scholarly journals Pro-sociality without empathy

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 910-912 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Vasconcelos ◽  
Karen Hollis ◽  
Elise Nowbahari ◽  
Alex Kacelnik
Keyword(s):  
Emotional State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Critical Comparison ◽  
Rescue Behaviour ◽  
Important Trait ◽  
Goal Directedness ◽  
Evolutionary Emergence ◽  
Behavioural Sciences ◽  
Current Standards

Empathy, the capacity to recognize and share feelings experienced by another individual, is an important trait in humans, but is not the same as pro-sociality, the tendency to behave so as to benefit another individual. Given the importance of understanding empathy's evolutionary emergence, it is unsurprising that many studies attempt to find evidence for it in other species. To address the question of what should constitute evidence for empathy, we offer a critical comparison of two recent studies of rescuing behaviour that report similar phenomena but are interpreted very differently by their authors. In one of the studies, rescue behaviour in rats was interpreted as providing evidence for empathy, whereas in the other, rescue behaviour in ants was interpreted without reference to sharing of emotions. Evidence for empathy requires showing that actor individuals possess a representation of the receiver's emotional state and are driven by the psychological goal of improving its wellbeing. Proving psychological goal-directedness by current standards involves goal-devaluation and causal sensitivity protocols, which, in our view, have not been implemented in available publications. Empathy has profound significance not only for cognitive and behavioural sciences but also for philosophy and ethics and, in our view, remains unproven outside humans.

Sight distance red zones on combined horizontal and sag vertical curves

1998 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 621-630 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasser Hassan ◽  
Said M Easa
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
The Other ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Horizontal Curve ◽  
Sight Distance ◽  
Stopping Sight Distance ◽  
Three Dimensional Models ◽  
Highway Alignment ◽  
Current Standards

Coordination of highway horizontal and vertical alignments is based on subjective guidelines in current standards. This paper presents a quantitative analysis of coordinating horizontal and sag vertical curves that are designed using two-dimensional standards. The locations where a horizontal curve should not be positioned relative to a sag vertical curve (called red zones) are identified. In the red zone, the available sight distance (computed using three-dimensional models) is less than the required sight distance. Two types of red zones, based on stopping sight distance (SSD) and preview sight distance (PVSD), are examined. The SSD red zone corresponds to the locations where an overlap between a horizontal curve and a sag vertical curve should be avoided because the three-dimensional sight distance will be less than the required SSD. The PVSD red zone corresponds to the locations where a horizontal curve should not start because drivers will not be able to perceive it and safely react to it. The SSD red zones exist for practical highway alignment parameters, and therefore designers should check the alignments for potential SSD red zones. The range of SSD red zones was found to depend on the different alignment parameters, especially the superelevation rate. On the other hand, the results showed that the PVSD red zones exist only for large values of the required PVSD, and therefore this type of red zones is not critical. This paper should be of particular interest to the highway designers and professionals concerned with highway safety.Key words: sight distance, red zone, combined alignment.

scholarly journals Zebra finches are sensitive to prosodic features of human speech

2014 ◽  
Vol 281 (1787) ◽  
pp. 20140480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle J. Spierings ◽  
Carel ten Cate
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Zebra Finches ◽  
Prosodic Features ◽  
Human Speech ◽  
Prosodic Cues ◽  
Paralinguistic Information ◽  
Final Syllable ◽  
Human Specific

Variation in pitch, amplitude and rhythm adds crucial paralinguistic information to human speech. Such prosodic cues can reveal information about the meaning or emphasis of a sentence or the emotional state of the speaker. To examine the hypothesis that sensitivity to prosodic cues is language independent and not human specific, we tested prosody perception in a controlled experiment with zebra finches. Using a go/no-go procedure, subjects were trained to discriminate between speech syllables arranged in XYXY patterns with prosodic stress on the first syllable and XXYY patterns with prosodic stress on the final syllable. To systematically determine the salience of the various prosodic cues (pitch, duration and amplitude) to the zebra finches, they were subjected to five tests with different combinations of these cues. The zebra finches generalized the prosodic pattern to sequences that consisted of new syllables and used prosodic features over structural ones to discriminate between stimuli. This strong sensitivity to the prosodic pattern was maintained when only a single prosodic cue was available. The change in pitch was treated as more salient than changes in the other prosodic features. These results show that zebra finches are sensitive to the same prosodic cues known to affect human speech perception.

