Feeling Empathically Toward Other People and the Self: The Role of Perspective Shifting in Emotion Sharing and Self-Reassurance

Abstract

Feeling one’s own emotions empathically when negative thoughts about the self arise, a defining element of self-reassurance, promotes resilience to prolonged emotional reactivity. We propose that feeling empathically toward the self is accomplished by first stepping into the shoes of an objectified, undesired self-aspect, after which the process of perspective shifting should be completed by reengaging the self to experience the moment in the first person. We hypothesize that the resumption of the egocentric perspective in perspective shifting, a cognitive characteristic of sharing other people’s emotions, is crucial for self-reassurance as well. The relationships among flexibility in perspective shifting, self-reassurance, and emotion sharing were examined in community participants. Our results show that quickly switching back to a visuospatial egocentric perspective after adopting an opposing perspective relates to self-reassurance and emotion sharing. We conclude that both reassuring the self and empathizing with other people involve flexibility in perspective shifting.

Keywords

empathy self-compassion executive control task switching visuospatial perspective taking

Working on emotions (Schafer, 1964), or more precisely the manner in which they are dealt with (Greenberg, 2007; Greenberg & Safran, 1989), constitutes the everyday practice of clinical psychology. Unaccepting attitudes and harsh self-judgments when confronted with personal inadequacies and life difficulties characterize individuals with mental illness (MacBeth & Gumley, 2012; Zessin, Dickhäuser, & Garbade, 2015). This maladaptive manner of relating to oneself can hinder one from attending to immediate experiences (Kross, 2009) and block one’s awareness of his or her own responses at the present moment (Stern, 2004). It may also hamper one’s sensitivity to other people’s feelings and the potential to develop adaptive interpersonal relationships (Barrett-Lennard, 1997). To stay resilient, a self-relating style that entails mindful contact with immediate emotions and acceptance of failures as a part of oneself is helpful (Muris & Petrocchi, 2017). In the current study, we examined whether flexibly shifting perspectives, a cognitive characteristic of feeling other people’s emotions empathically (Chiu & Yeh, 2018), is also essential for the mindful acceptance of one’s own emotions when negative thoughts about the self arise.

Shifting Perspectives and Sharing Other People’s Emotions

Various emotional experiences relevant to other people’s emotional states have been conceptualized under the umbrella of empathy (e.g., Batson, 2009; Goldman, 2011). A contemporary view emphasizes the case in which emotions corresponding to what we perceive in another person are instantiated in ourselves (i.e., emotion sharing; Coll et al., 2017). Emotion sharing is hardly extraordinary. Sitting in a café with a sweet caramel macchiato and laid-back bossa nova, we have no difficulty stepping into the position of a heartbroken friend and feeling his pain. Intriguingly, when we step into his situation, a conflict arises between our original mental state from the egocentric view of the cozy surroundings and what we come to experience. To feel an emotion that is incongruent with our original experience, we face a conflict that must be resolved.

Neurocognitive science has become increasingly interested in how this conflict is managed when we represent other people’s mental experiences (Bukowski, 2018). One particular line of research focuses on how we represent other people’s visuospatial experiences from their perspectives (Tversky & Hard, 2009). A popular paradigm used to study this phenomenon involves prompting participants to judge the left–right location of an object from the viewpoint of a target (Kessler & Thomson, 2010; Michelon & Zacks, 2006; Surtees, Apperly, & Samson, 2013). The angle between the target’s and the participant’s viewpoints is manipulated to introduce varying degrees of disparity. Not surprisingly, the response latency increases when the angular disparity becomes larger. However, instead of a linear increase, the response latency surges when the angular disparity exceeds 90°, at which point the answer is incongruent with the response of the egocentric perspective. Reacting from a viewpoint in conflict with the egocentric viewpoint (i.e., an altercentric perspective) entails mental transformation of the self in alignment with that perspective (Cavallo, Ansuini, Capozzi, Tversky, & Becchio, 2017) or response reversal (Gronholm, Flynn, Edmonds, & Gardner, 2012). In either case, resolving this conflict between the competing responses from the two viewpoints requires executive control (Carlson-Radvansky, & Jiang, 1998; Qureshi, Apperly, & Samson, 2010; Seymour, Wang, Rippon, & Kessler, 2018).

The executive control process in which people shift perspectives between the self and others may also be involved in resolving conflicts between our own and others’ emotional experiences. The role of perspective shifting in sharing other people’s emotions has recently been explicated in our laboratory (Chiu & Yeh, 2018). It is noteworthy that two steps of perspective shifting—that is, shifting forward to other people (i.e., the other perspective) and then back to the self (the self-perspective)—are differentiated. We specifically examined whether resuming the self-perspective after shifting to the other perspective may matter for emotion sharing, for two reasons. First, from a theoretical point of view, another person’s feelings can be shared when people first imagine the situation of another person, after which they imagine themselves in the situation from the first-person perspective. However, if they imagine only a distressing situation from that person’s perspective with the self-perspective set aside, they have concerns for that person’s emotions but do not share his or her feelings (Batson, Early, & Salvarani, 1997). Second, from a cognitive point of view, the two steps differ in their level of cognitive control. Shifting forward to another perspective requires suppression of the predominant self-perspective (Samuel, Roehr-Brackin, Jelbert, & Clayton, 2019), in which cognitive resources are consumed. Hence, the further step of shifting back to the self can be performed efficiently only with enough cognitive resources. Our results indeed show that flexibility in shifting back to the self-perspective, but not shifting forward to the other perspective, relates to the tendency to share others’ emotions. In the current study, we aimed to extend these findings by examining whether a flexible resumption of self-perspective is also relevant for experiencing incongruent emotions in another relational context: approaching one’s own emotions when negative thoughts about the self arise.

