System circumvention: Dishonest-illegal transgressions are perceived as justified in non-meritocratic societies.

Does believing that "effort doesn't pay" in society shape how people view dishonest-illegal transgressions? Across five studies, we show that when people view societal success as non-meritocratic-that is, more dependent on luck and circumstances than on hard work-they are more lenient in their moral judgements of dishonest-illegal transgressions. Perceiving society as non-meritocratic predicted greater justifiability of dishonest-illegal transgressions in the United States (Study 2), and across 42 countries (N = 49,574; Study 1). And inducing participants to view society as non-meritocratic increased justifiability of others' dishonest-illegal transgressions, via greater feelings of sympathy (Studies 3 and 4). Next, we investigated the contours of these effects. Perceiving societal success as non-meritocratic rather than based on hard work causes people to view dishonest-illegal transgressions as more justifiable if they are perpetrated by the poor, but not the rich (Study 4), and if the dishonest-illegal transgressions are related to economic striving, such as money laundering and dealing illegal drugs (Study 5). In sum, when people see a social system as unfair, they show greater tolerance for dishonest-illegal transgressions perpetrated to circumvent the system.

Navigating the shift in Bangladeshi host community's perceptions towards the Rohingya refugees: a declining sympathy.

Generosity and selflessness from the host community in Cox's Bazar were deemed to be instrumental in supporting Rohingyas who sought refuge in Bangladesh in 2017. Thousands of Rohingyas had to flee from their own country to save lives due to state-supported military violence. Initially, Bangladeshi media and civil society were largely supportive of the Rohingyas. However, the initial sympathy later withered away and may have turned into frustration and hostility. Based on 39 in-depth interviews with hot community members and humanitarian professionals, this paper argues that protraction of the crisis, inability to access natural resources due to the refugee camps, some Rohingyas' involvement in various unlawful activities, a perceived sense of neglect from the international community, and disruption in local labour market/trade affecting cost of living conditions for low-income people seem to have played important roles in creating widespread tensions between the host community and Rohingya refugees. We contend that findings of this study will add to the critical scholarship of humanitarian development in deepening the understanding of host and refugee communities' relationships. This paper will also have a positive impact on future policies toward harmonious coexistence between host communities and displaced refugees and potential sustainable solutions to the crisis.

Are prosocial tendencies relevant for developmental psychopathology? The relations of prosocial behavior and empathy-related responding to externalizing problems, internalizing problems, and autism spectrum disorder.

The field of developmental psychopathology tends to focus on the negative aspects of functioning. However, prosocial behavior and empathy-related responding - positive aspects of functioning- might relate to some aspects of psychopathology in meaningful ways. In this article, we review research on the relations of three types of developmental psychopathology- externalizing problems (EPs), internalizing problems (IPs), and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) - to empathy-related responding (e.g., affective and cognitive empathy, sympathy, personal distress) and prosocial behavior. Empathy-related responding and prosocial behavior generally have been inversely related to EPs, although findings are sometimes reversed for young children and, for empathy, weak for reactive aggression. Some research indicates that children's empathy (often measured as emotional contagion) and personal distress are positively related to IPs, suggesting that strong sensitivity to others' emotions is harmful to some children. In contrast, prosocial behaviors are more consistently negatively related to IPs, although findings likely vary depending on the motivation for prosocial behavior and the recipient. Children with ASD are capable of prosocially and empathy-related responding, although parents report somewhat lower levels of these characteristics for ASD children compared to neurotypical peers. Issues in regard to measurement, motivation for prosociality, causal relations, and moderating and mediating factors are discussed.

To tell the truth or not: What effortful control, false belief, and sympathy tell us about preschoolers' instrumental lies.

This study aimed to examine the predictors of instrumental lies in preschool children, specifically focusing on false belief, effortful control, and sympathy. Instrumental lies are intentional falsehoods used to achieve personal goals such as avoiding punishment and obtaining an undeserved reward. A total of 192 preschool children (age range = 32-73 month-olds), along with their mothers and fathers, participated in the study. The Temptation Resistance Paradigm, an experimental task, was employed to elicit instrumental lies from the children. The children also completed first-order false belief measures, and their parents filled out questionnaires assessing their children's effortful control and sympathy skills. Results revealed a positive association between children's effortful control and their decisions to tell instrumental lies. However, no significant relationship was found between false belief and instrumental lying. Age moderated the link between sympathy and the decision to tell instrumental lies, with sympathy being negatively associated with lie-telling behavior among older children but showing no effect among younger children. The study variables did not predict the maintenance of instrumental lies. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the role of effortful control and sympathy as underlying temperamental and emotional processes influencing children's decisions to engage in instrumental lie-telling.

