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In the recent years, discoveries in neuroscience have greatly impacted upon the need to modify therapeutic practice starting from the evidence showing some cerebral mechanisms capable of coping with mental health crisis and traumatic events of the individual's life history by redesigning the narrative plot and the person's sense of the Self. The emerging dialogue between neuroscience and psychotherapy is increasingly intense and modern psychotherapy cannot ignore the heritage deriving from studies about neuropsychological modification of memory traces, neurobiology of attachment theory, cognitive mechanisms involved in psychopathology, neurophysiology of human empathy, neuroimaging evidence about psychotherapeutic treatment, and somatoform disorders connecting the brain and the body. In the present article, we critically examined sectorial literature and claimed that psychotherapy has to referred to a neuroscience-based approach in order to adopt the most tailored interventions for specific groups of patients or therapy settings. We also provided recommendations for care implementation in clinical practice and illustrated challenges of future research.

Introduction: There is a consensus hidden in the criminal legislation of many countries that the criminal responsibility capacity of juvenile offenders is not significantly different from that of their peers. The purpose of this paper was to test this hypothesis. The research objects of this paper were 187 juvenile offenders in J Province, China, who are under detention measures, and 2,449 students from junior high school, senior high school and university in S Province as comparison objects. We subjected the gathered materials to independent-samples t-tests and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Results: (1) The self-control ability (109.30, 123.59) and empathy ability (63.86, 72.45) of juvenile offenders were significantly different from those of ordinary minors, but the difference of dialectical thinking ability was not statistically significant; (2) Except for the influence of mother's education level and family income on dialectical thinking ability, the other variables had no statistical significance on the three kinds of ability. Therefore, it was suggested that the correction plan and means for juvenile offenders should focus on the improvement of self-control ability and empathy ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The structure and measurement of occupational fraud rationalization as one of the motivations for fraudulent behavior has been a major obstacle in theoretical research and practical problems. In order to answer the fundamental question, “What does cognitive rationalization of occupational fraud involve?,” this paper explored the structure and scale development of the internal psychological factors of occupational fraud rationalization. Several research methods were used for this purpose, such as data collection, research interviews, review & verification, project purification, structural verification, and reliability & validity test. The results showed that, based on the internal structure, occupational fraud rationalization presented second-order three-dimensional and first-order eight-dimensional factors. Further, a formal scale containing 27 items related to the structure of the metric was constructed to measure the occupational fraud rationalization. In terms of variable correlations, this paper empirically tested the criterion validity of occupational fraud rationalization from the perspective of personality traits. The result revealed a significant positive (negative) correlation between Machiavellian traits (empathy traits) and occupational fraud rationalization, respectively. In conclusion, this paper provides an attempt to address the cognitive and measurement challenges of occupational fraud rationalization, expanding the application and development of moral disengagement theory in the field of occupational fraud and laying some groundwork for subsequent research and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aimof this systematic review was to collect and align the research on social cognition impairments in adults with Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In particular, we selected and analyzed papers on emotion recognition and processing, Theory of Mind (TOM), empathy, and other facets of social cognition as decision making. We identified 16 papers published between 2012 and 2022 which meet inclusion criteria. Papers search, selection, and extraction followed the PRISMA guidelines. In order to summarize data from papers, we used a narrative synthesis approach. Results show different evidence of impairment in social cognition domains in adults with ADHD. Our systematic review suggests the importance of promoting more research on this topic because it is essential to keep in mind that social cognition plays a central role in socialization and social relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Personal resources and resources of the sociocultural environment help children and adolescents to successfully cope with challenges in everyday life, which is associated with better individual well-being. SCOUT, the 'Study on Competence development in OUT-of-school settings', investigated whether participation in a summer camp enhanced adolescents' personal resources, well-being, and readiness to contribute to the community. Methods: The research took place during the Swiss National Jamboree of the Swiss Guide and Scout Movement, a two-week event in the summer of 2022, with a paper-pencil pretest (beginning of the camp -- T1) and posttest (end of the camp -- T2) survey (N = 607, aged 14--17). Confirmatory factor analyses were used to examine whether personal resources, well-being, and readiness to contribute to the community changed over time, and structural equation models were applied to test the direct and indirect effects of caring support from group leaders on the development of these variables. Results: In less than two weeks, camp participants demonstrated increased empathy, emotional self-control, optimism, and assertiveness. Furthermore, the adolescents reported more positive emotions, higher self-esteem, and stronger readiness to contribute to the community. Group leaders played a crucial role by influencing the positive development of well-being and readiness to contribute to the community both directly and indirectly through the promotion of personal resources. Discussion: The findings indicate that young people benefit not only from participating in collaborative activities in a stimulating environment, but also from caring support provided by their group leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Depression is a serious psychiatric illness that negatively affects people's feelings, thoughts, and actions. Providing emotion regulation support to others, also termed Extrinsic Emotion Regulation (EER), reduces depressive symptoms such as perseverative thinking and negative mood. In this conceptual review paper, we argue that EER may be especially beneficial for individuals with depression because it enhances the cognitive and affective processes known to be impaired in depression. Behavioral studies have shown that EER recruits processes related to cognitive empathy, intrinsic emotion regulation (IER), and reward, all impaired in depression. Neuroimaging data support these findings by showing that EER recruits brain regions related to these three processes, such as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex which is associated with IER, the ventral striatum, which is associated with reward-related processes, and medial frontal regions related to cognitive empathy. This conceptual review paper sheds light on the mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of EER for individuals with depression and therefore offers novel avenues for treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, titled "Editorial: Diversity, inclusion, and prejudice in the military," discusses the challenges faced by military organizations as they strive to include underrepresented populations, such as women and individuals with diverse gender and racial identities, within their ranks. The article highlights the importance of integrating more women in the military and addresses issues surrounding gender, combat, armed forces, and leadership. It also examines the experiences of minority group members in the military and the efforts to create more inclusive environments. The article concludes by emphasizing the need for further changes to improve diversity, inclusion, and reduce prejudice in the military. [Extracted from the article]