Self-Reassurance and Flexibility in Perspective Shifting

In the past 2 decades, clinical and social psychological science has grown increasingly interested in how people relate to themselves when confronted with personal failures or life difficulties (K. Neff, 2003; Neff & Dahm, 2015). A positive self-relating style entails mindfully experiencing emotions, accepting failures and sufferings as common human experiences, and being supportive and caring toward oneself; that is, self-reassurance. In contrast, a negative self-relating style is characterized by ruminating over failures and inadequacies, feeling isolated in suffering or making mistakes, and engaging in self-judgment and self-loathing; that is, self-criticism (Barnard & Curry, 2011). The self-relating styles differ from trait self-esteem (Leary, Tate, Adams, Batts Allen, & Hancock, 2007; Neff & Vonk, 2009) and appear to be important for mental well-being (MacBeth & Gumley, 2012; Zessin et al., 2015). Whereas self-criticism increases vulnerability to mental disorders, self-reassurance protects people from maladaptive coping with negative experiences and prevents mental illness (Muris & Petrocchi, 2017).

The psychotherapy literature has documented the importance of perspective shifting in facilitating self-reassurance (Elliott & Greenberg, 1997). One example is the two-chair dialogue designed to enhance the accessibility of unacknowledged emotions and needs amid self-judgments in people who suffer from pathological self-criticism (Greenberg, 1979; see also Sutherland, Peräkylä, & Elliott, 2014). A dialogue unfolds between the typical self-judging stance and the conflicting stance of being judged. By switching between the two stances, the emotions of being judged, which are incompatible with the self-judging stance, can be gradually felt in the first person (Greenberg, 1980, 1983). During this process, threatening and disapproving attitudes toward oneself can soften. A shift in perspective is also critical for mindfulness during stressful moments, a popular behavioral intervention for patients with intense negative views of themselves (Hayes & Feldman, 2004). Fixating on the egocentric stance results in ruminating over self-defects (Kross, 2009). To defuse self-defeating thoughts, people must perceive moment-by-moment changes in their emotional experiences with a shift in perspective (Bernstein et al., 2015; Shapiro, Carlson, Astin, & Freedman, 2006).

Therefore, we posit that flexibility in perspective shifting may be a cognitive characteristic that enables people to get in touch with present-moment feelings when negative thoughts about the self arise. In particular, as demonstrated in sharing other people’s emotions (Chiu & Yeh, 2018), the flexible resumption of the egocentric perspective after taking an altercentric perspective may facilitate empathically feeling one’s own emotions in the intrapersonal context. The two-chair dialogue hints at this hypothesis. For example, Greenberg (1980; p. 146) showed that emotions that were incompatible with the egocentric self-judging stance were elicited in the first few trials when participants moved into the stance of being self-judged. However, only by engaging the egocentric self-judging stance through the exercise of shifting forth and back could these incompatible emotions be accommodated and experienced in the first person. Flexibility in taking an altercentric perspective (e.g., the stance of being self-judged) per se appears to be insufficient for self-reassurance when the follow-up step of shifting back to the egocentric stance is missing (for a similar idea, see Arntz & Weertman, 1999, p. 718).

Verifying the link between self-reassurance and flexible perspective shifting is theoretically vital. There have been running discussions about the uniqueness of self-reassurance (e.g., Geiger et al., 2018; Neff, Tóth-Király, & Colosimo, 2018; Pfattheicher, Geiger, Hartung, Weiss, & Schindler, 2017). The issue in focus is whether self-reassurance solely reflects lowered reactivity in moments of hardship. This view is implicitly endorsed when self-reassurance and self-criticism are considered the two poles of the same continuum, in which one latent factor underlies both self-relating styles (K. D. Neff, 2003; also see Neff, 2016; Neff et al., 2019). Accumulated empirical studies have suggested otherwise. First, the latent factors for self-reassurance and self-criticism are interrelated yet separate (Gilbert, Clarke, Hempel, Miles, & Irons, 2004; López et al., 2015). Models that incorporate two separate factors have statistically outperformed models of one common factor for self-reassurance and self-criticism (Brenner, Heath, Vogel, & Credé, 2017; Coroiu et al., 2018; Costa, Marôco, Pinto-Gouveia, Ferreira, & Castilho, 2016; Kumlander, Lahtinen, Turunen, & Salmivalli, 2018; Pfattheicher et al., 2017). Second, neuroticism, the dispositional trait of emotional reactivity, accounts for an extremely high proportion of the variance in self-criticism; meanwhile, for self-reassurance, some remaining variance cannot be attributed to neuroticism (Pfattheicher et al., 2017; see also López et al., 2015). Perceiving immediate changes in emotional experiences may facilitate adaptive coping with negative experiences via deliberate emotion regulation in addition to immunity against reactivity to negative thoughts about the self (Hayes & Feldman, 2004; Shapiro et al., 2006). The flexible resumption of self-perspective may be a cognitive characteristic that differentiates self-reassurance from self-criticism.

