A complete theory of empathy must consider stage changes

Commentary on Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases

Word Counts;
Abstract 51 words
Main Text 983 words
References 440 words
Total Text (Total + Addresses, etc.) 1474 words

Michael Lamport Commons, Ph.D.
Department of Psychiatry
Harvard Medical School
Massachusetts Mental Health Center
74 Fenwood Road
Boston, MA 02115
Commons@tiac.net
http://www.tiac.net/users/commons/

Chester Arnold Wolfsont, Ph.D.
Department of Counseling
Cohoes High School
1 Tiger Circle
Cohoes, NY 12047
Chetsgym@hotmail.com

Abstract

A sequential, hierarchical stage model of empathy can account for a comprehensive range of empathic behaviors. We provide an illustrative table, "Stages of Empathy", to demonstrate how increasingly complex empathic behaviors emerge at each stage, beginning with the infant's "automatic empathy" and ending with the advanced adult's "co-construction of empathetic reality".

The Perception-Action Model (PAM), even with "additional cognitive capacities" to explain empathic behaviors, cannot account for stages of empathy. The model is useful and necessary but not sufficient. Although aspects of empathy follow an "automatic" process, we assert there is a long development of stage-like changes in empathic action in humans, and perhaps to some extent in great apes. This development results in the adult's very complex empathic stages of action. We argue that the Model of Hierarchical Complexity (MHC)(Commons, et al, 1998) provides a coherent account of these developmental changes (see Dawson & Kay, in preparation for validity and reliability). The increases in the hierarchical complexity of empathic actions are due to a dialectical process of transition from one stage to the next (Commons 2002, Wolfsont 2002).

We have constructed a table of stages of empathy to underscore the hierarchically sequential stage changes (also see Fischer, 1980). The table shows that at each stage there is a new, more abstract "layer" of actions added that organizes the previous component actions. Such ordered changes can be described by using the MHC because of this model's universality. It posits mathematical definitions of "ideal" actions that define stages and a dialectical process of actions that define transitions between stages (Commons, 2002). The model has been applied to a variety of domains in psychology including attachment (Commons, 1991), social perspective-taking (Commons & Rodriguez, 1990, 1993) and evaluative reasoning (Dawson, 1998).

Stages of Empathy

Stages	Empathetic Affect and Action
Sensory & motor actions (simple reflexes and conditioning)	Reflex reactions occur including comfort to distress and comforting stimuli, elicited smiles (Field, 1989). Reflexive imitative tongue protrusion; mouth opening (Meltzoff & Moore, 1977). Shows emotional contagion: Cries and keeps crying when hears other infants' cries (Hoffman, 1978).
Circular sensori-motor actions (Instrumental, social referencing)	Coordinates perceiving the parent's emotion cues and its own behavior. Behavior is adjusted in situations (e.g., watch for adults' facial expressions when meeting a stranger (Boccia & Campos, 1989)). Turns away (avoidance), suppresses an ongoing activity, or gets more involved with an alternative activity from others' aversive emotions.
Sensory-motor (Physical Consoling)	Couples motor action with emotional action, matching intensity of expressions when imitating. Recognizes disparities in emotions across persons. Displays consoling type (or empathic) responses when someone else is upset. These responses involve only the infant's own body. Pats another person, hugs them, or looks concerned. Infants compare emotional responses to caretaker; defer to caretaker's response to determine their response to stranger.
Nominal (Multi-referential or Deferred)	Names and associates feelings (e.g., happy, sad) with familiar entities, events, or representations (e.g., pictures). Infant responds with a distressed look to an adult who looks sad, then offers the adult infant's beloved doll; child runs to fetch his own mother to comfort a crying friend (Hoffman , 1978). Emotionally reacts to the distress and anger of other family members (Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, & King, 1979).
Sentential (Egocentric helping)	Simple sequences of empathic interactions limited to egocentric helping (e.g., console crying infant). Talks about cause and effect, reflects on cause, actor and action and outcome, hiding, reparation. Guilt is assuaged by reparations or is evaded (Kuczynski, et. al. 1987; Zahn-Waxler & Kochanska, 1988). There is play-acting or pretense (e.g., acting hurt).
Preoperational (Storied Empathy)	Empathize with a character in a story. Confuses real and imaginary. May act on mistaken beliefs. Acculturation determines whether the context requires empathy (e.g. it is alright to kill fish but not dogs). Narrative form integrates situations and context, and less salient cues, to infer whether an emotion indicates suffering or something else.
Primary (Personal Empathy)	Matches feelings towards the sufferer to sufferer's reality. Feelings belong more to oneself than to the other person's feelings aroused in the situation. Also can empathize with another's situation. But cannot coordinate the two. Projects self into other's situation if familiar or perceptible but not into other's perspective if it is not familiar. Empathy consists of "Me too-isms".
Concrete (Interpersonal Inclusion)	Describes feelings as inferred directly from expressions and linked to a situation. Feelings include understanding the other's motives in terms of one's own motives in a similar situation. They include statements of preferences of others as well as stated values of things and acts. Not only understands how the other self feels, but relates those feelings to the ones oneself has had during similar experiences. There is coordination between how they feel now and how they have felt in the same concrete situation and what did help.
Abstract (Normative Personal Sympathy)	Identifies degrees of feelings and suffering along a continuum as states or moods inside the person, and expressions on the outside. Feelings and expressions may conflict (Selman 1980). Generalizes feelings and situations but does not logically link generalizations. Sees feelings as normative. "This is how people feel in a situation like this". Non-systematically tries various things to help.
Formal (Ideal Sympathy)	Links suffering, moods, expressions and situational variables. Asks about how people feel in a given situation. Aware that feeling states influence immediate perspectives or perceptions. Imagines self in other's position and situation, when these are unfamiliar or abstract. May sympathize with abstract persons and situations (e.g., idealistically sympathizes with individual foreigner enemies)
Systematic (Interpersonal Reflection)	Organizes feelings and expressions into systems in each person. Sees self as impartial, though caring reflector of other's states and perspective. Empathic responses moderated by standing in the hierarchy of the sufferer.
Metasystematic (Universal Principles)	Coordinates and subordinates congruently expressed emotions, taking into account that some systems of emotions conflict with other systems (e.g., social and individual caring emotions; personal survival emotions; justice emotions). Recognizes they could be anyone else and in their universal situations. Acts on universal principles of caring, and suffering.
Paradigmatic (Collaborative Co-construction & Transformation of Reality)	Sees that caring, justice and survival systems cannot be integrated entirely. Sees failure to find universal principles for empathy. Knowledge about others as to preference and feelings needs direct representation by the person.

