinical practice, and identify interventions for pessimistic cancer patients.Show less
Trauma, cognitive flexibility, and empathy are widely studied constructs in psychology. However, inconsistent results are found regarding the aftermath of trauma. In the current study, it was...Show moreTrauma, cognitive flexibility, and empathy are widely studied constructs in psychology. However, inconsistent results are found regarding the aftermath of trauma. In the current study, it was expected that Syrian refugee children with higher severity of trauma symptoms scored significantly higher on cognitive flexibility and empathy tests than children with lower severity of trauma symptoms. To investigate these hypotheses, a quantitative cross-sectional study was conducted with a between-subjects design. The participants were asked to complete three questionnaires and two computer tasks to measure their cognitive flexibility, empathy, and trauma symptoms. Linear regression analyses showed that trauma was not a significant predictor of cognitive flexibility or empathy. If future studies could find this relationship in a larger sample, it possibly has implications for actively using cognitive flexibility and empathy as resilience factors during education for mental health professionals, therapeutic treatments of trauma, and in educational settings.Show less