The Current Study

In this study we aimed to acquire evidence for the crucial role of perspective shifting in feeling empathically toward other people and the self. We hypothesized that the flexible resumption of self-perspective would be a shared characteristic of emotion sharing and self-reassurance. Hence, a smaller cost of shifting back to the self-perspective (i.e., a swifter shift) would be associated with the tendencies of both sharing other people’s emotions and reassuring the self. Despite the interrelation between self-reassurance and self-criticism, this association was not expected for self-criticism, as we hypothesized that flexibility in perspective shifting may differentiate self-reassurance from self-criticism. In other words, the association between perspective shifting and self-reassurance would remain significant when negative emotional reactivity was controlled for. A significant difference between self-reassurance and self-criticism should also be observed in their associations with the cost of shifting back to the self-perspective (Nieuwenhuis, Forstmann, & Wagenmakers, 2011; see also Meng, Rosenthal, & Rubin, 1992; Steiger, 1980).

Furthermore, we examined whether the links with perspective shifting could alternatively be explained by general cognitive functioning. A question under debate is whether the executive-control process of perspective shifting is domain-specific; whereas some findings suggest its specificity (e.g., Samson, Houthuys, & Humphreys, 2015), others do not (e.g., Long, Horton, Rohde, & Sorace, 2018). To address this issue, we assessed updating and inhibition, two components of executive control (Miyake & Friedman, 2012). In addition, we measured the efficiency of adopting the other perspective in a task context that did not demand a selection between the self-perspective and the other perspective (i.e., no recruitment of executive control; Qureshi et al., 2010) and intellectual function. If resuming the self-perspective during perspective shifting is a specific cognitive characteristic of emotion sharing and self-reassurance, general cognitive functioning should not account for their associations.

Method

Participants

This study was part of a larger project investigating sociocognitive capabilities and psychosocial functioning. The Survey and Behavioral Research Ethics Committee of The Chinese University of Hong Kong approved the experimental design (No. 14611418). Participants were recruited from local communities through online advertisements (e.g., Facebook) and posters placed in diverse community settings and social service centers (e.g., leisure and recreation centers, family service centers, educational institutes, and churches).

In terms of inclusion criteria, participants had to be (a) between 18 and 50 years old, (b) native Cantonese-speaking Chinese who were able to read traditional Chinese, and (c) without intellectual disability and pervasive developmental disorders. A past or current diagnosis of mental illness was neither an inclusion nor an exclusion criterion for the study. Power analysis with G*Power 3 (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007) was performed to determine the sample size needed to detect a significant association between emotion sharing and the cost of shifting back to the self-perspective, according to our previous finding (b = .29; Chiu & Yeh, 2018). The probability of one-tailed Type I error was set at .05, and the power was set at .90. Ninety-eight participants were suggested, and 106 participants were recruited for the study. The participants were between 18 and 48 years old (M = 31.06, SD = 6.90) and 27% were male. The average duration of education was 16.42 years.

Measures for the key variables under study

Self-reassurance and self-criticism

The positive subscale of the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS; K. D. Neff, 2003) was used to measure self-reassurance and the negative subscale to measure self-criticism. The SCS assesses the manner in which people relate to themselves when confronted with hardships and failures. The 26 items, scored on a Likert-type scale from 1 (almost never) to 5 (almost always), give six indices, including three positive ones (i.e., mindfully experiencing emotions, feeling connected and seeing failures as common human experiences, and being open and kind to oneself) and three negative ones (i.e., being absorbed in self-defects and failures, feeling isolated and alone, and fomenting harsh intolerance toward oneself; Barnard & Curry, 2011). Through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, studies have found two distinct latent factors for the positive (self-reassurance) and negative (self-criticism) subscales (Brenner et al., 2017; Coroiu et al., 2018; Costa et al., 2016; Kumlander et al., 2018; López et al., 2015; Pfattheicher et al., 2017). We used a traditional Chinese version with good psychometric properties in the current study (Wong, Mak, & Liao, 2016; internal consistencies for self-reassurance and self-criticism, αs = .88 and .92).

The factorial validity of the SCS in this sample of Hong Kongers was investigated. Exploratory factor analysis was performed following the principal axis factoring method for extraction and the promax method for rotation (Fabrigar, Wegener, MacCallum, & Strahan, 1999). Parallel analysis (Horn, 1965), considering eigenvalues larger than what could be expected by chance (Glorfeld, 1995; Hayton, Allen, & Scarpello, 2004), was performed to determine the number of factors for extraction. A two-factor solution similar to that in previous studies was revealed (see Table S1 in the Supplemental Material available online for the factor loadings) and explained 48.25% of the total variance. The interfactorial correlation was –.24.

Emotion sharing

The Multifaceted Empathy Test (MET) was conducted to assess the tendency to share other people’s emotions (Dziobek et al., 2008; Foell, Brislin, Drislane, Dziobek, & Patrick, 2018). The MET is a behavioral test that evaluates emotional experiences in response to seeing other people in emotionally charged situations. It includes 40 photos of such situations, with half pertaining to positive emotions and the other half to negative emotions.¹ Three responses were assessed when the participants saw each photo. The first was the recognition of the emotional states of the people in the photos (i.e., emotion recognition). The participants picked one of four mental-state descriptors, only one of which was correct. The other two responses corresponded to the emotional arousal elicited when seeing the emotions of the people in the photos (i.e., vicarious emotional arousal) and the feeling of experiencing what those people were feeling (i.e., vicarious feeling), respectively, both rated on a 4-point Likert-type scale from 1 (lowest) to 4 (highest).² Vicarious emotional arousal has been considered a comparatively implicit measure of sharing other people’s emotions and vicarious feeling an explicit measure of the subjective perception of sharing other people’s emotions (Dziobek et al., 2008).³ Two indices were derived. The first was the accuracy rate of emotion recognition, which relied on a low-level perceptual categorization of affective cues (Bird & Viding, 2014). The second was emotion sharing, which was the average score of vicarious emotional arousal and vicarious feeling.