This paper introduces a model that explains psychosocial development by embedding the developmental concept of rough-and-tumble play (RTP) into the contextual settings of martial arts (MA). Current sport-for-change literature relies on theories that address contextual factors surrounding sport but agrees that sport in itself does not facilitate developmental outcomes. In contemporary times where western societies invest substantial resources in sport programs for their psychosocial contribution, this becomes problematic. If the contextual factors surrounding sport are exclusively what produce developmental outcomes, what is the rationale for investing resources in sport specifically? We challenge this idea and argue that although contextual factors are important to any social phenomena, the developmental outcomes from sport can also be traced to the corporeal domain in sport. To date, we have lacked the theoretical lenses to articulate this. The developmental concept of RTP emphasizes how "play fighting" between consenting parties stimulates psychosocial growth through its demand for self-regulation and control when "play fighting" with peers. In short, RTP demands that individuals maintain a self-regulated mode of fighting and is contingent on a give-and-take relationship to maintain enjoyment. RTP can thus foster empathy and prosocial behavior and has strong social bonding implications. However, such play can also escalate. A fitting setting to be considered as moderated RTP is MA because of its resemblance to RTP, and its inherent philosophical features, which emphasizes self-regulation, empathy, and prosocial behavior. This paper outlines what constitutes high-quality RTP in a MA context and how this relates to developmental outcomes. By doing so, we present a practitioner's framework in which practitioners, social workers, and physical educators can explain how MA, and not merely contextual factors, contributes toward developmental outcomes. In a time where sport is becoming increasingly politicized and used as a social intervention, it too becomes imperative to account for why sport , and in this case, MA, is suitable to such ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While making great strides in recent decades to connect leadership and human flourishing, the positive leadership literature has yet to focus on the aspect of the communal. Based on a close reading of Augustine’s works, this paper examines Augustinian leadership and emphasizes the importance of a view on leadership that aims at community building and contains an ethical framework characterized by veracity. This leadership style is founded on caritas (Gr.: agape, Eng.: love) as the main motive for leaders. Based on Augustine’s thinking, this kind of love is defined as a way to attain knowledge. We identify four subconstructs to constitute an Augustinian leadership scale: Centrality of the community, Veracity, Empathy and Success (through temperance). We provide theoretical grounds for the distinctiveness of this leadership construct as compared with neighboring constructs. Finally, we propose a testable framework of Augustinian leadership with a direct effect on affective commitment as well as a mediated effect, and with a sense of belonging as the mediating variable. We provide ideas for future research and present practical implications of the theoretical insights on Augustinian leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The current paper undertakes interdisciplinary research on empathy in children by combining insights and methodological tools from the fields of psychology, education and anthropology. The researchers aim to map how children's individual empathic abilities studied on a cognitive level do or do not coincide with their empathic expressions as part of group dynamics in daily life at the classroom level. Method: We combined qualitative and quantitative methods within three different classrooms at three different schools. In total, 77 children aged between 9 to 12 years participated. Results: The results indicate how such an interdisciplinary approach can provide unique insights. Through the integration of data from our different research tools we could reveal the interplay between different levels. More specifically this meant showing the possible influence of rule-based prosocial behaviors versus empathy based prosocial behaviors, the interplay between community empathic abilities and individual empathic abilities, and the role of peer culture and school culture. Discussion: These insights can be seen as encouragement toward a research approach that extends beyond the single disciplinary field in social science research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Grounded theory, we took 15 Chinese entrepreneurs as the research objects and constructed the entrepreneurial process model of dynamic evolution of entrepreneurial motivation. The model includes seven themes, such as egoist motivation, bottleneck, altruistic motivation, TP/MTP, empathy, responsible leadership, CSR implementation and entrepreneurial performance. Through the analysis of the internal relations between these elements, we abstracts the law of the dynamic evolution process of entrepreneurial motivation of Chinese entrepreneurs, and reveals the mechanism of the dynamic evolution process of entrepreneurial motivation. The theoretical contribution of this paper is mainly reflected in the following two aspects: (1) it enriches and expands the research results in the field of entrepreneurship motivation of Chinese entrepreneurs. From the perspective of entrepreneurial motivation, this study analyzes the dynamic evolution process of Internet entrepreneurs' entrepreneurial motivation, extracts the rules of entrepreneurial process of dynamic evolution of Internet entrepreneurs, and provides a new path for enriching and expanding the research on Internet entrepreneurs' entrepreneurial motivation. (2) The study of turning point (TP) that enriches and complements the dynamic evolution of entrepreneurs' entrepreneurial motivation. Using grounded theory, this paper deeply analyzes the reasons for the dynamic evolution of entrepreneurial motivation, and provides empirical evidence for the research on the evolution of localized entrepreneurial motivation in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is an editorial titled "Power, discrimination, and privilege in individuals and institutions" published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. The editorial discusses the prevalence of prejudices and biases in society, leading to discrimination and inequitable outcomes. It highlights various forms of systemic discrimination, such as racism, sexism, and ethnocentrism, and their impact on marginalized groups. The editorial also presents research articles from diverse researchers around the world, covering topics such as caste systems, barriers to higher education, and the mental health consequences of oppression. It emphasizes the need to address power imbalances and promote change in individuals and institutions to create a more equitable society. [Extracted from the article]

This paper investigates the role of group identification in empathic emotion and its behavioral consequences. Our central idea is that group identification is the key to understanding the process in which empathic emotion causes helping behavior. Empathic emotion causes helping behavior because it involves group identification, which motivates helping behavior toward other members. This paper focuses on a hypothesis, which we call "self-other merging hypothesis (SMH)," according to which empathy-induced helping behavior is due to the "merging" between the helping agent and the helped agent. We argue that SMH should be interpreted in terms of group identification. The group identification interpretation of SMH is both behaviorally adequate (i.e., successfully predicts and explains the helping behavior in the experimental settings) and psychologically plausible (i.e., does not posit psychologically unrealistic beliefs, desires, etc.). Empathy-induced helping behavior, according to the group identification interpretation of the SMH, does not fit comfortably into the traditional egoism/altruism dichotomy. We thus propose a new taxonomy according to which empathy-induced helping behavior is both altruistic at the individual level and egoistic at the group level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to uncover the relationship among multicultural differences, empathy, and the behaviors of risk prevention and control in the context of crisis events by using a sample of 300 individuals in 10 different multicultural countries. A theoretical logic model was applied to empirical analysis, and the results indicated that cultural differences positively influenced the behavior of empathy communication and risk prevention and control. Further analyses revealed that