Interesting
report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA) about a series of clinical perception analog studies in which
mental health practitioners were given written vignettes of
clients/patients with common mental health difficulties (schizophrenia,
depression, social phobia), and then randomly given either biological or
psychosocial explanations for the person's problems. (I thought the
explanations were quite well done and evidence-based.) After that, they
were asked to rate their feelings toward the client on 6 relational
emotions (including "warm, compassionate, sympathetic"), labelled by the researchers as "empathy".
Results: The
researchers said that they had expected that the biological explanations would make practitioners more sympathetic to the hypothetical clients. Instead, they were surprised to find that the so-called empathy ratings were higher when
practitioners were given psychosocial explanations (e.g., trauma, poor
living conditions, family conflict) than biological explanations (e.g.,
family history of the problem, MRI results.)
I think that humanistic
psychologists will not be surprised by these results, since this is
consistent with what we have been warning of for years. Still, it is a
sobering finding for those of us who do like to dabble in neuroscience
(e.g., brain correlates of empathy). However, I think that what is really going on here is that the psychosocial explanations provided a more coherent narrative for the person's problems, locating them within the person's life history and context to a much greater extent that the biological explanations did. Empathic, caring emotions are much easier to access within a narrative context.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/11/25/1414058111.short
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