A traditional Chinese version of the MET was developed (Chiu & Yeh, 2018) and used in this study. Promising psychometric properties have been reported for this version. Convergent validity for the emotion sharing index was demonstrated in a college sample with a measure of self-reported disposition to feeling the emotions of others (the Emotional Contagion Scale, or ECS; Doherty, 1997; r _{(n = 158)} = .24, p < .01, d = 0.49).⁴ Consistent findings of weakened emotion recognition in individuals with dissociation proneness were reported using the traditional Chinese version (Chiu et al., 2019) and a Dutch version (Chiu, Paesen, Dziobek, & Tollenaar, 2016). The internal consistencies of the two measures were acceptable in the current sample (for emotion recognition⁵ and emotion sharing, αs = .93 and .97).

Flexibility in visuospatial perspective shifting

A paradigm devised to investigate the control process of shifting between conflicting visuospatial perspectives (Chiu & Yeh, 2018) was used. This novel paradigm followed the conventional design that elicits conflicting visuospatial responses by prompting the left–right judgment for the location of an object in relation to a target (Kessler & Thomson, 2010; Michelon & Zacks, 2006; Surtees et al., 2013; Tversky & Hard, 2009). A rectangle appeared in the center of the computer screen, with a circle (radius = 2.86° visual angle, or DVA) on either the left or the right of the rectangle (side length = 5.7 DVA) at a distance of 3.43 DVA (see Fig. 1). When the participants judged whether the circle was to the left or the right of the rectangle, two perspectives were taken. In the self-perspective condition, the participants made the judgment from their own egocentric perspective. In the other-perspective condition, the participants made the judgment from an imaginary perspective of the rectangle, as if they faced themselves from the position of the rectangle. Studies have shown that using human-figure or animate stimuli enhances the performance of visuospatial perspective-taking in some individuals but not others (e.g., Shelton, Clements-Stephens, Lam, Pak, & Murray, 2012). Given that inanimate targets can also elicit a perspective (Bryant, Tversky, & Franklin, 1992), a rectangle was used in this study to minimize the confounding effect.

Fig. 1.

Schematic illustration of trials in the visuospatial perspective-shifting task. Participants judge whether the circle is on the left or right side of the rectangle. The visuospatial judgment is made from the self-perspective (the egocentric perspective from the position of the bodily self) or the other perspective (the imaginary perspective from the position of the rectangle facing the self). Self-perspective and the other perspective alternate every two trials, forming a repetition and a switch condition (i.e., whether the perspective adopted in the current trial is the same as or different from the preceding trial). The increase of response latencies in the switch condition, compared with the repetition condition, indicates the cost of perspective shifting.

A nonshifting perspective-taking task was administered first. In this first part, the self-perspective and other-perspective conditions were tested in two separate blocks. Each condition consisted of 20 trials. A trial began with an instruction about the perspective to be taken (500 ms). The rectangle and circle then appeared until the participants responded with a key press (“z” key for left; “/” key for right). The trial ended with a blank screen (1,000 ms). The self-perspective condition commenced first, and the other-perspective condition followed. The difference in response latencies of the two conditions indicated the efficiency of calculating the other perspective, in which the participants made visuospatial judgments from the other perspective in the entire block, with self-perspective irrelevant in the task context. Hence, no selection between the two perspectives was made (e.g., Qureshi et al., 2010).

In the perspective-shifting task, the participants regularly alternated between self-perspective and the other perspective for the visuospatial judgment. There were 81 trials in total. The two perspectives alternated every 2 trials (i.e., self-self-other-other-self-self-other-other; see Fig. 1; Rogers & Monsell, 1995). This regular arrangement rendered the reconfiguration of a coming trial predictable, so that endogenous control could be recruited for the selection between the two perspectives (Kiesel et al., 2010; Monsell, 2003). There were two conditions regarding shifting. In the repetition condition, the perspective taken was the same as that of the preceding trial (e.g., self-perspective following self-perspective). In the switch condition, the participants responded from the perspective that was different from the preceding one (e.g., self-perspective following other perspective). The switch cost (i.e., the increase in the response latencies of the switch condition compared with those of the repetition condition) quantified an individual difference in resolving the conflict between the self-perspective and the other perspective. A smaller cost (i.e., swifter responses) indicated a larger flexibility in perspective shifting.

Measures for covariates

The assessed covariates included negative emotional reactivity, intellectual function, and updating and inhibition of executive control. Negative emotional reactivity was assessed using the traditional Chinese version of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS; Leung, Wing, Kwong, & Shum, 1999; Zigmond & Snaith, 1983). Fourteen items measuring state anxiety and depression in the week before the experiment were rated on a 4-point Likert-type scale (from 0 to 3). The respective internal consistencies of the anxiety and depression subscales were .81 and .71 in the current sample. Intellectual function was assessed with the traditional Chinese version of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, third version (WAIS-III; Chen & Chen, 2002). A short form consisting of information and block design was used to estimate the full-scale intellectual quotient (Ringe, Saine, Lacritz, Hynan, & Cullum, 2002).