real-time monitoring of changes in empathy could provide better options of measures for local risk prevention and control when the same crisis event occurred in a multicultural context. With user-generated content (UGC) emerging in the web 2.0 era, this paper proposed a more profound empathy code regarding the periodicity of risk prevention and control. This paper expects to contribute to the circumvention of cognitive errors caused by cultural differences, and to further provide effective conduction for individuals' risk prevention and control behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research in heritage tourism tends to focus on cultural and anthropogenic motivations and drivers, this paper seeks to examine how social-media narration amidst a broader backdrop context in Chinese mass culture creates, perpetuates, and reinforce feline-focused narratives and practices among social media young followers. Drawing on text and image-based analyses of postings of cat sightings within the official Palace Museum account on a key Chinese microblog, this study reveals the application of three vital narrative strategies at work and corresponding empathic responses: ambassadorial, bounded, and broadcast. The Palace Museum has achieved an enhancement of interaction and emotional exchange between the heritage of Palace Museum and youths and generated a process from attention to emotional engagement and eventually to emotional identification on the part of youths in their attitude toward the heritage of Palace Museum through the workings of three key narrative strategies on Chinese social media. In doing so, this research illuminates the potential of social media-based narratives and charismatic animals in the revitalization of cultural heritage sites and the contributions of setting narrative strategies in engaging the younger audiences while also revitalizing the cultural heritage of the Palace Museum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As philanthropic sales via live-streaming shopping have played an important role in alleviating the huge backlog of agricultural products during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper aims to study how online interaction in philanthropic marketing exerts influence on consumer impulse buying behaviors. We empirically explore four major dimensions of online interactions in philanthropic live-streaming sales, i.e., the live streamers' image, the herd effect of consumers, the responsiveness of sellers, and the mutual trust between consumers. The results reveal that the herd effect of consumers and the responsiveness of sellers could promote consumers' empathy ability toward the growers of the products sold lively, whereas the live streamers' image and the mutual trust between consumers have little effect on empathy promotions. Meanwhile, both the consumers' empathy ability and the live streamers' image positively affect consumers' impulse buying behavior, which suggests a partial moderating role of consumers' empathy ability. Lastly, by taking both social and business perspectives, we provide managerial implications for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of philanthropic live-streaming sales to alleviate social and economic pressure in emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prolonged COVID-19 has caused a global lockdown and greatly impacts the supply chain and consumers’ consumption behavior of aquatic products. Specifically, consumers’ increasing awareness of environmental protection drives the marine aquaculture enterprises to supply green products and establish empathy with consumers in a bid to achieve sustainable consumption. This paper conducts a study on the international green marketing paths of marine aquatic products through PLSSEM analysis of the 407 valid samples collected from the questionnaire survey. The findings indicate that empathy marketing has a significant positive effect on consumers’ purchase intention; subjective norm has a significant positive effect on consumers’ purchase intention. Additionally, perceived behavior control has a significant mediating effect between consumers’ subjective norm and purchase intention; the consumption environment has a significant positive moderating effect on individual consumption intention. The study suggests that sustainable development can be further propelled by means of coordinating the consumers’ awareness of ecological environment protection and their enhanced consumption intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clients who seek psychotherapeutic treatment have had personal experiences involving some form of distress. Although research has shown that the client's ability to experience and express painful emotions during therapy can have a therapeutic benefit, it has also been argued that displaying distress may convey a form of helplessness and vulnerability, and thus, clients may be reluctant to cast themselves in this light. Using the methods of conversation analysis, this paper explores how a client's upsetting experience is managed over the course of a single session of client-centered therapy. The main analytic focus will be on (1) the different therapist practices used to orient to the client's distress, (2) the varying forms of client opposition to the therapist's attempts to work with the distress, and (3) the context sensitivity of orienting to distress and how certain practices may be uniquely shaped by what had occurred in prior talk. It was found that, whereas certain types of therapist responses tended to be endorsed by the client, others were forcefully rejected as inappropriate displays of understanding or empathy. By focusing on repeated sequential episodes over time in which a client conveys distress, followed by the therapist's response, this paper sheds light on the interactional trajectory through which a client and therapist are able to resolve impasses to emotional exploration and to successfully secure extended and intense emotional work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies show that people are concerned with other people's consumption position in a varying degree with respect to the type of goods consumed and individual characteristics. Using both survey experiments and a large survey of subjective well-being (SWB) dataset, this paper aims to investigate the association between the degree of empathic capacity and positional concerns for consumption items involving pleasure and pain. The paper exploits both empathy quotient (EQ) and interpersonal reactivity index (IRI) measures of empathic capacity, i.e., dispositional empathy, which are sufficient measures capturing affective and cognitive aspects of empathy. Positional concerns are identified directly using a series of stated choice experiments and indirectly using the SWB approach. The main result of the paper is that positional concerns vary substantially with the levels of empathic capacity. Both EQ and IRI are found to be positively associated with positional concerns for "goods" (e.g., after-tax income, market value of a luxury car), reflecting a degree of self-regarded feelings and behavior to reduce personal distress, and negatively associated with positional concerns for "bads" (e.g., working hours and poverty rates), reflecting a degree of other-regarding feelings and behavior. The results are robust with respect to various checks including statistical specifications, reference groups, and omitted variables (e.g., prosocial behavior and competitivity) that could bias the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origin of moral agency is a much-debated issue. While rationalists or Kantians have argued that moral agency is rooted in reason, sentimentalists or Humeans have ascribed its origin to empathic feelings. This debate between rationalists and sentimentalists still stands with respect to persons with mental disorders, such as individuals diagnosed with mild forms of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), without intellectual impairment. Individuals with ASD are typically regarded as moral agents, however their ability for empathy remains debated. The goal of this paper is to investigate the mechanisms of moral actions in people with ASD, by finding arguments for the origin of their moral actions, supporting either the sentimentalist or the rationalist view of the dispute. We propose to revisit the debate using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to study the autobiographies of individuals with High-Functioning Autism (HFA) and Asperger Syndrome (AS). While conducting the systematic analysis of 10 autobiographies, we re-examined both the rationalist and the sentimentalist positions, considering the links between empathic feelings and moral agency. The investigation of the temporal dimensions of emotional