Moderate similarity leads to empathic concern, but high similarity can also induce personal distress towards others' pain.

Empathic concern and personal distress are common vicarious emotional responses that arise when witnessing someone else's pain. However, the influence of perceived similarity on these responses remains unclear. In this study, we examined how perceived similarity with an injured target impacts vicarious emotional responses. A total of 87 participants watched a video of an athlete in pain preceded by a clip describing the athlete's trajectory, which indicated either high, moderate, or low similarity to the participants. Emotional self-reports, facial expressions, gaze behavior, and pupil diameter were measured as indicators of the participants' emotional responses. Participants in the moderate- and high-similarity groups exhibited greater empathic concern, as evidenced by their display of more sadness compared with those in the low-similarity group. Furthermore, those in the moderate-similarity group exhibited less avoidance by displaying reduced disgust, indicating lower personal distress compared with those in the low-similarity condition. Nevertheless, the high-similarity group displayed just as much disgust as the low-similarity group. These findings suggest that perceived similarity enhances empathic concern to others' suffering, but that high similarity can also lead to personal distress. Future studies on empathy should explore distinct vicarious states using multimodal measurements to further advance our understanding of these processes.

Blame others but hurt yourself: blaming or sympathetic attitudes toward victims of COVID-19 and how it alters one's health status.

OBJECTIVE: This study explored the relationship between blame/sympathy and blamer's/sympathizer's perceived health status. DESIGN: We recruited participants via an online survey platform. Study 1 was a cross-sectional study using data (N = 3304, Mage = 28.22, SDage = 7.92, and 39.3% female) collected from 30 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions of China on February 3, 2020. Study 2 used the daily diary method collecting data from February 4 to 9, 2020. Sample (N = 2456, Mage = 28.49, SDage = 7.49, and 39.4% were female) was obtained by inviting participants in Study 1 on the same platform. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Self-reported health status and life satisfaction. RESULTS: In Study 1, blame was negatively associated with perceived health status, while sympathy was positively associated with it. Negative emotions and risk perception are the underlying mechanisms, but neither of them has effects on the relationship between sympathy and perceived health status. Study 2 replicated these results using multilevel analysis. CONCLUSION: The results highlight the importance of people's attitudes on perceived health status. While sympathy is positively related to perceived health status, blaming has a negative association with perceived health status. Negative emotions and risk perceptions are the underlying mechanisms.

Explaining the Insufficient Relationship between Affective Empathy and Physical Aggression Based on a Double-edged Sword Model.

Affective empathy is generally considered an important inhibitor of aggression. However, the meta-analysis studies on the relationship between affective empathy and aggression have challenged this common-sense view and found no substantial correlation between the two variables. We proposed a double-edged sword model to explain this counterintuitive phenomenon and tested this model by establishing an inconsistent mediation model. A total of 663 college students in China (59.1% female; Mage = 20.69 years) completed questionnaires measuring affective empathy, sympathy, personal distress, anger proneness, and physical aggression. The results showed that on the one hand, affective empathy can indirectly inhibit physical aggression by increasing sympathy; on the other hand, affective empathy can indirectly promote physical aggression through the serial mediation of personal distress and anger proneness. Such two pathways offset each other, leading to an insignificant relation observation between affective empathy and physical aggression. The findings revealed the complexity of the relationship between affective empathy and aggression, which suggested that more efforts to reduce aggression should be made to develop individuals' sympathy, while affective empathy training should be moderate to avoid excessive empathic emotional arousal.

Evolving Scope of Clinical Empathy in the Current Era of Medical Practice.

Clinical empathy is one of the most essential tools of medical practice, and it is an act of correctly acknowledging the emotional state of another without experiencing that state oneself. Empathy comprises four components. Mounting evidence exists to support the use of clinical empathy as a tactic for effective health care. Resolving the multi-fold barriers of clinical empathy is important. Clinical empathy is very important in the current era, and a trust-based relationship in patient care is a way to optimal clinical outcomes that can be achieved through better communication and treatment-compliance plans between health care professionals and patients.

