From memory to motivation: Probing the relationship between episodic simulation, empathy, and helping intentions.

Research has documented a strong link between constructing episodic simulations-vivid imaginations of specific events-and empathy. To date, most studies have used episodic simulations of helping someone to facilitate affective empathy and promote helping intentions, but have not studied how episodic simulations of another's distressing situation affect empathy. Moreover, affective empathy encompasses both personal distress (i.e., an egocentric experience of distress in response to another's circumstances) and empathic concern (i.e., compassion for another), but we do not know how episodic simulations affect each component. To address these questions, we ran three experiments testing how different episodic simulations influenced personal distress and empathic concern, and thereby willingness to help. In Experiment 1 (N = 216), we found that participants who constructed episodic simulations of another's situation reported increased personal distress (but not empathic concern) and increased helping intentions compared to a control group; additional analyses revealed that personal distress mediated the simulation effect on helping. Furthermore, in Experiment 2 (N = 213), we contrasted episodic simulation of helping versus the distressing scenario; we found no differences in personal distress or helping intentions, but simulating helping led to higher empathic concern. Experiment 3 (N = 571) included both simulation conditions and a control condition; we fully replicated our findings, additionally showing that simulating a helping interaction increased personal distress, empathic concern, and helping intentions relative to the control condition, which consisted of prior work. Taken together, our work illustrates how distinct forms of episodic simulation differentially guide empathic responding and highlights the importance of personal distress in motivating helping. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

How culturally unique are pandemic effects? Evaluating cultural similarities and differences in effects of age, biological sex, and political beliefs on COVID impacts.

Despite being bio-epidemiological phenomena, the causes and effects of pandemics are culturally influenced in ways that go beyond national boundaries. However, they are often studied in isolated pockets, and this fact makes it difficult to parse the unique influence of specific cultural psychologies. To help fill in this gap, the present study applies existing cultural theories via linear mixed modeling to test the influence of unique cultural factors in a multi-national sample (that moves beyond Western nations) on the effects of age, biological sex, and political beliefs on pandemic outcomes that include adverse financial impacts, adverse resource impacts, adverse psychological impacts, and the health impacts of COVID. Our study spanned 19 nations (participant N = 14,133) and involved translations into 9 languages. Linear mixed models revealed similarities across cultures, with both young persons and women reporting worse outcomes from COVID across the multi-national sample. However, these effects were generally qualified by culture-specific variance, and overall more evidence emerged for effects unique to each culture than effects similar across cultures. Follow-up analyses suggested this cultural variability was consistent with models of pre-existing inequalities and socioecological stressors exacerbating the effects of the pandemic. Collectively, this evidence highlights the importance of developing culturally flexible models for understanding the cross-cultural nature of pandemic psychology beyond typical WEIRD approaches.

You don't know how it feels: Accuracy in emotion perception predicts responsiveness of support.

When bad things happen people often seek out close others for support to help regulate their negative emotions. The degree to which support providers are responsive to the specific needs of support seekers is associated with many outcomes, including how effective that support is in regulating emotion. The ability of support providers to accurately assess the emotions experienced by support seekers seems crucial, yet few studies have examined the role this type of accuracy plays in support provision. We predicted that individuals who accurately assessed the emotions being experienced by a support seeker would provide more responsive support. Further, we predicted that individual differences in emotion differentiation (perceiving differences between similar emotions), range (experiencing a range of emotions), and clarity (understanding the cause and effect of one's emotions) would facilitate emotional accuracy and, in turn, responsiveness. Participants read scenarios depicting their romantic partners seeking support to help regulate different negative emotions; they then wrote supportive messages and indicated which emotions they thought their partners would be experiencing. Individual differences in emotional range and clarity (but not differentiation) predicted how accurate participants were in gaging the emotions depicted in the scenarios. In turn, accuracy predicted how responsive their messages were, as rated by independent coders. These results suggest that accuracy in perceiving a partner's emotions is crucial for providing responsive support and individual differences in one's own emotional experiences are associated both accuracy and responsiveness. Our findings have implications for research on interpersonal emotion regulation, close relationships, and social support. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).