experiences, an aspect overlooked by previous research, indicated that individuals with ASD empathize with others, but in different ways as compared to neurotypicals. A relationship between emotional experience and the type of moral agency exhibited by individuals with forms of ASD was established. As a consequence, our analyses support the sentimentalist stance on moral action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic and cultural effects of sports films have attracted close attention from academia as well as the industry. In this paper, two sub-studies were conducted to explore the empathy mechanism performance of the interest-related community in sports films. In Study 1, the film Lead was applied as an example and used network text analysis to analyze the discourse characteristics and structure of its interest-related community to grasp the practice regularities. More specifically, the results in Study 1 show that the theme feature, brand building, technological innovation, and spirit communication are the key factors that affect an individual’s empathy for sports films. In Study 2, I conducted a survey to explore the empathy mechanism of sports films in the new age to provide a theoretical reference for the high-quality development of films. The abovementioned four main factors have positive impacts on empathy: affective empathy and cognitive empathy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Borderline personality disorder is a complex psychopathological phenomenon. It is usually thought to consist in a vast instability of different aspects that are central to our experience of the world, and to manifest as "a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity" [American Psychiatric Association (APA), 2013, p. 663]. Typically, of the instability triad—instability in (1) self, (2) affect and emotion, and (3) interpersonal relationships—only the first two are described, examined, and conceptualized from an experiential point of view. In this context, disorders of self have often motivated analyses of self-experience and the sense of self, affective disorders have been frequently considered in the light of emotional experience and its phenomenological structure. Patterns in the phenomenology of social experience have found comparatively little traction when it comes to the conceptualization of the interpersonal disturbances in borderline. In this paper, I argue that interpersonal instability in borderline consists in much more than fragile and shifting relationships but, most importantly, also involves certain styles in experiencing others. These styles, I suggest, may play an explanatory role for the borderline-typical patterns of interpersonal turmoil and so deserve more attention. To better describe and understand these styles, I explore the phenomenological structure of borderline affective instability and discuss the implications it might have for how a person experiences and relates to other people. Considering core aspects of borderline affective instability, such as alexithymia, emotional contagion, emotion dysregulation, and chronic emptiness, I propose borderline can be interpreted as a disturbance of interaffective exchange, which gives rise to certain ways of experiencing others that imply a social impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows the brain correlates of Cloninger's personality model during the presentation of social scenarios under positive or negative valence situations. Social scenarios were constructed when participants played the Dictator game with two confederates that had two opposites roles as the cooperator (Coop) and non-cooperator (NoCoop). Later the same day during a fMRI scanning session, participants read negative (Neg) and positive (Pos) situations that happened to confederates in the past. Participants were asked to think "how do you think those people felt during that situation?" A dissimilarity matrix between stimuli were obtained from fMRI results. Results shown that Harm Avoidance trait people make use of right middle frontal gyrus and left superior frontal gyrus to discriminate between Coop and NoCoop. Cooperation as a trait makes use of the right superior temporal gyrus and the right precuneus to discriminate between Coop and NoCoop in positive social scenarios. Finally, Self-directedness trait people make use of the right inferior parietal lobe to discriminate between Coop and NoCoop in negative social scenarios and the right precuneus to discriminate between Coop and Strangers. An intuitive link between discrimination findings and behavioral patterns of those personality traits is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MDMA's first identified potential as a therapeutic catalyst was for couple therapy. Early work in the 1970s and 1980s explored its potential amongst seasoned psychotherapists and their clients. With the completion of the first pilot trial of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy with couples for PTSD, and as the possibility of conducting MDMA-assisted psychotherapy trials expands due to new regulatory frameworks, we have an opportunity to explore and investigate how and why MDMA-assisted couples therapy works. This theoretical paper will explore the neurobiological and neurochemical effects of MDMA in a relational context, the emotional, behavioral, cognitive and somatic effects within a dyadic frame, and how empathy, communication, perception of social connection/support, non-avoidance, openness, attachment/safety, bonding/social intimacy and relationship satisfaction, are all impacted by MDMA, and can be harnessed to facilitate systems-level and interpersonal healing and growth. A model to support MDMA-assisted couple therapy is introduced, and future directions, including implications for intervention development and delivery, will be elucidated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The occupation expectation of medical students can predict the possibility of their future employment in the medical industry, and empathy is the special ability of medical students in their study and career, which affects the development of their occupation expectation. Objective: To explore the relationship between resilience and subjective well-being between medical students' empathy and occupation expectation and their internal mechanisms. Design: Data were collected from October 2020 to March 2021 using a paper questionnaire survey. Subjective: 586 medical students at a key medical university in Yunnan Province were invited to complete the survey. Main Measures: The Basic Empathy Scale, Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, Subjective Well-Being Questionnaire, and Occupation Expectation Scale. Key Results: The empathy is intended to affect the occupation expectation of medical students through four paths. The direct path effect value is 0.073 (95% CI: 0.007∼0.217), the indirect path 1 effect value is 0.078 (95% CI: 0.022∼0.134), indirect path 2 effect value is 0.010 (95% CI: 0.005∼0.022), indirect path 3 effect value is 0.022 (95% CI: 0.0604∼0.039), all the confidence intervals do not contain 0, and the mediated effect ratio is 60.109%. Conclusion: Empathy has an impact on occupation expectation of medical students through the sequential mediating effects of resilience and subjective well-being. Medical colleges should fully consider the role of protective factors when cultivating and enhancing the occupation expectation of clinical medical students. Strengthening the intervention of emotional factors (empathy), self-regulating ability (psychological toughness) and cognitive factors (subjective well-being) is an important way to effectively establish professional values, improve occupation expectation of medical students and reduce the turnover rate of medical students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing evidence in the literature of positive relationships between socio-emotional competencies and school performance. Several hypotheses have been used to explain how these variables may be related to school performance. In this paper, we explored the role of various school adjustment variables in the relationship between interpersonal socio-emotional competencies and school grades, using a weighted network approach. This network approach allowed us to analyze the structure of interrelations between each variable, pointing to both central and mediatory school and socio-emotional variables within the network. Self-reported data from around 3,400 French vocational high school students were examined. This data included a set of interpersonal socio-emotional competencies (cognitive and affective empathy, socio-emotional behaviors and collective orientation), school adjustment measures (adaptation to the institution, school anxiety, self-regulation at school, and self-perceived