The random-number generation task (RNG task; Brugger, 1997) was used to assess updating and inhibition of executive control. The participants were asked to generate a string of random numbers from 1 to 9 every 1.5 s. One hundred responses were analyzed for various indicators (Towse & Neil, 1998). Three indices could be extracted, with two of them corresponding to updating (equality of response usage) and inhibition (prepotent associates), respectively (Miyake et al., 2000). Through exploratory factor analysis, a three-factor solution comparable with that of previous studies was found in the current sample (Chiu, Tseng, et al., 2016; Friedman & Miyake, 2004; Miyake et al., 2000; Towse & Mclachlan, 1999; Towse & Neil, 1998). The indicators were standardized and averaged to form the indices of updating (RNG score, turning-point index, runs, and adjacency) and inhibition (R, coupon, mean of repetition gap, and median of repetition gap).

Procedure

The participants indicated their interest in joining the study via e-mail, telephone call, or an online enrollment form. A research assistant contacted the participants, explaining the research project and conducting a screening interview to determine whether the inclusion criteria were met. Two respondents were screened out (because they were older than 50). With oral consent, the participants came to our laboratory for individual assessments. On the day of the assessment, the study was fully explained again, and written informed consent was obtained. Behavioral tasks including the MET, the visuospatial perspective tasks, the RNG task, and the WAIS-III were conducted. Standardized scales including the SCS and HADS were then administered. Finally, the participants were debriefed and monetary compensation of HKD75 (per hour) was provided.

Results

Emotion sharing and self-reassurance

The descriptive statistics of the measures for the major variables under study are summarized in Table 1. We first tested the relationship between emotion sharing and self-relating styles when negative thoughts about the self arise. A correlation analysis using Pearson’s product-moment coefficients was performed. The results showed a positive correlation between emotion sharing and self-reassurance, r = .24, p = .01, d = 0.49. The correlation of emotion sharing with self-criticism did not reach significance, r = −.10, p = .31. The difference between the two correlations did not reach significance, though, z = 1.14, p = .26 (Meng et al., 1992).⁶

Table 1.

Means, Standard Deviations, and Ranges of the Measures Under Study, Including Emotion Sharing, Self-Reassurance, and Visuospatial Perspective Shifting

Measure	M	SD	Range
Multifaceted empathy test
Emotion recognition	0 .71	0.08	0.53–0.98
Emotion sharing	2.68	0.46	1.26–3.91
Self-compassion scale
Self-reassurance	59	14	14–89
Self-criticism	56	14	16–82
Visuospatial perspective-shifting task
Self-perspective, repetition	579	276	253–1,387
Self-perspective, switch	678	285	266–1,456
Other perspective, repetition	697	368	286–2,004
Other perspective, switch	805	465	280–2,899
Visuospatial perspective-taking task
Self-perspective	565	355	264–2,403
Other perspective	712	396	304–2,639
General cognitive functioning
Intelligence	107	13	70–141
Updating	0.00	0.30	−0.66–1.09
Inhibition	0.00	0.46	−0.78–2.04
Negative emotional reactivity
Anxiety	5.75	3.29	0–16
Depression	5.34	3.49	0–16

Flexibility in visuospatial perspective shifting

First, in the nonshifting perspective-taking task, the participants performed with high accuracy in the visuospatial judgment from the other perspective, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [.98, .99], as well as the self-perspective, 95% CI = [.99, 1.00], suggesting that the participants understood and followed the perspective-taking instructions. As expected, the participants judged the location of the circle with longer response latencies (in milliseconds) from the other perspective, 95% CI = [636, 788], than from the self-perspective, 95% CI = [496, 633], F(1, 105) = 10.35, p < .01, η_p² = .09.

Two-way analysis of variance with repeated measures (shifting: switch and repetition; perspective: self and other) was conducted to examine the response latencies of the perspective-shifting task. Switch, 95% CI = [689, 873], resulted in longer response latencies than repetition, 95% CI = [595, 750], F(1, 105) = 81.76, p < .001, η_p² = .45, suggesting that the experimental manipulation was successful. Similar to the performance in the nonshifting perspective-taking task, the response latencies of the other-perspective condition, 95% CI = [678, 912], were longer than those of the self-perspective condition, 95% CI = [596, 720], F(1, 105) = 35.44, p < .001, η_p² = .26. Numerically, the costs for the two steps of perspective shifting were comparable, as shown by the nonsignificant interaction between shifting and perspective, F(1, 105) = 0.03, p = .76. However, the costs of shifting to the other perspective and shifting back to the self-perspective did not correlate significantly, r = −.09, p = .34, supporting the dissociation of the two directions of perspective shifting (Chiu & Yeh, 2018; Samuel et al., 2019). For the accuracy rates, the main effect of shifting reached significance, F(1, 105) = 60.10, p < .001, η_p² = .36, with more errors committed in the switch condition, 95% CI = [.95, .97], than in the repetition condition, 95% CI = [.98, .99]. Neither the main effect of perspective nor its interaction with shifting reached significance, ps > .16.

Perspective shifting, emotion sharing, and self-reassurance

The correlations of the two directions of perspective shifting with emotion sharing, emotion recognition, and the two self-relating styles were examined with Pearson’s correlation coefficients (see Table 2). First, replicating the previous finding (Chiu & Yeh, 2018), a swifter shift back to the self-perspective was associated with emotion sharing, d = 0.64,⁷ but not with emotion recognition, d = 0.02. More importantly, the cost of shifting back to the self-perspective correlated negatively with self-reassurance, d = 0.44,⁸ but not with self-criticism, d = 0.08. Hence, swiftly resuming the self-perspective during perspective shifting was associated with the tendency to feel empathically toward both other people and the self. The difference between the correlations of self-reassurance and self-criticism with the cost of shifting back to self-perspective reached significance, z = −1.69, p < .05 (Meng et al., 1992). No significant associations were found between the cost of shifting to the other perspective and emotion sharing and between the cost and self-reassurance.

