The Perspective Taking Effect In Positive Empathy

Empathy is not only a common action in people's daily life,but also an important of psychological phenomenon with social function,thus to discuss with the cognitive neural mechanism has important theoretical and practice value.Past studies are generally about negative empathy for others.And we have the need of share our happiness,joy and comfort with other people,this kind of positive empathy can make positive emotions spread,as a result to improve our work efficiency,life satisfaction and strengthen the positive interaction relationships.Therefore,it is necessary to study the mechanism of positive empathy.In this study we investigated how perspective taking influence positive empathy.Research hypothesis are as follows:perspective taking in themselves is easier than others to positive empathy;perspective taking in friends is more efficiency than strangers on positive empathy.In order to verify this hypothesis,we designed two experiments.Experiment One asked the participants to take perspective of themselves or others and response to positive or neutral stimulus and recorded the ERP data,it was found that perspective taking effect occurred at both early and late cognition.Experiment Two gives a further validation of perspective taking.We asked the participants to stand in the perspective of friends and strangers to response to positive and neutral stimulus,recorded the reaction time and judge of degree,the results were that judge in friends 'perspective take more reaction time and get higher degree.This study concluded that there is a perspective taking effect in positive empathy.It occurred in both early and late cognitive activities.Taking perspective of friend makes us feel higher degree of positive empathy than strangers.