competence at school) as well as grades in mathematics and French language. The results showed that self-regulation at school weighted the most strongly on the whole network, and was the most important mediatory pathway. More specifically, self-regulation mediated the relationships between interpersonal socio-emotional competencies and school grades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though numerous studies have shown that adolescent empathy is positively related to bystander defending in school bullying, others have failed to detect a significant association between these two variables. To address this discrepancy, a three-level meta-analysis of 27 papers (35 independent studies, N = 25,012 adolescents) was conducted. The results showed that empathy was positively correlated with bystander defending. Furthermore, the strength of the relationship between empathy and bystander defending was moderated by the type of empathy and the evaluators of defending. Specifically, the correlation coefficient between affective empathy and bystander defending (r = 0.27, 95% CI [0.22, 0.32]) was significantly stronger than that between cognitive empathy and bystander defending (r = 0.22, 95% CI [0.17, 0.28]). Finally, the strength of the relationship between empathy and bystander defending was moderated by the evaluator of defending behavior. That is, the correlation coefficient of bystander defending measured by self-evaluation was significantly stronger than that measured by peer-evaluation. The results showed that empathy was closely related to bystander defending. Thus, school bullying can be prevented from the perspective of enhancing empathy among adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue in favor of the existence of two different guilt feelings: altruistic guilt (AG) and deontological guilt (DG). AG arises from having harmed, through one's own action or omission, an innocent victim, while DG arises from the transgression of an internalized norm. In most daily experiences of guilt feelings both types are present, but we argue that they are not traceable to each other and that each can be present without the other. We show that the two guilt feelings can be distinguished with reference to behavioral, cognitive, and neurophysiological aspects. Moreover, we demonstrate that they are differently related to other processes and emotions. AG is connected with pain, empathy and ToM. DG is strongly related to disgust. We briefly illustrate some implications for moral psychology and clinical psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central diagnostic and anecdotal feature of autism is difficulty with social communication. We take the position that communication is a two-way, intersubjective phenomenon—as described by the double empathy problem —and offer up relevance theory (a cognitive account of utterance interpretation) as a means of explaining such communication difficulties. Based on a set of proposed heuristics for successful and rapid interpretation of intended meaning, relevance theory positions communication as contingent on shared—and, importantly, mutually recognized—"relevance." Given that autistic and non-autistic people may have sometimes markedly different embodied experiences of the world, we argue that what is most salient to each interlocutor may be mismatched. Relevance theory would predict that where this salient information is not (mutually) recognized or adjusted for, mutual understanding may be more effortful to achieve. This paper presents the findings from a small-scale, linguistic ethnographic study of autistic communication featuring eight core autistic participants. Each core autistic participant engaged in three naturalistic conversations around the topic of loneliness with: (1) a familiar, chosen conversation partner; (2) a non-autistic stranger and (3) an autistic stranger. Relevance theory is utilized as a frame for the linguistic analysis of the interactions. Mutual understanding was unexpectedly high across all types of conversation pairings. In conversations involving two autistic participants, flow, rapport and intersubjective attunement were significantly increased and in three instances, autistic interlocutors appeared to experience improvements in their individual communicative competence contrasted with their other conversations. The findings have the potential to guide future thinking about how, in practical terms, communication between autistic and non-autistic people in both personal and public settings might be improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On March 9, 2020, Italy has gone into "lockdown" because of COVID-19 pandemic, with a national quarantine. All non-essential working activities and schools of all levels have been temporarily closed: consequently, the entire population have been forced to dramatically change their daily habits. The pandemic raised important psychological, moral, social, and economic issues. Our research focused on the moral decision-making of people during an emergency. This paper reports two studies. The aim of Study 1 was to evaluate moral decision-making, level of perceived stress, ability of mentalizing and empathy in university students and Italian workers. 224 front-line workers (FLW), 413 second-line workers (SLW), and 663 university students (US), during Italian Phase 1 of lockdown, completed an online questionnaire. The results of Study 1 showed that participants in the FLW group are more likely to choose utilitarian solutions and judge as morally acceptable actions finalized to saving lives of more people if this requires sacrificing a low number of individuals. At the same time, decision-making was experienced as less unpleasant and less arousing with respect to the other two groups, demonstrating a greater ability to keep emotional control under pressure. In Study 2, we compared the same variables used in Study 1, selecting two professional categories from the FLW group engaged in emergency during COVID-19, namely healthcare providers (n = 82) and public safety personnel (n = 117). Our results showed that healthcare providers were more stressed and emotionally involved than public safety personnel, with higher empathic concern and arousal in moral decision-making. We suggest it is essential providing immediate psychological support and monitoring physical and emotional well-being for workers in the front-line during emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to prevent experiences of moral distress or mental health problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent Covid-19 pandemic has had significant psychological and social effects on the population. Research has highlighted the impact on psychological well-being of the most exposed groups, including children, college students, and health workers, who are more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and other symptoms of distress. The social distance and the security measures have affected the relationship among people and their perception of empathy toward others. From this perspective, telepsychology and technological devices assume important roles to decrease the negative effects of the pandemic. These tools present benefits that could improve psychological treatment of patients online, such as the possibility to meet from home or from the workplace, saving money and time and maintaining the relationship between therapists and patients. The aim of this paper is to show empirical data from recent studies on the effect of the pandemic and reflect on possible interventions based on technological tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Depression is a serious psychiatric illness that negatively affects people’s feelings, thoughts, and actions. Providing emotion regulation support to others, also termed Extrinsic Emotion Regulation (EER), reduces depressive symptoms such as perseverative thinking and negative mood. In this conceptual review paper, we argue that EER may be especially beneficial for individuals with depression because it enhances the cognitive and affective processes known to be impaired in depression. Behavioral studies have shown that EER recruits processes related to cognitive empathy, intrinsic emotion regulation (IER), and reward, all impaired in depression. Neuroimaging data support these findings by showing that EER recruits brain regions related to these three processes, such as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex which is associated with IER, the ventral striatum, which is associated with reward-related processes, and medial frontal regions related to cognitive empathy. This conceptual review paper sheds light on the mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of EER for individuals with depression and therefore offers novel avenues for treatment.