Table 2.

Correlation Coefficients and p Values of Emotion Sharing and Self-Reassurance With Visuospatial Perspective-Shifting Performance and General Cognitive Functioning

	Multifaceted empathy test				Self-compassion scale
Cognitive measures	Emotion sharing		Emotion recognition		Self-reassurance		Self-criticism
Visuospatial perspective shifting
Cost of shift from self-perspective to other perspective	.12	.22	.17	.07	.03	.75	−.11	.25
Cost of shift from other perspective to self-perspective	−.30	.002	−.01	.91	−.22	.03	.04	.65
General cognitive functioning
Intelligence	−.06	.57	.21	.03	.12	.21	.14	.14
Cost of calculating other perspective	.04	.71	−.04	.67	.02	.84	.00	.98
Updating	−.10	.29	.05	.64	.10	.32	−.27	.005
Inhibition	−.11	.26	−.12	.23	−.07	.47	−.07	.50

Finally, we performed regression analysis to verify whether the associations of shifting back to self-perspective could be observed when negative emotional reactivity, general cognitive functioning, and demographics were controlled for. The results are summarized in Table 3. For both emotion sharing and self-reassurance, the aforementioned associations remained significant.

Table 3.

Standardized Regression Coefficients (b) and t Scores of the Switch Costs of Visuospatial Perspective Shifting and the Covariates in the Two Models That Regressed Emotion Sharing and Self-Reassurance, Respectively

Independent variable	Emotion sharing		Self-reassurance
Independent variable	b	t	b	t
Demographics
Gender	−0.14	−1.44	−0.03	−0.26
Age	0.06	0.65	0.12	1.22
Negative emotional reactivity
Anxiety	0.23	1.91	−0.05	−0.39
Depression	−0.40	−3.35**	−0.42	−3.49**
General cognitive functioning
Intelligence	−0.17	−1.78	0.07	0.75
Cost of calculating other perspective	0.04	0.65	−0.01	−0.11
Updating	−0.14	−1.52	0.01	0.12
Inhibition	−0.09	−0.96	0.05	0.49
Visuospatial perspective shifting
Cost of shift from self-perspective to other perspective	0.04	0.40	−0.06	−0.63
Cost of shift from other perspective to self-perspective	−0.33	−3.59**	−0.21	−2.25*

p < .05; **p < .01

Discussion

In the current study we aimed to investigate whether perspective shifting is a cognitive characteristic of feeling empathically toward not only others, but also oneself. We hypothesized that the flexibility of shifting back to the self-perspective, which was recently found to relate to the intensity of sharing other people’s emotions (Chiu & Yeh, 2018), would also play a crucial role in approaching one’s own emotions when confronted with personal inadequacies and life difficulties. Consistent with our previous findings, a smaller cost of shifting back to the self-perspective was associated with intensified emotion sharing. More importantly, shifting back to the self-perspective correlated with self-reassurance, which involved mindful contact with immediate feelings and acceptance of failures as common human experiences and a part of the self. These associations remained significant when negative emotional reactivity and general cognitive functioning were controlled for.

Resuming the self-perspective and emotion sharing

Given that emotion sharing entails simulating other people’s emotions in oneself (Oliver, Vieira, Neufeld, Dziobek, & Mitchell, 2018) and experiencing them in the first person (Batson et al., 1997), resuming self-perspective after adopting the other perspective should be important. The mentalization of other people’s visuospatial experiences has been shown to involve executive control (Carlson-Radvansky & Jiang, 1998; Qureshi et al., 2010; Seymour et al., 2018). Our prior study elucidated the executive-control process in resolving the conflict between the self-perspective and the other perspective for emotion sharing, using a college-student sample (Chiu & Yeh, 2018). We demonstrated that shifting back to the self-perspective, but not shifting to the other perspective, related to emotion sharing. This association was demonstrated again in the current study. Hence, the crucial role of resuming self-perspective in emotion sharing was not restricted to college students but was evident in community residents with diverse demographic backgrounds as well.

Findings in the current study indicate some specificity of perspective shifting. General switching ability seems unlikely to explain the results, given that shifting to the other perspective did not correlate with emotion sharing. In addition, neither intellectual function nor two other components of executive control, that is, updating and inhibitory function (Miyake & Friedman, 2012), accounted for the association. At first glimpse, the current study seems to suggest that perspective shifting could uniquely account for emotion sharing. Yet, the results should be cautiously interpreted given the correlational nature of our study design. It is unclear whether the context in which conflict arises matters, such as visuospatial judgments or inanimate targets (Santiesteban, Catmur, Hopkins, Bird, & Heyes, 2014; Shelton et al., 2012). It is also unknown whether such conflict resolution necessitates mental transformation to align mentally with the altercentric perspective (Cavallo et al., 2017) or simply involves reversing responses on the basis of the judgment from the egocentric perspective (Gronholm et al., 2012). These questions should be addressed in future studies.

