How Cognitive and Affective Empathy Relate to Emotion Regulation: Divergent Patterns from Trait and Task-Based Measures

Abstract

Evidence suggests that empathy and emotion regulation may be related, but few studies have directly investigated this relationship. Here we report two experiments which examined: 1) how different components of empathy (cognitive & affective) relate to the habitual use of cognitive reappraisal to regulate emotions (N=220), and 2) how these components of empathy relate to implicit reappraisal in a context-framing task (N=92). In study 1, a positive correlation between cognitive empathy and reappraisal use was observed. Affective empathy showed no relationship with reappraisal use. In study 2, participants completed an implicit reappraisal task in which previously viewed negative images were paired with either a neutralising (intended to reduce negative emotionality) or descriptive (which simply described the image) framing sentence. Participants then reported how unpleasant/pleasant each image made them feel. In contrast to study 1, a positive correlation between affective empathy and the implicit reappraisal task metric (rating of neutralising-descriptive framing conditions) was observed. There was no relationship between cognitive empathy and implicit reappraisal. These findings suggest that both components of empathy are related to reappraisal, but in different ways: Cognitive empathy is related to more deliberate use of reappraisal, while affective empathy is associated with more implicit reappraisal processes.