The DOI matches its Crossref record; 12 of the 12 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Empathy versus Personal Distress: Recent Evidence from Social Neuroscience
Abstract
This chapter examines empathy as a construct, with an emphasis on a sense of similarity in feelings experienced by the self and the other. It explains how confusion between self and other can turn empathy into sympathy or even personal distress. It reviews the results of recent social neuroscience research that investigated the behavioral and neural responses of people to the pain of others. These studies show that a person who perceives another individual in pain results in the activation of the former’s neural network involved in the processing of firsthand experience of pain. The chapter also looks at the neural circuits responsible for a person’s ability to perceive the pain of others in the context of the shared-representation theory of social cognition. In addition, it discusses perspective taking and the ability to differentiate the self from the other.
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.
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
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
Empathy 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
The functional architecture of human empathy
Decety, J., & Jackson, P. L. (2004) · Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews · doi:10.1177/1534582304267187 · Cited by 3,407 · cited 2×
“In line with these findings, the frontal lobes may functionally serve to separate perspectives, or resist interference from one’s own perspective when adopting the subjective perspective of others (Decety & Jackson, 2004).”
BackgroundResultSelf-citationNeural systems supporting interoceptive awareness
Critchley, H. D., Wiens, S., Rotshtein, P., Öhman, A., & Dolan, R. J. (2004) · Nature Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nn1176 · Cited by 3,406 · cited 1×
“Such a simulation might server to mobilize motor areas for the preparation of defensive or withdrawal behaviors, and also instigate the interoceptive monitoring associated with autonomic changes evoked by this simulation process (Critchley et al., 2005).”
BackgroundCattaneo, L., & Rizzolatti, G. (2009) · Archives of Neurology · doi:10.1001/archneurol.2009.41 · Cited by 3,137
Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others
Singer, T., Seymour, B., O'Doherty, J. P., Stephan, K. E., Dolan, R. J., & Frith, C. D. (2006) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature04271 · Cited by 1,726
Emotional distress regulation takes precedence over impulse control: If you feel bad, do it!
Tice, D. M., Bratslavsky, E., & Baumeister, R. F. (2001) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.80.1.53 · Cited by 1,361 · cited 1×
“Personal distress may even result in a more egoistic motivation to reduce it, by withdrawing from the stressor, for example, thereby decreasing the likelihood of prosocial behavior (Tice et al., 2001).”
BackgroundHuman empathy through the lens of social neuroscience.
Decety, J., & Lamm, C. (2006) · The Scientific World JOURNAL · doi:10.1100/tsw.2006.221 · Cited by 1,051 · cited 1×
“Here, we consider empathy as a construct accounting for a sense of similarity in feelings experienced by the self and the other, without confusion between the two individuals (Decety & Jackson, 2004; Decety & Lamm, 2006).”
BackgroundJackson, P. L., Brunet, E., Meltzoff, A. N., & Decety, J. (2006) · Neuropsychologia · doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2005.07.015 · Cited by 838
Transcranial magnetic stimulation highlights the sensorimotor side of empathy for pain.
Avenanti, A., Bueti, D., Galati, G., & Aglioti, S. M. (2005) · Nature Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nn1481 · Cited by 615
Cited by
From emotion resonance to empathic understanding: A social developmental neuroscience account
Decety, J., & Meyer, M. (2008) · Development and Psychopathology · doi:10.1017/s0954579408000503 · Cited by 597
Self-citationPhysicians down-regulate their pain empathy response: An event-related brain potential study
Decety, J., Yang, C.-Y., & Cheng, Y. (2010) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.01.025 · Cited by 531
Self-citationDissecting the neural mechanisms mediating empathy
Decety, J. (2011) · Emotion Review · doi:10.1177/1754073910374662 · Cited by 521
Self-citationElliott, R., Bohart, A. C., Watson, J. C., & Greenberg, L. S. (2011) · Psychotherapy · doi:10.1037/a0022187 · Cited by 511
Therapist empathy and client outcome: An updated meta-analysis.
Elliott, R., Bohart, A. C., Watson, J. C., & Murphy, D. (2018) · Psychotherapy · doi:10.1037/pst0000175 · Cited by 495
Metadata
- Authors
- Decety, J., & Lamm, C.
- Venue
- The Social Neuroscience of Empathy
- Publisher
- The MIT Press
- Published
- 2009-03-20
- Pages
- 199-214
- OpenAlex
- W2340112924
- Cited by
- 262
- References
- 12
- FWCI
- 17.01
- Type
- book chapter
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Empathy versus Personal Distress: Recent Evidence from Social Neuroscience. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.7551/mitpress/9780262012973.003.0016
- The paper
- Decety, J., & Lamm, C. (2009). Empathy versus Personal Distress: Recent Evidence from Social Neuroscience. The Social Neuroscience of Empathy. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262012973.003.0016
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