Self-reassurance and flexible shift in conflicting perspectives

The critical finding of this study is that the flexibility in shifting back to the self-perspective after taking the other perspective relates to self-reassurance. The finding is consistent with the view that perspective shifting may facilitate staying in contact with moment-by-moment changes in experience rather than getting trapped in self-defeating rumination (Shapiro et al., 2006). A prevalent view in the mindfulness literature emphasizes the initial move to decenter from oneself (e.g., Bernstein et al., 2015; Kross, 2009). However, as our results indicated, the cost of the shifting to the other perspective per se did not correlate with self-reassurance. The follow-up step to resume self-perspective is vital for a person to experience emotions that are incompatible with the egocentric stance when negative thoughts about the self arise.

Our finding sheds light on the controversy surrounding the relationship between self-reassurance and self-criticism. A recent debate concerns whether the two constructs are separable (Geiger et al., 2018; Neff et al., 2018; Pfattheicher et al., 2017). The one-dimensional hypothesis that posits the two self-relating responses as the opposites of a continuum (K. D. Neff, 2003; Neff, 2016; Neff et al., 2019) has been challenged by studies demonstrating distinct latent factors for self-reassurance and self-criticism in the SCS (Brenner et al., 2017; Coroiu et al., 2018; Costa et al., 2016; Kumlander et al., 2018; López et al., 2015; Pfattheicher et al., 2017). However, although it has been noted that emotional reactivity accounts for the majority of variance in self-criticism but only a part of that in self-reassurance (López et al., 2015; Pfattheicher et al., 2017), what contributes to an accepting and affiliative attitude toward oneself is unknown. Our finding indicates that flexible perspective shifting may characterize self-reassurance but not self-criticism. A similar distinction between self-reassurance and self-criticism is also suggested in an fMRI study. Whereas self-criticism is linked with brain areas pertaining to error detection and behavioral inhibition (e.g., lateral prefrontal cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate), self-reassurance recruits areas pertinent to interpersonal empathy (e.g., left temporal pole and insula; Longe et al., 2010).

The link between shifting back to self-perspective and self-reassurance highlights the crucial role of first-person engagement in adaptive coping with negative experiences. The same opinion has been given from a clinical study of intervening in patients with major depressive disorder. In addition to decentering from ruminations, adaptive emotion regulation requires experiential engagement with devastating emotions so that the emotions can be transformed (Hayes & Feldman, 2004). Intriguingly, the clinical observation of the two-chair dialogue has demonstrated increasing depth of reflections on experiencing emotions as the client moves along the process of shifting between conflicting self-stances (Greenberg, 1980, 1983). The emotions of self-judgment are evoked by stepping into the stance of being judged and then referenced to the self by moving back into the self-judging stance. That is to say, shifting back to self-perspective may set the self as a context to transform the unacknowledged emotional states. Hence, the emotions can be consciously accessed and reflected on, allowing deliberate regulation of mental states (Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, & Zhang, 2007).

The ability to take different viewpoints when looking at ourselves allows us to observe our actions from different angles (Corradi-Dell’Acqua et al., 2008). Decoupling an observing self from an objectified self provides an opportunity to evaluate, monitor, and correct ourselves in accordance with actual or imaginary demands from the outside, which helps us survive in a collective environment and maintain societal order (Leary, 2004; Tracy & Robins, 2004). Staying away from emotions while the self is under self-scrutiny may prevent the distraction from the emotional voices of an undesired self and promote the pursuit of an ideal self. However, when we fall short of the standard that we have set for ourselves, adopting an altercentric perspective to view the self also brings conflicts inside. This can be detrimental to our mental well-being and lead to maladaptive behaviors potentially harmful to us (Baumeister, 1988, 1990; Heatherton & Baumeister, 1991) if we become indifferent to imposing a harsh attitude on ourselves (Greenberg, 1980, 1983). The current finding suggests that shifting flexibly between opposing perspectives matters for keeping an empathic eye on the dissonance of various self-aspects. Resuming the self-judging perspective after moving into the position of being judged may help bring back the emotions that accompany the critical attitude we impose on the self. This mindful contact with the emotions can increase sensitivity toward the harsh self-attitude (Greenberg, 1980, 1983) and lead to resilience when confronted with situations that provoke a sense of defectiveness, undesirability, and worthlessness (Muris & Petrocchi, 2017).

Limitations and future research

Several limitations of the current study should be noted. First, unlike emotion sharing, which was elicited by emotionally charged scenarios, self-reassurance was assessed through a self-report scale. This introspective approach depended on reliable self-knowledge; hence, a bias in the formation and retrieval of self-knowledge might have affected the results. Meanwhile, using photos to elicit empathic responses might not have been ideal, as other channels of information available in real-life emotional episodes, such as voices, were missing. To increase ecological validity, future studies should use more-authentic situations to elicit empathic responses, such as listening to narratives of other people’s emotional experiences (Batson et al., 1997) or recollecting autobiographical experiences pertinent to one’s inadequacies (Whelton & Greenberg, 2005).

Second, emotions can manifest at various levels, including behavioral and physiological responses and conscious feelings. We focused on conscious feelings that people could introspectively—that is, reflectively—report (Bernstein et al., 2015). This subjected our findings to reporting bias as a result of social desirability. People capable of swift perspective shifting may also be sensitive mind readers, who tend to meet social expectations in an experimental context. It would be interesting to know whether flexibility in perspective shifting also leads to changes in nonreflective emotional reactions. A relevant question is whether physiological reactivity occurs concurrently with conscious empathic feelings. Recent literature has suggested that physiological reactivity and conscious experience have a dynamic interplay rather than a linear, dependent relationship (Cunningham, Dunfield, & Stillman, 2013; Hollenstein, & Lanteigne, 2014). Empathic responses may primarily be conscious feelings with low physiological reactivity (Deuter et al., 2018). Future studies should clarify the dynamic interplay between conscious feelings and physiological reactivity for being empathic.

