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Empathy through the Pandemic: Changes of Different Emphatic Dimensions during the COVID-19 Outbreak

Growing evidence suggests that empathy is a relevant psychological trait to face the challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but at the present very little is known on whether this multi-dimensional construct has been affected by the pandemic outbreak differently in its separate components. Her...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Baiano, Chiara, Raimo, Gennaro, Zappullo, Isa, Marra, Marialaura, Cecere, Roberta, Trojano, Luigi, Conson, Massimiliano
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8872216/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35206623
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19042435
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author Baiano, Chiara
Raimo, Gennaro
Zappullo, Isa
Marra, Marialaura
Cecere, Roberta
Trojano, Luigi
Conson, Massimiliano
author_facet Baiano, Chiara
Raimo, Gennaro
Zappullo, Isa
Marra, Marialaura
Cecere, Roberta
Trojano, Luigi
Conson, Massimiliano
author_sort Baiano, Chiara
collection PubMed
description Growing evidence suggests that empathy is a relevant psychological trait to face the challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but at the present very little is known on whether this multi-dimensional construct has been affected by the pandemic outbreak differently in its separate components. Here, we aimed at filling this gap by capitalizing on the opportunity of having collected data from different self-report measures and cognitive tasks assessing the main dimensions of empathy immediately before the beginning of the global pandemic and about one year later. The results showed a detrimental impact of the pandemic outbreak on empathic social skills but not on both cognitive (perspective-taking) and emotional empathy that instead significantly improved. Thus, reduced empathic social skills could be a weakness to be targeted in psychological interventions to help people cope with the mental health challenges related to COVID-19 pandemic, whereas the ability of understanding another’s mental states and emotions could represent a strength in dealing with the current long-lasting crisis.
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spelling pubmed-88722162022-02-25 Empathy through the Pandemic: Changes of Different Emphatic Dimensions during the COVID-19 Outbreak Baiano, Chiara Raimo, Gennaro Zappullo, Isa Marra, Marialaura Cecere, Roberta Trojano, Luigi Conson, Massimiliano Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Growing evidence suggests that empathy is a relevant psychological trait to face the challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but at the present very little is known on whether this multi-dimensional construct has been affected by the pandemic outbreak differently in its separate components. Here, we aimed at filling this gap by capitalizing on the opportunity of having collected data from different self-report measures and cognitive tasks assessing the main dimensions of empathy immediately before the beginning of the global pandemic and about one year later. The results showed a detrimental impact of the pandemic outbreak on empathic social skills but not on both cognitive (perspective-taking) and emotional empathy that instead significantly improved. Thus, reduced empathic social skills could be a weakness to be targeted in psychological interventions to help people cope with the mental health challenges related to COVID-19 pandemic, whereas the ability of understanding another’s mental states and emotions could represent a strength in dealing with the current long-lasting crisis. MDPI 2022-02-20 /pmc/articles/PMC8872216/ /pubmed/35206623 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19042435 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Baiano, Chiara
Raimo, Gennaro
Zappullo, Isa
Marra, Marialaura
Cecere, Roberta
Trojano, Luigi
Conson, Massimiliano
Empathy through the Pandemic: Changes of Different Emphatic Dimensions during the COVID-19 Outbreak
title Empathy through the Pandemic: Changes of Different Emphatic Dimensions during the COVID-19 Outbreak
title_full Empathy through the Pandemic: Changes of Different Emphatic Dimensions during the COVID-19 Outbreak
title_fullStr Empathy through the Pandemic: Changes of Different Emphatic Dimensions during the COVID-19 Outbreak
title_full_unstemmed Empathy through the Pandemic: Changes of Different Emphatic Dimensions during the COVID-19 Outbreak
title_short Empathy through the Pandemic: Changes of Different Emphatic Dimensions during the COVID-19 Outbreak
title_sort empathy through the pandemic: changes of different emphatic dimensions during the covid-19 outbreak
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8872216/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35206623
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19042435
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