Human infants are aroused and concerned by moral transgressions.

Humans reason and care about ethical issues, such as avoiding unnecessary harm. But what enables us to develop a moral capacity? This question dates back at least to ancient Greece and typically results in the traditional opposition between sentimentalism (the view that morality is mainly driven by socioaffective processes) and rationalism [the view that morality is mainly driven by (socio)cognitive processes or reason]. Here, we used multiple methods (eye-tracking and observations of expressive behaviors) to assess the role of both cognitive and socioaffective processes in infants' developing morality. We capitalized on the distinction between moral (e.g., harmful) and conventional (e.g., harmless) transgressions to investigate whether 18-mo-old infants understand actions as distinctively moral as opposed to merely disobedient or unexpected. All infants watched the same social scene, but based on prior verbal interactions, an actor's tearing apart of a picture (an act not intrinsically harmful) with a tool constituted either a conventional (wrong tool), a moral (producing harm), or no violation (correct tool). Infants' anticipatory looks differentiated between conventional and no violation conditions, suggesting that they processed the verbal interactions and built corresponding expectations. Importantly, infants showed a larger increase in pupil size (physiological arousal), and more expressions indicating empathic concern, in response to a moral than to a conventional violation. Thus, infants differentiated between harmful and harmless transgressions based solely on prior verbal interactions. Together, these convergent findings suggest that human infants' moral development is fostered by both sociocognitive (inferring harm) and socioaffective processes (empathic concern for others' welfare).

Children's sympathy moderates the link between their attentional orientation and ethical guilt.

This study examined how children's attentional orientation towards environmental cues, dispositional sympathy and inhibitory control were associated with their ethical guilt. Participants were 4- and 6-year-old children (N = 211; 55% male) from ethnically diverse backgrounds. To assess ethical guilt, children were presented with two vignettes depicting ethical violations and reported how they would feel and why, if they had committed those transgressions. Using eye tracking, we calculated attentional orientation as the percentage of time children attended to other-oriented (i.e., victim) minus self-serving (i.e., object gained by transgressing) cues during these vignettes. Children also reported on their sympathy and completed an observational measure of inhibitory control. Although main effects were not significant, sympathy moderated the link between attentional orientation and ethical guilt: attentional orientation was positively associated with ethical guilt for children with low levels of sympathy but had no effect among those high in sympathy. These findings suggest that practices centred on prompting children to attend to other-oriented cues - and away from self-serving ones - may be effective particularly for children who are generally less sympathetic.

Attentional Control Moderates the Relation between Sympathy and Ethical Guilt.

In response to ethical transgressions, some children respond with ethical guilt (e.g., remorse), while others do not. The affective and cognitive precursors of ethical guilt have been widely studied on their own, however, few studies have looked at the interaction of affective (e.g., sympathy) and cognitive (e.g., attention) precursors on ethical guilt. This study examined the effects of children's sympathy, attentional control, and their interaction on 4 and 6-year-old children's ethical guilt. A sample of 118 children (50% girls, 4-year-olds: Mage = 4.58, SD = .24, n = 57; 6-year-old: Mage = 6.52, SD = .33, n = 61) completed an attentional control task and provided self-reports of dispositional sympathy and ethical guilt in response to hypothetical ethical violations. Sympathy and attentional control were not directly associated with ethical guilt. Attentional control, however, moderated the relation between sympathy and ethical guilt, such that sympathy was more strongly related to ethical guilt at increasing levels of attentional control. This interaction did not differ between 4- and 6-year-olds or boys and girls. These findings illustrate an interaction between emotion and cognitive processes and suggest that promoting children's ethical development may require a focus on both attentional control and sympathy.

What is Sympathy? Understanding the Structure of Other-Oriented Emotions.

Sympathy (empathic concern) is mainly understood as a feeling for another and is often contrasted with empathy-a feeling with another. However, it is not clear what feeling for another means and what emotions sympathy involves. Since empirical data suggests that sympathy plays an important role in our social lives and is more closely connected to helping behavior than empathy, we need a more detailed account. In this paper, I argue that sympathy is not a particular emotion but a type of emotional experience: those that have another person as focus. I explain what this means and show that this sheds light on why sympathy, rather than empathy, directly motivates altruistic actions.