Caution should be taken in applying the findings to another related, popular construct, that is, self-compassion (K. Neff, 2003; K. D. Neff, 2003). The SCS has been shown in an alternative bifactorial model to have a general factor in addition to the six specific factors of the three positive and three negative self-relating manners (Neff, 2016; Neff et al., 2019; but see Geiger et al., 2018; Montero-Marín et al., 2016; Muris, Otgaar, & Petrocchi, 2016, for methodological and conceptual concerns about this model). The general factor has been considered a self-compassionate state of mind that reflects the synergistic interaction among the various ways of relating to oneself, which conceptually goes beyond the sum of the six components (Neff, 2016, p. 267). An intriguing question is whether feeling empathically toward the self should be differentiated from being self-compassionate, as hinted at by the distinction between empathic and compassionate experiences in interpersonal contexts (Singer & Klimecki, 2014). Given that the link with flexibility in perspective shifting appears in self-reassurance but not self-criticism, accommodating conflicting perspectives may be relevant not to the synergistic interaction of being self-compassionate but specifically to an emotion-regulatory style of dealing with emotions when negative thoughts about the self arise. To clarify, a latent variable design can be adopted to extract a measure of self-compassion and investigate its association with flexibility in perspective shifting.

Finally, given the correlational design, the current study remains inconclusive on the causality of the link between flexibility in perspective shifting and self-reassurance. If flexibility in perspective shifting plays a causal role in self-reassurance, cultivating this cognitive ability may be beneficial to adaptive emotion regulation (MacLeod & Mathews, 2012). This question may carry important clinical implications. For instance, cognitive modification training that aims to improve clients’ capability of basic information processing (e.g., attention deployment) has shown some beneficial effects on enhancing targeted cognitive performance and reducing anxiety symptoms (Jones & Sharpe, 2017). It would be informative to test whether practicing shifting between conflicting perspectives may promote self-reassurance. Furthermore, future investigations should address the relationship between flexibility in perspective shifting and emotion-evocation interventions that aim to resolve intrapsychic conflicts of opposing self-stances. For example, having a dialogue between two opposing perspectives can elevate empathic and compassionate responses toward oneself (Falconer et al., 2014), reduce pathological self-criticism (Falconer et al., 2016; Shahar et al., 2012), and help resolve unfinished business with a significant other (Greenberg & Malcolm, 2002). It is unknown whether these interventions are beneficial solely for those with the cognitive ability to readily shift between conflicting perspectives. Alternatively, these interventions may facilitate the evocation and experiencing of emotions in those who have difficulty engaging in perspective shifting.

Conclusion

Emotion sharing and self-reassurance are emotional experiences in different relational contexts. However, a feature they have in common is to approach emotions that are incompatible with the egocentric stance. We demonstrated that shifting flexibly between egocentric and altercentric perspectives in a laboratory paradigm was associated with the tendency to share other people’s emotions and the disposition of self-reassurance. Particularly, it was the swift resumption of the egocentric perspective that related to feeling incompatible emotions, regardless of their relational contexts. For inter- and intrapersonal empathy, completing the second step of perspective shifting may be crucial to approaching emotions that are not experienced at the initial egocentric stance.

Supplemental Material

Chiu_Supplemental_Material – Supplemental material for Feeling Empathically Toward Other People and the Self: The Role of Perspective Shifting in Emotion Sharing and Self-Reassurance

Supplemental material, Chiu_Supplemental_Material for Feeling Empathically Toward Other People and the Self: The Role of Perspective Shifting in Emotion Sharing and Self-Reassurance by Chui-De Chiu, Hau Ching Ng, Wing Ki Kwok and Marieke S. Tollenaar in Clinical Psychological Science

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Some of the results were presented at the 22nd World Congress of Psychotherapy in Amsterdam in June 2018. We thank Ethiana Hoi Ling Chung, Sarina Drummond, Michael Timothy Ng, and Eunice Hoi Lam Ho for their assistance in data collection and cleaning; Cheuk Ying Siu, Leong Ki Chan, and Sin Cheung Tang for comments on the manuscript; the institutes for assistance in participant recruitment; and the participants for their kind participation.

Action Editor

Scott O. Lilienfeld served as action editor for this article.

Author Contributions

W. K. Kwok and C.-D. Chiu jointly conceived the initial research idea. H. C. Ng and C.-D. Chiu conducted the literature review with W. K. Kwok and developed the conceptual framework. W. K. Kwok contributed to experiment preparation and data collection together with other lab members. C.-D. Chiu performed the data analysis and prepared the manuscript in conjunction with H. C. Ng, W. K. Kwok, and M. S. Tollenaar. All authors participated in revisions of the manuscript and approved the final version for submission. H. C. Ng and W. K. Kwok contributed equally to this work.

ORCID iD

Chui-De Chiu

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article.

Funding

This work was supported in part by Grant (No. 4052207) from the Social Science Faculty of The Chinese University of Hong Kong and a 2018 NARSAD Young Investigator Grant (No. 27180) from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation and the Families for Borderline Personality Disorder Research (to C.-D. Chiu).

Supplemental Material

Additional supporting information can be found at

Notes

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