scholarly journals The Translation of Ellipsis as Identity Marker in the Literary Dialogue

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Mona Arhire
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Loss Of Information ◽  
Rhetorical Device ◽  
Formal Equivalence ◽  
Languages In Contact ◽  
Structural Differences ◽  
State Of Mind

AbstractApart from the ellipsis occurring in discourse as a fairly common cohesive device, the literary dialogue oftentimes uses ellipsis as a stylistic or rhetorical device or as a means of endowing characters with idiolectal or sociolectal features. This paper examines such instances of ellipsis which contribute to the construction of the literary heroes’ identity through their speech, while providing them with features distinguishing them from the other characters either in terms of social identity or emotional state. The study is based on examples depicted from the dialogue of a number of literary works written in English and selected so as to exhibit a variety of functions which ellipsis acquires to complete some heroes’ identity or state of mind. Considering the importance of the information embedded in such ellipses, a contrastive approach to translation is obvious. The analysis focuses on the translation of ellipsis from English into Romanian and scrutinizes the situations when structural differences between English and Romanian prevent formal equivalence, which triggers an important loss of information in translation. The findings lead to conclusions relative to translation solutions that can be adopted to compensate for the scarcity of structural similarities between the two languages in contact in translation.

The waking-to-dreaming continuum and the effects of emotion

2000 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 947-950 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Hartmann
Keyword(s):  
Emotional State ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
The Other ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Mental Functioning ◽  
The Continuum

The three-dimensional “AIM model” proposed by Hobson et al. is imaginative. However, many kinds of data suggest that the “dimensions” are not orthogonal, but closely correlated. An alternative view is presented in which mental functioning is considered as a continuum, or a group of closely linked continua, running from focused waking activity at one end, to dreaming at the other. The effect of emotional state is increasingly evident towards the dreaming end of the continuum.[Hobson et al.; Nielsen; Solms]

scholarly journals Fear Reduces Perceived Sweetness: Changes in the Perception of Taste due to Emotional State.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naoya Zushi ◽  
Midori Ogawa ◽  
Saho Ayabe-Kanamura
Keyword(s):  
State Anxiety ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
The Other ◽  
High State ◽  
Fear And Anxiety ◽  
The Relationship

<p>This study manipulated the emotional state of participants by having them watch movies involving comedy, horror, and beautiful scenery. High state anxiety was triggered among the participants who watched a horror movie, and high juice consumption was confirmed among them. The perception of sweetness of the mixed juice was found to be reduced in the horror movie group compared to the other two groups, while the comedy movie group participants were found to have tasted less bitterness than did the horror movie group participants. Furthermore, the relationship between liking the juice and sweetness was found to differ according to emotional state. This study confirms that our emotional state affects our perception of taste, including that feeling fear and anxiety can reduce the perception of sweetness. These findings suggest that our emotional state may affect our perception of taste.<br></p>

scholarly journals HISTORICAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEAS OF A.P. NECHAEV. PART 1: HISTORY OF LITERATURE, LITERARY CRITICISM, HISTORICAL PSYCHOLOGY

2021 ◽  
pp. 252-270
Author(s):  
А.А. Костригин
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Psychological Traits ◽  
Artistic Creativity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Psychological Tasks ◽  
History Of Literature ◽  
The 19Th Century