References

Boccia, M., & Campos, J. J. (1989). Maternal emotional signals, social referencing, and infants' reactions to strangers. In N. Eisenberg (Ed.), Empathy and related emotional responses (pp. 25-49). New Directions for Child Development, 44. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Commons, M. L. (1991). A comparison and synthesis of Kohlberg's cognitive-developmental and Gewirtz's learning-developmental attachment theories. In J. L. Gewirtz & W. M. Kurtines (Eds.), Intersections with attachment (pp. 257-291). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Commons, M. L., & Richards, F. A. (2002). Organizing components into combinations: How stage transition works. Journal of Adult Development, 9(2).

Commons, M. L., Rodriguez, J. A. (1990). "Equal access" without "establishing" religion: The necessity for assessing social perspective-taking skills and institutional atmosphere. Developmental Review, 10, 323-340.

Commons, M. L., & Rodriguez, J. A. (1993). The development of hierarchically complex equivalence classes. Psychological Record, 43, 667-697

Commons, M. L., Trudeau, E. J., Stein, S. A., Richards, F. A., & Krause, S. R. (1998). The existence of developmental stages as shown by the hierarchical complexity of tasks. Developmental Review, 8(3), 237-278.

Dawson, T. L. (1998). "A good education is…." A lifespan investigation of developmental and conceptual features of evaluative reasoning about education. (Doctoral Dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1999). Dissertation Abstracts International, 60(3-B), 1329.

Dawson, T. L. & Kay, A. (in preparation). A stage is a stage is a stage: A direct comparison of two scoring systems.

Field, T. (1989). Individual and maturational differences in infant expressivity. In N. Eisenberg (Ed.) Empathy and related emotional responses. (pp. 9-24). New Directions for Child Development, 44. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

Hoffman, M. L. (1978). Toward a theory of empathic arousal and development (pp. 227-256). In M. Lewis and L. A. Rosenblum, The development of affect. New York: Plenum Press.

Kuczynski, L., Kochanska, G., Radke-Yarrow, M., & Girnius-Brown, O. (1987). A developmental interpretation of young children's noncompliance. Developmental Psychology, 23(6), 799-806.

Meltzoff, A. N., & Moore, M. K (1977). Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates. Science, 198, 75-78.

Selman, R. L. (1980). The growth of interpersonal understanding. New York: Academic Press.

Wolfsont, C. (2002). Increasing behavioral skills and level of understanding in adults: A brief method integrating Dennison's Brain Gym® balance with Piaget's reflective processes. Journal of Adult Development, 9(2)..

Zahn-Waxler, C. & Kochanska, G. (1988). The origins of guilt. In Thompson, Ross A. (Ed). Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Socioemotional development. Current theory and research in motivation, 36. (pp. 183-258). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Zahn-Waxler, C., Radke-Yarrow, M., Wagner, E., & Chapman, M. (1992). Development of concern for others. Developmental Psychology, 28(1), 126-136.

Acknowledgments: We thank Patrice Marie Miller and Sharon Lamb for their comments and suggestions.