The DOI matches its Crossref record; 96 of the 100 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Human empathy through the lens of social neuroscience.
Open accessAbstract
Empathy is the ability to experience and understand what others feel without confusion between oneself and others. Knowing what someone else is feeling plays a fundamental role in interpersonal interactions. In this paper, we articulate evidence from social psychology and cognitive neuroscience, and argue that empathy involves both emotion sharing (bottom-up information processing) and executive control to regulate and modulate this experience (top-down information processing), underpinned by specific and interacting neural systems. Furthermore, awareness of a distinction between the experiences of the self and others constitutes a crucial aspect of empathy. We discuss data from recent behavioral and functional neuroimaging studies with an emphasis on the perception of pain in others, and highlight the role of different neural mechanisms that underpin the experience of empathy, including emotion sharing, perspective taking, and emotion regulation.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The cited source says what the claim attributes to it.
In the citing paper
“Intact ability to distinguish between the self and other then allows the observer to attribute the emotional state to the observed individual, thereby reducing personal distress, and giving rise to empathic concern (Bird and Viding, 2014; Coll, Viding, et al., 2017; Davis, 1980; Decety and Lamm, 2006; Moriguchi et al., 2007b).”
From Atypical interoception as a common risk factor for psychopathology: A review (2021) · cites this paper as Decety and Lamm, 2006
In the citing paper
“A growing number of neuroimaging studies reliably documents that witnessing pain in others activates a similar network as the first-hand experience of pain [12], [34 for reviews].”
From What are you feeling? Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess the modulation of sensory and affective responses during empathy for pain (2007) · cites this paper as [12]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention in the brain
Corbetta, M., & Shulman, G. L. (2002) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn755 · Cited by 12,881 · cited 1×
“In a number of studies (see [69], for review), it has been demonstrated that the right TPJ is specifically activated when subjects focusing their attention on a certain screen location are presented with a stimulus at a nonattended location, representing a violation of their expectancy and requiring them to redirect t…”
BackgroundThe emerging field of emotion regulation: an integrative review
Gross, J. J. (1998) · Review of General Psychology · doi:10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.271 · Cited by 9,916 · cited 1×
“Various strategies have been identified to regulate emotions by means of top-down cognitive control[75].”
BackgroundLeDoux, J. E. (2000) · Annual Review of Neuroscience · doi:10.1146/annurev.neuro.23.1.155 · Cited by 8,444
Rizzolatti, G., & Craighero, L. (2004) · Annual Review of Neuroscience · doi:10.1146/annurev.neuro.27.070203.144230 · Cited by 7,433 · cited 1×
“Electrophysiological recordings in monkeys as well as neuroimaging experiments in humans have shown that the observation of actions performed by others activates cortical motor representations in the self (see [17] for review).”
BackgroundHow do you feel? Interoception: The sense of the physiological condition of the body
Craig, A. D. (2002) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn894 · Cited by 6,006 · cited 1×
“This system includes the insula and medial cingulate cortices[81] and codes the affective and motivational dimensions of pain.”
BackgroundThe cognitive control of emotion
OCHSNER, K., & GROSS, J. (2005) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.03.010 · Cited by 4,495 · cited 1×
“Heuristically, these processes have been arranged on a continuum from attentional control to cognitive change[76].”
Background(2001) · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511546396 · Cited by 4,482
(2000) · Elsevier eBooks · doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-109890-2.x5027-6 · Cited by 4,453
Empathy: its ultimate and proximate bases
Preston, S. D., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2002) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x02000018 · Cited by 4,126 · cited 2×
“Besides, empathy has evolved as an in-group phenomena[9].”
BackgroundEmpathy for Pain Involves the Affective but not Sensory Components of Pain
Singer, T., Seymour, B., O'Doherty, J., Kaube, H., Dolan, R. J., & Frith, C. D. (2004) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1093535 · Cited by 3,929
Research works printed but not linked: 4
- Ickes, W. (1997) Empathic Accuracy. The Guilford Press, New York.
- Batson, C.D. (2006) Folly bridges. In Bridging Social Psychology. van Lange, P.A.M., Ed. Erlbaum, Mahwah. pp. 59-64.
- Russell, J. (1996) Agency and Its Role in Mental Development. Psychology Press, Hove.
- Ickes, W., Ed. The Guilford Press, New York. pp. 144-168.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Lamm, C., Decety, J., & Singer, T. (2011) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.10.014 · Cited by 2,016
“However, many models of empathy assume an important role of mimicry and emotional contagion and regard these two phenomena as interacting (see Singer and Lamm, 2009, for clarification of terms, and Decety and Lamm, 2006; Preston and de Waal, 2002).”
Self-citationThe social neuroscience of empathy
Singer, T., & Lamm, C. (2009) · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04418.x · Cited by 1,981
“Decety and Lamm (2006), for example, proposed a model in which bottom-up (i.e., direct matching between perception and action) and top-down (i.e., regulation, contextual appraisal, and control) information processes are fundamentally intertwined in the generation and modulation of empathy.”
BackgroundInfluentialEmpathy: A Review of the Concept
Cuff, B. M. P., Brown, S., Taylor, L. M., & Howat, D. (2014) · Emotion Review · doi:10.1177/1754073914558466 · Cited by 1,708
“In particular, this distinction is what separates empathy from emotional contagion (Decety & Lamm, 2006; de Vignemont & Singer, 2006; Gerdes et al., 2010; Scheler, cited in Ickes, 2003).”
BackgroundThe Neural Substrate of Human Empathy: Effects of Perspective-taking and Cognitive Appraisal
Lamm, C., Batson, C. D., & Decety, J. (2007) · Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1162/jocn.2007.19.1.42 · Cited by 1,464
“It was thus important to demonstrate both the similarities in the neural networks underlying the sharing of pain with others and the specific mechanisms that permit distinguishing the self from others, which is critical for the experience of empathy (Decety & Hodges, 2006; Decety & Lamm, 2006; Decety, 2005).”
BackgroundA common role of insula in feelings, empathy and uncertainty
Singer, T., Critchley, H. D., & Preuschoff, K. (2009) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2009.05.001 · Cited by 1,270
Metadata
- Authors
- Decety, J., & Lamm, C.
- Affiliations
- Department of Psychology Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
- University of Chicago (US)
- ORCID
- Lamm, Claus
- Venue
- The Scientific World JOURNAL
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2006
- Volume
- 6
- Pages
- 1146-1163
- ISSN
- 1537-744X (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5917291
- OpenAlex
- W2144872492
- Cited by
- 1,051
- References
- 100
- Citations by year
- 2026: 82 · 2025: 80 · 2024: 59 · 2023: 76 · 2022: 62 · 2021: 72 · 2020: 51 · 2019: 60 · 2018: 57 · 2017: 45 · 2016: 48 · 2015: 60 · 2014: 53 · 2013: 52 · 2012: 44
- FWCI
- 3.32
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- The Scientific World JOURNAL (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Empathy and Medical Education
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Emotions and Moral Behavior
- Keywords
- empathy, social neuroscience, emotional sharing, executive function, top-down processing, bottom-up processing, self-other distinction, perspective taking, emotion regulation, neural mechanisms of empathy
- MeSH terms
- Awareness, Brain Mapping, Empathy, Biological Evolution, Humans, Models, Psychological, Nerve Net, Neurosciences, Psychology, Social, Social Behavior
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