Are interpersonal affordances a distinct type of affordance, and if so, what is it that differentiates them from other kinds of affordances? In this paper, I show that a hard distinction between interpersonal affordances and other affordances is warranted and ethically important. The enactivist theory of participatory sense-making demonstrates that there is a difference in coupling between agent-environment and agent-agent interactions, and these differences in coupling provide a basis for distinguishing between the perception of environmental and interpersonal affordances. Building further on this foundation for understanding interpersonal affordances, I argue that in line with some enactivist work on social cognition, interpersonal affordances ought to be considered as those that are afforded by agents and are recognized as such. Given this distinction, I also make the point that because our social conventions establish persons as more than mere agents, the direct perception of interpersonal affordances may also involve seeing others as embodied selves. Distinguishing between types of affordances thus also matters ethically: there can be harms done when an agent is not perceived as an agent, and there can be harms done when an agent is not perceived as a self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autistic traits can help people gain and sustain power, and has probably done so throughout history, says the present paper. A number of testable claims follow from this assumption. First, the powerful should have more autistic traits than others - which they do appear to have. Among other things, powerful people, and those with many autistic traits, tend to prefer solitary activities and are often aloof. Moreover, they are often rigid and socially insensitive, low on empathy and with low scores on the trait of agreeableness - and as a rule they do not have many friends. Both groups are also more self-centered than others, more honest, less submissive, more sensitive to slights, and with a stronger tendency to engage in abstract thinking. They tend to behave in bossy or dominant ways, and their moral judgment is more based on rules than on feelings. In addition to experimental evidence, I cite biographies showing that a surprising number of presidents, prime ministers and other powerful people seem to have had traits like those in question - and interestingly, in animals, leaders are often rigid and insensitive to group members' needs and feelings, mostly acting the way they are themselves inclined to, not responding much to others. Problem solving is important in leadership, and people with many autistic traits appear often to be better thinkers than typical subjects with similar IQs. However, these and other congruities could be coincidences. Hence the question of whether traits the two groups have in common also have a common cause constitutes a strong test of the paper's thesis - and a common cause does appear to exist, in the form of testosterone's effects on the central nervous system. Finally, there is evidence that, other things equal, powerful men have more reproductive success than others. If men wielding power do indeed have more autistic traits than those less powerful, this will lead to, other things equal, such traits becoming more common - which can help explain the prevalence of autistic traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasingly digital and multicultural 21st-century society requires future teachers to be prepared for the changes and challenges they may encounter. Not only language and digital competences, but critical-thinking and problemsolving skills are needed. Moreover, well developed socio-affective abilities, empathy among them, are also key when dealing with others. This is even more relevant when teachers are to work with a non-mainstream population, such as adult migrants with low literacy levels, and to design student-centered curricula or activities. Empathy is a multifaceted process involving, among others, perception, intellection, affect and other sensory aspects of the lived experience. It has been argued that the first-person perspective-taking involved in empathic engagement must necessarily involve rational computation and cognitively mediated processing. Training future teachers in the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies is a means to integrate multimodal digital instruction and aggregate cognitive as well as socio-emotional features to the education of future language teachers. Method: A mixed-method pre-post study was conducted with 48 trainee teachers who participated in stand-alone digital multiliteracy interventions, in which they were encouraged to envisage themselves as future teachers of low-literate migrants. Policy documents such as the reference guide on Literacy and Second Language Learning for the Linguistic Integration of Adult Migrants, journal articles, audiovisual resources as well as examples of existing educational materials aimed at the target audience, were made available to them on an online platform. In two separate studies, trainees were encouraged to collaboratively produce two different multimodal outputs. The Revised Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy was administered before and after the intervention, subjecting the data obtained to quantitative analysis. Qualitative data was also collected to gain a better understanding of the affective and cognitive processes experienced by the participants. Results: Simple statistical analysis coupled with the comparison of means was used to respond to the research questions. Statistical hypothesis testing, including correlations and non-parametric statistics were used to analyze the relationship between each of the factors within the RSEE and the participants, considering the different interventions applied. Non-parametric tests (U-Mann Whitney) were used to compare the differences between the levels of ethnocultural empathy of the participants in the two studies. Significant differences were found in Factor 3 (Empathy) and Factor 5 (Anxiety) between the groups and their postintervention results, with a p value of 0.053 and 0.038, respectively. The effect size r was calculated, obtaining a size effect of 0.625 for Factor 3 (Empathy) and 0.674 for Factor 5 (Anxiety). These results indicate that the significant differences and the size effect between both groups are large. U-Mann Whitney non-parametric analysis also revealed gender differences in Factor 3 (Empathy), showing females higher levels than males. Effect size r analysis showed a large size effect of 0.708 for Factor 3 (Empathy). The findings pertaining to gender-related differences in empathy levels confirm the conclusions drawn by previous studies. When contrasting study 1 and 2, statistical differences were also shown after the intervention for the 'Anxiety and Lack of Multicultural Selfefficacy' factor. The qualitative data analysis was carried out with Atlas.ti v.8, in order to isolate and categorize the broader themes and the most significant explanatory quotes extracted from the participants' records and interviews. The results reveal the learning strategies that each group of learners applied to successfully complete the task at hand, as well as the participants' deployment of their critical thinking skills and the awakening of a sense of awareness of their own professional competence development process. Conclusion: This study set out to compare how effective two digital multiliteracy interventions were in developing future language teachers' ethnocultural empathy and cognitive abilities when appraising the educational needs of lowliteracy migrants. Despite the small sample size, the study certainly adds to our understanding of the impact of multimodal tasks involving critical thinking skills on trainees' cognitive and affective abilities. Besides, it expands the growing body of research that points to the desirability of embedding digitally-based content creation tasks in training curricula for future language teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of theater-based interventions to reduce social isolation and loneliness in older adults. It emphasizes the negative impacts of social isolation and loneliness on physical and mental well-being. Theater-based interventions provide social tasks and interactions that can strengthen social cognition and promote successful aging. The article highlights the prevalence of social isolation and loneliness in older adults and the need for interventions to address these issues. It suggests that theater-based interventions can be effective in promoting social interaction and improving cognitive functioning in older adults. Overall, theater-based interventions offer a promising approach to reducing social isolation and improving well-being in older adults. The document is a list of references to research articles and studies on social isolation, loneliness, and interventions for older adults. The references cover a range of topics and provide a comprehensive overview of the current research in this field. They can be a valuable resource for library patrons conducting research on these topics. [Extracted from the article]

This conceptual paper proposes a framework for understanding the developmental mechanisms and literary characteristics that bind children's storybooks with empathy. The article begins with a taxonomy of empathy composed of three key continuous dimensions: cognitive/emotional empathy, empathy for in-group and out-group members and empathy with positive and negative consequences. Insights from developmental psychology and literary theory form the basis for an interdisciplinary framework based on three premises: (1) book-reading can support empathy if it fosters in-group/out-group identification and minimizes in-group/out-group bias; (2) identification with characters who are dissimilar from the readers is the most valuable contribution of children's storybooks to cognitive empathy; and (3) the quality of language positions children's storybooks as an exceptional, but not exclusive, empathy-building form of fictional narratives. Implications for future intervention and empirical work are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this systematic review was to collect and align the research on social cognition impairments in adults with Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In particular, we selected and analyzed papers on emotion recognition and processing, Theory of Mind (TOM), empathy, and other facets of social cognition as decision making. We identified 16 papers published between 2012 and 2022 which meet inclusion criteria. Papers search, selection, and extraction followed the PRISMA guidelines. In order to summarize data from papers, we used a narrative synthesis approach. Results show different evidence of impairment in social cognition domains in adults with ADHD. Our systematic review suggests the importance of promoting more research on this topic because it is essential to keep in mind that social cognition plays a central role in socialization and social relationships.