Interpersonal Consequences of Deceptive Expressions of Sadness.

Emotional expressions evoke predictable responses from observers; displays of sadness are commonly met with sympathy and help from others. Accordingly, people may be motivated to feign emotions to elicit a desired response. In the absence of suspicion, we predicted that emotional and behavioral responses to genuine (vs. deceptive) expressers would be guided by empirically valid cues of sadness authenticity. Consistent with this hypothesis, untrained observers (total N = 1,300) reported less sympathy and offered less help to deceptive (vs. genuine) expressers of sadness. This effect was replicated using both posed, low-stakes, laboratory-created stimuli, and spontaneous, real, high-stakes emotional appeals to the public. Furthermore, lens models suggest that sympathy reactions were guided by difficult-to-fake facial actions associated with sadness. Results suggest that naive observers use empirically valid cues to deception to coordinate social interactions, providing novel evidence that people are sensitive to subtle cues to deception.

Emotional foundations of the market: Sympathy and self-interest.

Sociology shows the role of emotions in economic life. Sympathy and self-interest are crucial individual dispositions to explain the social behavior that shapes market institutions. Adam Smith emphasized the importance that sympathy has in the achievement of stability in social interactions that foster market society. On the other hand, Max Weber argued that disciplined self-interest is essential for the accumulation of capital. Although their analyses differed in some aspects, both Smith and Weber considered emotions to be the key to understanding the moral values that drive economic behavior. This paper will compare Smith's and Weber's theories of the relationship between emotions and the market. Finally, this paper will interpret sympathy and self-interest as the emotional foundations of the market, highlighting the fundamental role that emotions might have in economic analyses.

The Effects of the Creator's Situation on Creativity Evaluation: The Rater's Cognitive Empathy and Affective Empathy Matter in Rating Creative Works.

Successful intelligence theory suggests that creativity is necessary for personal achievement outside of intelligence. Unlike intelligence, creativity can develop in a supportive environment. People should consider the situation of disadvantaged groups, which are characterized by low personal achievement and a bad growth environment in creativity evaluation from a caring perspective. This study focuses on the effect of the creator's situation on creative evaluation and the role of the rater's empathy (i.e., cognitive empathy and affective empathy) and sympathy in creative evaluation. Four pairs of creator's situations (by age, physical state, family situation, and economic state) were designed to represent people with disadvantages or advantages. A between-subject design was used with 590 undergraduate students randomly assigned to eight sub-conditions. The participants were asked to assess three products in eight situations. The rater's empathy and sympathy in creativity evaluation were explored in the overall disadvantage (N = 300) and advantage (N = 290) conditions. The results showed that the participants only provided significantly higher ratings to the creative product made by a child. Cognitive empathy only predicted a creative rating under disadvantaged conditions, and affective empathy negatively moderated this effect. Affective empathy only predicted a creative rating under advantage conditions, and cognitive empathy positively moderated this effect. Affective empathy only predicted a creative rating under advantage conditions, and cognitive empathy positively moderated this effect. The possible mechanisms of the effect and implications for the establishment of a supportive environment for creativity and creativity teaching practice were discussed.

Palliative care strategies of Iranian nurses for children dying from cancer: a qualitative study.

Background: Children with cancer, who are at the end-of-life and facing death, need access to palliative care services, and nurses play an important role in providing these services. Aims: To explore the palliative care strategies of Iranian nurses for children dying from cancer. Methods: This was a qualitative study with conventional content analysis. Participants were 8 nurses, 1 social worker, 1 psychologist, 2 children, and 4 mothers from the Paediatric Oncology Unit in Semnan, Islamic Republic of Iran, who had experience in palliative care for children with cancer. Data were collected from individuals using in-depth, unstructured and semi-structured interviews and analysed using the Graneheim and Lundman approach. Data rigour increased with credibility, dependability, transferability, and confirmability criteria. Results: Data analysis led to the emergence of the concept of "perceived compassion". This theme was derived from the 2 main categories of "feeling the shadow of death on the child" and "comforting accompaniment". Feeling the shadow of death on the child included the subcategories of "pre-death arrangements" and "an opportunity to continue interactions". Comforting accompaniment was derived from 3 subcategories: "preparing to announce the child's death", "extra-role sympathy" and " post-death interactions". Conclusion: Perceived compassion was the main strategy used by Iranian nurses to provide palliative care to children dying from cancer.

