Aberrant cognitive empathy in individuals with elevated social anxiety and regulation with emotional working memory training

Journal article


Kade, Saif A., du Toit, Simone A., Danielson, Craig T., Schweizer, Susanne, Morrison, Amanda S., Ong, Desmond C., Prasad, Ashni, Holder, Lauren J., Han, Jin, Torok, Michelle and Wong, Quincy J. J.. (2024). Aberrant cognitive empathy in individuals with elevated social anxiety and regulation with emotional working memory training. Cognition and Emotion. 38(4), pp. 605-623. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2024.2314981
AuthorsKade, Saif A., du Toit, Simone A., Danielson, Craig T., Schweizer, Susanne, Morrison, Amanda S., Ong, Desmond C., Prasad, Ashni, Holder, Lauren J., Han, Jin, Torok, Michelle and Wong, Quincy J. J.
Abstract

Social anxiety may disrupt the empathic process, and well-regulated empathy is critical for navigating the social world. Two studies aimed to further understand empathy in the context of social anxiety. Study 1 compared individuals with elevated or normative social anxiety on a measure assessing cognitive and affective empathy for positive and negative emotions conveyed by other people (“targets”), completed under social threat. Relative to individuals with normative social anxiety, individuals with elevated social anxiety had greater cognitive empathy and no differences in affective empathy, regardless of emotion type. As greater cognitive empathy can be maladaptive, Study 2 tested whether this could be down-regulated. Individuals with elevated social anxiety underwent emotional working memory training (eWMT) for negative emotional information, or control training (CT). Effects on an empathy measure completed under social threat were assessed. Cognitive empathy for negative emotions decreased following eWMT but not CT, and this was only evident for those with higher pre-training working memory capacity. Cognitive empathy for positive emotions and affective empathy were not affected. Overall, social anxiety is associated with aberrant elevated cognitive empathy for negative and positive emotions, and the deviation in cognitive empathy for negative emotions can be regulated with eWMT for certain individuals.

Keywordssocial anxiety; empathy; working memory training; emotional working memory training; emotion
Year2024
JournalCognition and Emotion
Journal citation38 (4), pp. 605-623
PublisherRoutledge
ISSN0269-9931
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2024.2314981
PubMed ID38349272
Scopus EID2-s2.0-85185506393
Page range605-623
Publisher's version
License
File Access Level
Open
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Online13 Feb 2024
Publication process dates
Accepted04 Jan 2024
Deposited27 May 2025
Additional information

© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

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