Статья посвящена Александру Петровичу Нечаеву (1870-1948), выдающемуся отечественному психологу и педагогу первой половины XX в. В данной работе А.П. Нечаев показан как историк психологии. Рассматриваются историко-психологические работы и взгляды ученого по трем направлениям: анализ историко-литературных работ, в которых освещаются идеи, связанные с исторической психологией; анализ работ, освещавших состояние психологии на рубеже XIX-XX вв. и об отдельных персоналиях современной Нечаеву психологии; анализ специальных историко-психологических и историко-философских работ. В первой части представляются историко-литературные и литературно-критические работы: «Об отношении Крылова к науке» (1895) и «Поэзия А.Н. Майкова. Критический очерк» (1898). Отечественный психолог анализирует взгляды И.А. Крылова на ученых и научную деятельность, выраженных в художественных метафорах и отражавших общественные и народные представления о науке. Рассматривая творчество Майкова, Нечаев показывает, что поэзия может выполнять психологические задачи: с одной стороны, она влияет на эмоциональное состояние читателя и на развитие его личности, с другой - выражает внутренние особенности самого поэта, и необходима ему для удовлетворения собственных потребностей и стремлений. Несмотря на то, что напрямую эти работы не касаются проблематики истории психологии, они показывают интерес Нечаева к историко-научным исследованиям, а также могут быть отнесены к области исторической психологии, поскольку в них представлено изучение образов ученого и поэта и их психологические качества, характерные для XIX в., через художественное творчество и литературу. The article is dedicated to Aleksander Petrovich Nechaev (1870-1948), an outstanding Russian psychologist and teacher of the first half of the 20th century. In this work, Nechaev is presented as a historian of psychology. The historical-psychological views and works of the scientist in three directions are considered: analysis of historical and literary works in which ideas related to historical psychology are presented; analysis of works covering the state of psychology at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries and dedicated to Nechaev’s contemporaries in psychology; analysis of special historical-psychological and historical-philosophical works. The first part presents the historical-literary and literary-critical works of Nechaev: «On Krylov's attitude to science» (1895) and «Poetry of A.N. Maikov. A critical sketch» (1898). The Russian psychologist analyzes the views of I.A. Krylov on scientists and scientific activities, expressed in artistic metaphors and reflecting public and popular ideas about science. Considering the work of Maikov, Nechaev shows that poetry can perform psychological tasks: on the one hand, it affects the emotional state of the reader and the development of his personality, on the other hand, it expresses the inner characteristics of the poet himself, poetry is necessary for him to satisfy his own needs and intentions. Even though these works do not directly relate to the problems of history of psychology, they show the interest of Nechaev to historical-scientific research, and can also be attributed to the field of historical psychology: through artistic creativity and literature, the author studies the images of a scientist and a poet and their psychological traits specific to the 19th century.

scholarly journals Emotional model for a multi-robot system with emergent behavior

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 220
Author(s):  
Angel Gil ◽  
Jose Aguilar ◽  
Eladio Dapena ◽  
Rafael Rivas
Keyword(s):  
Emotional State ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Emergent Behavior ◽  
The Other ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Robot System ◽  
Basic Emotions ◽  
Emotional Process ◽  
Emotional Model ◽  
Multi Robot

<p>This article describes an emotional model for a general-purpose robot operating in a multi-robot system with emergent behavior. The model considers four basic emotions: anger, rejection, sadness and joy, plus  a neutral emotional state, which affect the behavior of the robot,  both individually and collectively. The emotional state of each robot in  the system is constructed through the conjunction of a series of factors related to their individual and collective actions, which are: safety, load, acting and interaction, which serve as input to an emotional process that results in an index of satisfaction of the robot that establishes the emotional state in which it is in a certain moment. The emotional state of a robot influences its interactions with the other robots and with the environment, that is, it determines its emergent behavior in the system. This paper  presents the design of this model, and establishes some considerations for its implementation.</p>

scholarly journals Empathy and Altruism

Psychology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric L. Stocks ◽  
Taylor Clark
Keyword(s):  
Prosocial Behavior ◽  
Personality Traits ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Protective Behaviors ◽  
Motivational State ◽  
Fruitful Research