Through theoretical discussion, literature review, and a computational model, this paper poses a challenge to the notion that perspective-taking involves a fixed architecture in which particular processes have priority. For example, some research suggests that egocentric perspectives can arise more quickly, with other perspectives (such as of task partners) emerging only secondarily. This theoretical dichotomy–between fast egocentric and slow other-centric processes–is challenged here. We propose a general view of perspective-taking as an emergent phenomenon governed by the interplay among cognitive mechanisms that accumulate information at different timescales. We first describe the pervasive relevance of perspective-taking to cognitive science. A dynamical systems model is then introduced that explicitly formulates the timescale interaction proposed. This model illustrates that, rather than having a rigid time course, perspective-taking can be fast or slow depending on factors such as task context. Implications are discussed, with ideas for future empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attachment relationships are widely recognized as influential in increasing prosocial tendencies, with existing literature indicating that human attachment can increase empathetic processes, thereby potentially facilitating prosocial behavior. Given that pets frequently fulfill the criteria for attachment figures, this study investigates whether the observed associations among human attachment, empathy, and prosocial attitudes extend to human-animal interactions (HAI). This study examines the relationship between pet attachment, animal empathy, and prosocial attitudes toward humans. The study hypothesizes that animal empathy mediates the association between pet attachment and prosocial attitudes. A cross-sectional survey was administered to 343 Filipino participants, predominantly consisting of single female young adults with college education backgrounds. Participants completed a battery of assessments including the Contemporary Companion Animal Bonding Scale (CCABS), the Animal Empathy Scale (AES), and the Prosocialness Scale for Adults (PSA). Aligned with our hypothesis, our study reveals that animal empathy plays a significant mediating role in the relationship between pet attachment and attitudes toward humans. We found that stronger pet attachment correlates positively with heightened animal empathy, subsequently leading to elevated levels of prosocial attitudes. Our findings prompt discussions on implications for understanding human-animal relationships and suggest avenues for future research exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: In response to several high-profile cases of senior leaders in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) being accused of various forms of sexual and professional misconduct, the organization has committed to culture change. Drawing on the group engagement model and empirical evidence, we propose that CAFmembers' experience of thwarted belongingness reduces their capacity to show empathy, which in turn affects their support for culture change. Method: Participants were 139 Naval and Officer Cadets from the Royal Military College of Canada who were predominantly male (61%), between 18 and 21 years old (80%), and not members of a visible minority group (68%). Data was collected via an online self-report survey assessing thwarted belongingness, empathy, and attitudes toward culture change. Results: Whether participants experienced thwarted belongingness was not directly related to their level of support for culture change. Individuals' thwarted belongingness was indirectly and negatively associated with support for culture change, through its impact on empathy. Discussion: Taken together, the results demonstrate that cadets' experience of belongingness contributed to their level of empathy, which together predicted their support for culture change initiatives. Efforts to change the culture of the CAF may need to consider improving members' levels of belongingness and, by extension, their levels of empathy. Implications for inclusion efforts are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to concerns about climate anxiety and distress, researchers and practitioners in both education and psychology have been investigating the importance of engaging climate hope in Climate Change Education (CCE). Synthesizing recent multidisciplinary research, alongside insights from the development of educational programs, this article proposes a new theoretical model for pedagogies of hope in CCE. The Hope Wheel presents three foundational elements: handrails for educators to hold on to while constructively engaging with climate change (honesty, awareness, spaceholding, action), guardrails for educators to be sensitive to when implementing the handrails (climate anxiety, mis-/disinformation, false hope), and lenses to encourage educators to explore connections between complex societal and planetary challenges (complexity, justice, perspectives, creativity, and empathy). This working model aims to support educators by distilling current learnings from the literature into a visual guide. It depicts essential elements to include, as well as avoid, in order to engage honest, hope-oriented CCE for transformative learning in the face of the climate crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of group identification in empathic emotion and its behavioral consequences. Our central idea is that group identification is the key to understanding the process in which empathic emotion causes helping behavior. Empathic emotion causes helping behavior because it involves group identification, which motivates helping behavior toward other members. This paper focuses on a hypothesis, which we call “self-other merging hypothesis (SMH),” according to which empathy-induced helping behavior is due to the “merging” between the helping agent and the helped agent. We argue that SMH should be interpreted in terms of group identification. The group identification interpretation of SMH is both behaviorally adequate (i.e., successfully predicts and explains the helping behavior in the experimental settings) and psychologically plausible (i.e., does not posit psychologically unrealistic beliefs, desires, etc.). Empathy-induced helping behavior, according to the group identification interpretation of the SMH, does not fit comfortably into the traditional egoism/altruism dichotomy. We thus propose a new taxonomy according to which empathy-induced helping behavior is both altruistic at the individual level and egoistic at the group level.

This paper introduces a model that explains psychosocial development by embedding the developmental concept of rough-and-tumble play (RTP) into the contextual settings of martial arts (MA). Current sport-for-change literature relies on theories that address contextual factors surrounding sport but agrees that sport in itself does not facilitate developmental outcomes. In contemporary times where western societies invest substantial resources in sport programs for their psychosocial contribution, this becomes problematic. If the contextual factors surrounding sport are exclusively what produce developmental outcomes, what is the rationale for investing resources in sport specifically? We challenge this idea and argue that although contextual factors are important to any social phenomena, the developmental outcomes from sport can also be traced to the corporeal domain in sport. To date, we have lacked the theoretical lenses to articulate this. The developmental concept of RTP emphasizes how “play fighting” between consenting parties stimulates psychosocial growth through its demand for self-regulation and control when “play fighting” with peers. In short, RTP demands that individuals maintain a self-regulated mode of fighting and is contingent on a give-and-take relationship to maintain enjoyment. RTP can thus foster empathy and prosocial behavior and has strong social bonding implications. However, such play can also escalate. A fitting setting to be considered as moderated RTP is MA because of its resemblance to RTP, and its inherent philosophical features, which emphasizes self-regulation, empathy, and prosocial behavior. This paper outlines what constitutes high-quality RTP in a MA context and how this relates to developmental outcomes. By doing so, we present a practitioner’s framework in which practitioners, social workers, and physical educators can explain how MA, and not merely contextual factors, contributes toward developmental outcomes. In a time where sport is becoming increasingly politicized and used as a social intervention, it too becomes imperative to account for why sport, and in this case, MA, is suitable to such ends.