Examining the Effect of Self-Determined Appeal Organ Donation Messages and Respective Underlying Mechanism.

This study examined how intrinsic motivation and its respective underlying mechanism influence people's attitude and intentions of organ donation. The findings revealed the importance of meeting people's customized psychological needs. For the general population, especially non-organ donors, autonomous appeal message will be more effective in promoting their intention of becoming an organ donor. For registered organ donors, competence-based organ donation messages are more effective in increasing their promotion and seeking behavior of organ donation. This study also discovered underlying mechanisms of intrinsic motivation, such as self-integrity, pride, and sympathy. Pairing underlying mechanism with competence-based messages can maximize the message impact.

'Dead bodies as a daily business': Affective work events, emotions and emotion regulation in the work of undertakers.

BACKGROUND: Affective Events Theory (AET) postulates that job characteristics have an impact on job attitudes and work behaviour via affective events and reactions. However, the display of positive emotions can be rather problematic in undertakers and be in conflict with displaying compassion. OBJECTIVE: This study examines work events eliciting various emotions in the work of undertakers and how display of emotions in this profession affects job satisfaction. We thereby focus on AET and extend this by investigating time pressure as a moderator of the relationship between autonomy, positive emotions and job satisfaction. METHODS: First, we collected specific affective work events of undertakers in a pilot interview study. Second, N = 112 undertakers participated in a cross-sectional survey measuring affective events, emotional display, commitment to display compassion, autonomy, time pressure, job satisfaction and work engagement. RESULTS: Experiencing positive emotions at work is beneficial even in undertakers. Additionally, autonomy was associated with positive emotions particularly under high time pressure and low commitment to display compassion moderated the link between work events and showing compassion. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, undertakers' well-being is associated in complex ways with the interplay of positive emotions, autonomy and time pressure at work and individual differences in commitment for displaying compassion to clients.

The Roles of Health and e-Health Literacy, Conspiracy Beliefs and Political Sympathy in the Adherence to Preventive Measures Recommended during the Pandemic.

Adherence to preventive measures is of the utmost importance for limiting the spreading of the coronavirus. Many predictors of adopting preventive behaviors have been analyzed in different countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Objectives: The study's main aim was to assess the roles of health (HL) and e-health literacy (eHL), conspiracy beliefs, political sympathy, and religious practices in the adherence to COVID-19 preventive measures after adjusting for sociodemographic factors. The analysis was based on the data obtained from a survey conducted among 2410 adult Internet users in Poland in October 2020. The survey was performed with a computer-assisted web-based interviewing technique. Survey data were analyzed through uni- and multivariable linear regression models. The multivariable regression model revealed that after adjusting for sociodemographic variables, the preventive measures score (PMS) was significantly associated with HL (B = 0.04, p < 0.001), eHL (B = 0.03, p < 0.001) and the COVID-19-related conspiracy beliefs score (C19CBS) (B = −0.24, p < 0.001). There was also a significant statistical relationship between PMS and political sympathies and religious practices. HL and eHL are key factors eligible for modification through appropriate interventions and showing positive effects in compliance with preventive measures. Conspiracy beliefs, political sympathy and religious beliefs are independently associated with the adherence.

Associations Among Adolescents' Mindfulness, Sympathy, Cognitive Empathy, and Sibling Relationships.

In the current study, we examined the direct and indirect paths from mindfulness to adolescents' sibling relationships through their cognitive empathy and sympathy. The sample consisted of 220 adolescents (50.9 % female) between age of 13 and 17 years (M = 15.86, SD = 0.91). Participants reported their mindfulness (acceptance and awareness), cognitive empathy and sympathy, and sibling relationships. The parallel mediation model revealed that mindful awareness and acceptance predicted kindness, involvement, and empathy within sibling relationships through sympathy. In addition, there was a significant indirect effect of mindful awareness to empathy in sibling relationships through cognitive empathy. Findings provided information regarding the importance of indirect contributions of mindfulness to sibling relationships through cognitive empathy and sympathy.