The word empathy has been used as a label for many different phenomena, including feeling what another person is feeling, understanding another person’s point of view, and imagining oneself in another person’s situation. Perhaps the most widely researched phenomenon called “empathy” involves an other-oriented emotional state that is congruent with the perceived welfare of another person. Feelings associated with empathy include sympathy, tenderness, and warmth toward the other person. Other manifestations of empathic emotions have been investigated, too, including empathic joy, empathic embarrassment, and empathic anger. As was the case with empathy, the term altruism has also been used as a label for a broad range of phenomena, including any type of prosocial behavior, as a collection of personality traits associated with helpful persons, and biological influences that evoke protective behaviors toward genetically related others. A particularly fruitful research tradition has focused on altruism as a motivational state with the ultimate goal of protecting or promoting the welfare of a valued other. For example, the empathy–altruism hypothesis claims that empathy (viewed here as an other-oriented emotional state) evokes an altruistic motivational state. Empathy and altruism, regardless of how they are construed, have important consequences for understanding human behavior and social relationships.

scholarly journals Adaptive Empathy: Empathic Response Selection as a Dynamic, Feedback-Based Learning Process

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Kozakevich Arbel ◽  
Simone G. Shamay-Tsoory ◽  
Uri Hertz
Keyword(s):  
Emotional State ◽  
Response Selection ◽  
Initial Response ◽  
Cognitive Empathy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Dynamic Feedback ◽  
Social Feedback ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Dynamic Nature

Empathy allows us to respond to the emotional state of another person. Considering that an empathic interaction may last beyond the initial response, learning mechanisms may be involved in dynamic adaptation of the reaction to the changing emotional state of the other person. However, traditionally, empathy is assessed through sets of isolated reactions to another's distress. Here we address this gap by focusing on adaptive empathy, defined as the ability to learn and adjust one's empathic responses based on feedback. For this purpose, we designed a novel paradigm of associative learning in which participants chose one of two empathic strategies (reappraisal or distraction) to attenuate the distress of a target person, where one strategy had a higher probability of relieving distress. After each choice, participants received feedback about the success of their chosen strategy in relieving the target person's distress, which they could use to inform their future decisions. The results show that the participants made more accurate choices in the adaptive empathy condition than in a non-social control condition, pointing to an advantage for learning from social feedback. We found a correlation between adaptive empathy and a trait measure of cognitive empathy. These findings indicate that the ability to learn about the effectiveness of empathic responses may benefit from incorporating mentalizing abilities. Our findings provide a lab-based model for studying adaptive empathy and point to the potential contribution of learning theory to enhancing our understanding of the dynamic nature of empathy.

scholarly journals Nonverbal Communication in Business Negotiations and Business Meetings

2015 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 62-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kęstutis Peleckis ◽  
Valentina Peleckienė ◽  
Kęstutis Peleckis
Keyword(s):  
Nonverbal Communication ◽  
Oral Language ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Eye Contact ◽  
Body Language ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Business Meetings ◽  
Business Negotiations ◽  
Physical Changes

This paper examines the importance of reading the body language signals in business negotiations and business meetings. By observing the physical changes of the human body, gestures, can lead to a more or less realistic impression about opponent, feelings of the other person, his mood, thoughts, expectations, intentions, and their changes. In non-verbal body language are very much important things : human posture, dress, accessories, gestures, eye contact, facial expressions, smile, voice intonation, laughter, eye contact, eye signs, the distance between the communicators, touch, clap, dance, and physiological responses - sweating palms, forehead, paleness, resulting in acute facial, neck redness and others. Part of nonverbal communication signs, or in other words the body language signals are sent consciously (natural or play signs, signals), and the other part of the body signals is emitted into the environment unintentionally, when to the information received response is made immediately, instantly, instinctively and without thinking. Body language signals in business negotiations or business meetings are important in several aspects:- reveal the other person’s, the opponent's physical and emotional state as well as its evolution;- complement, reinforce or weaken the spoken language;- allows those who are able to read nonverbal communication signs, to determine more or less accurately whether oral language is true.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document