Introduction: Alexithymia is characterized by difficulties identifying and describing feelings but expression of externally oriented thinking (EOT) and difficulty fantasizing is more variable. In two studies, we investigated whether links between EOT and fantasizing are mediated by sensory processing sensitivity (SPS). Methods: University students completed measures of alexithymia, SPS, and fantasizing. Results: In Study 1 (N = 700) we identified two clusters of SPS traits: a positive facet (sensitivity to subtle stimuli) and a negative facet (sensitivity to uncomfortable stimuli). In the 499 participants who completed the fantasy measure, low EOT scores predicted stronger SPS positive and negative traits, which predicted a stronger tendency to mentally project oneself into the lives of characters in books, movies, and plays. In Study 2 (N = 600), the link between EOT and this same fantasizing tendency was again mediated by features of SPS--in this case fantasy proneness and emotional reactivity. Discussion: We suggest that, whereas individuals who score high on EOT have an impoverished fantasy life, those who score relatively low on EOT and turn their attention inward are able to maintain stronger representations of imagined events in working memory (enhancing the likelihood that they will be recalled) and react more strongly to these events (enhancing their salience). Stronger expression of these features of SPS, in turn, increases the likelihood that one will develop a cognitive style that involves the application of imagery-based strategies to support deep processing of the thoughts and feelings of characters depicted in narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge about empathy is part of the study of artistic expressions, among which stand out works of personalities such as the Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci, who was concerned with the connection between science and art during his creative research full of imagination and sensitivity to nature and human anatomy. The word empathy emerged among critics of German art as the term einfühlung, which was used within the aesthetic bias by philosophers and art historians. It emphasized the idea that a viewer perceiving an object could establish a link between it and themselves, projecting the object 'into themselves'. That is, the artwork could be experienced by the observer as if the viewer belonged predominantly to the object, in such a way that its characteristics could be actually felt through the expression of emotions, feelings and thoughts. This analysis of art appreciation required a great deal of knowledge and contemplation of nature, as understood by the German Romanticists, who had enormous admiration for da Vinci and his universal and systematic mind--a mind which reacted against formalisms, building his intellectual and sensory systems based on both his observation of nature and his own criteria. In particular, the art of painting for Leonardo was a way to demonstrate a mental discourse, just as the most important aspect of human portraits is to represent--in gestures and facial expressions--the states of mind and emotions. These are facts that German Romanticists tried to explain as the relationship between empathy and a work of art. The present manuscript aims to describe empathy from an artistic view, considering the roots of this word in German Romanticism; to comment about Leonardo da Vinci and the expression of art in the Renaissance; and, finally, to discuss the expression of his art in relation to empathy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social support provided by chatbots is typically designed to mimic the way humans support others. However, individuals have more conflicting attitudes toward chatbots providing emotional support (e.g., empathy and encouragement) compared to informational support (e.g., useful information and advice). This difference may be related to whether individuals associate a certain type of support with the realm of the human mind and whether they attribute human-like minds to chatbots. In the present study, we investigated whether perceiving human-like minds in chatbots affects users' acceptance of various support provided by the chatbot. In the experiment, the chatbot posed questions about participants' interpersonal stress events, prompting them to write down their stressful experiences. Depending on the experimental condition, the chatbot provided two kinds of social support: informational support or emotional support. Our results showed that when participants explicitly perceived a human-like mind in the chatbot, they considered the support to be more helpful in resolving stressful events. The relationship between implicit mind perception and perceived message effectiveness differed depending on the type of support. More specifically, if participants did not implicitly attribute a human-like mind to the chatbot, emotional support undermined the effectiveness of the message, whereas informational support did not. The present findings suggest that users' mind perception is essential for understanding the user experience of chatbot social support. Our findings imply that informational support can be trusted when building social support chatbots. In contrast, the effectiveness of emotional support depends on the users implicitly giving the chatbot a human-like mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The delivery of social and emotional learning (SEL) programs that are developmentally school-based and evidence-based has the potential to benefit many children, and as such, greater efforts are needed to disseminate these programs more widely within the community. The Incredible Years® Teacher Classroom Management (IY-TCM) has shown promising results when applied by teachers in preschool centers and primary schools, as seen in several randomized control trials conducted worldwide, including in Portugal. Methods: The current study presents a model of the implementation of the program within the framework of a nationwide initiative undertaken in Portugal: the Academias Gulbenkian do Conhecimento. Additionally, results of the program's impact on children were explored using ANOVA, which compared preto post- treatment outcomes. To assess which factors affected the efficacy of the intervention, moderation analyses were conducted using the MEMORE macro. Ninety teachers and 535 children (2 to 10 years old) were assessed. Results: Results revealed that children showed significant increases in social and emotional skills (e.g., social adjustment, empathy) and significant reductions in problem behavior when assessed by their teachers, and in social-cognitive problem solving strategies as evaluated by a set of problem-solving tasks. Moderation analyses showed that, in general, interaction effects were not found, meaning that the intervention was effective for almost all conditions. Nevertheless, significant moderation effects were found for factors pertaining to the child and the mother with respect to pro-social and emotional skills (children who benefited most from the intervention exhibited more behavioral difficulties at the baseline according to the teachers' perceptions and had mothers without a university degree; children attending primary school took less benefit from the intervention than those attending pre-school). Discussion: The findings contribute both to the reinforcement of the effectiveness of the IY-TCM program as a universal intervention in "real world" schools and to the development of some guidelines for the promotion of effective scaling up and sustainability of program effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The neurodiversity paradigm challenges pathologising accounts of neurodevelopmental differences, including autism, attention deficit disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, developmental language disorder (DLD) and others. From a neurodiversity perspective, these differences in the way people perceive, learn about and interact with the world are conceptualised as naturally occurring cognitive variation, akin to biodiversity in the natural environment, which may bring unique strengths and challenges for individuals. An implication of this approach is that interventions designed to create contexts in which neurodivergent people can thrive are needed, in addition to those that seek to ameliorate individual-level difficulties. In this conceptual review, we consider how higher education can offer a context in which cognitive diversity can be noticed, welcomed and accepted with warmth. In universities, neurodiversity is one dimension of difference within an increasingly diverse student population, which overlaps - but is not synonymous - with disability. We argue that improving experience and outcomes for neurodivergent students should be a priority for universities aiming to produce graduates equipped to tackle the complex problems of contemporary society. Drawing on the foundational principles of compassion-focused psychological therapies, we consider how compassion can be enacted within interpersonal interaction, curriculum design, and leadership culture in universities. We apply the insights of double empathy theory to the problem of overcoming barriers of difference in the classroom. Finally, we make recommendations for Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and strengths-based pedagogical approaches, which create a fit-for-purpose educational environment for the widest possible range of learners. This realignment with the neurodiversity paradigm offers an antidote to bolt-on provisions for students who differ from the neuro-normative, and might enable neurodivergent thinkers to flourish within and beyond higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]