Empathy is linked to our happiness and relationships with others, in people from 10 to 87 years of age.

Read “New Research Findings On Empathy” to find out what scientists are saying about empathy.

Landmark Studies on Empathy

  1. Grühn, D., Rebucal, K., Diehl, M., Lumley, M., & Labouvie-Vief, G. (2008). Empathy across the adult lifespan: Longitudinal and experience-sampling findings. Emotion, 8(6), 753.
  2. Paleari, F. G., Regalia, C., & Fincham, F. (2005). Marital quality, forgiveness, empathy, and rumination: A longitudinal analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(3), 368-378.
  3. Ickes, W., & Tooke, W. (1988). The observational method: Studying the interactions of minds and bodies. In S. Duck, D.F. Hay, S.E. Hobfoll, W. Ickes, & B. Montgomery (Eds.), Handbook of personal relationships: Theory, research, and interventions (pp. 79-97). Chichester: Wiley.
  4. Klein, K. J., & Hodges, S. D. (2001). Gender differences, motivation, and empathic accuracy: When it pays to understand. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(6), 720-730.
  5. Greenson, R. R. (1977). Empathy And Its Vicissitudes. Classics in psychoanalytic technique, 227.
  6. Meffert, H., Gazzola, V., den Boer, J. A., Bartels, A. A., & Keysers, C. (2013). Reduced spontaneous but relatively normal deliberate vicarious representations in psychopathy. Brain, 136(8), 2550-2562.
  7. Nummenmaa, L., Hirvonen, J., Parkkola, R., & Hietanen, J. K. (2008). Is emotional contagion special? An fMRI study on neural systems for affective and cognitive empathy. Neuroimage, 43(3), 571-580.
  8. Goerlich-Dobre, K. S., Lamm, C., Pripfl, J., Habel, U., & Votinov, M. (2015). The left amygdala: A shared substrate of alexithymia and empathy. NeuroImage.
  9. Kanske, P., Böckler, A., Trautwein, F. M., & Singer, T. (2015). Dissecting the social brain: Introducing the EmpaToM to reveal distinct neural networks and brain-behavior relations for empathy and Theory of Mind. NeuroImage.
  10. Eres, R., Decety, J., Louis, W. R., & Molenberghs, P. (2015). Individual differences in local gray matter density are associated with differences in affective and cognitive empathy. NeuroImage.
  11. Decety, J., Skelly, L., Yoder, K. J., & Kiehl, K. A. (2014). Neural processing of dynamic emotional facial expressions in psychopaths. Social Neuroscience, 9(1), 36-49.
  12. Martin, L. J., Hathaway, G., Isbester, K., Mirali, S., Acland, E. L., Niederstrasser, N., … & Mogil, J. S. (2015). Reducing social stress elicits emotional contagion of pain in mouse and human strangers. Current Biology, 25(3), 326-332.
  13. Pew Research Center (2014, October 22). “Online Harassment”. Retrieved August 27, 2015. Available at pewinternet.org/2014/10/22/online-harassment/
  14. Shultz, E., Heilman, R., & Hart, K. J. (2014). Cyber-bullying: An exploration of bystander behavior and motivation. Cyberpsychology, 8(4).
  15. Machackova, H., Dedkova, L., & Mezulanikova, K. (2015). Brief report: The bystander effect in cyberbullying incidents. Journal of adolescence, 43, 96-99.
  16. Hortensius, R., & de Gelder, B. (2014). The neural basis of the bystander effect—The influence of group size on neural activity when witnessing an emergency. Neuroimage, 93, 53-58.
  17. Eman, S., Nicolson, R. I., & Blades, M. Understanding Antisocial Behaviors: The Roles of Sensation Seeking and Subtypes of Empathy, The IAFOR North American Conference on Psychology & the Behavioral Sciences, 2014.
  18. Hysek, C. M., Schmid, Y., Simmler, L. D., Domes, G., Heinrichs, M., Eisenegger, C., … & Liechti, M. E. (2014). MDMA enhances emotional empathy and prosocial behavior. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 9(11), 1645.
  19. Exploring Mechanisms of Action in MDMA-assisted Psychotherapy for PTSD. (n.d.). Retrieved August 29, 2015, from clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02102802
  20. Vachon, D. D., Lynam, D. R., & Johnson, J. A. (2014). The (non) relation between empathy and aggression: surprising results from a meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 140(3), 751.
  21. Swain, J. E., Konrath, S., Brown, S. L., Finegood, E. D., Akce, L. B., Dayton, C. J., & Ho, S. S. (2012). Parenting and beyond: common neurocircuits underlying parental and altruistic caregiving. Parenting, 12(2-3), 115-123.
  22. Hojat M, Gonnella JS, Mangione S, Nasca TJ, Veloski JJ, Erdmann JB, et al. Empathy in medical students as related to academic performance, clinical competence and gender. Med Educ. 2002;36(6):522-7.
  23. Nightingale SD, Yarnold PR, Greenberg MS. Sympathy, empathy, and physician resource utilization. J Gen Intern Med. 1991;6:420-3.
  24. Hojat M, Mangione S, Nasca TJ, Rattner S, Erdmann JB, Gonnella JS, Magee M. An empirical study of decline in empathy in medical school. In: Medical Education. vol. 38: Blackwell Science Ltd; 2004: 934–941.
  25. Nunes P, Williams S, Sa B, Stevenson K. A study of empathy decline in students from five health disciplines during their first year of training. Int J Med Educ. 2011;2:12–7.
  26. Stepien KA, Baernstein A. Educating for empathy. Rev J General Internal Med. 2006;21(5):524–30.
  27. Williams, B., Brown, T., & McKenna, L., et al. (2015, June). Student empathy levels across 12 medical and health professions: An interventional study – Springer. Retrieved August 29, 2015, from springer.com/article/10.1186/s40639-015-0013-4/fulltext.html
  28. Cheung, D. H., & Reeves, A. (2014). Can We Teach Empathy?: Evidence from the Evaluation of a Course Titled “Compassion in Medicine”. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 20(5), A7-A7.
  29. Carr, L., Iacoboni, M., Dubeau, M. C., Mazziotta, J. C., & Lenzi, G. L. (2003). Neural mechanisms of empathy in humans: a relay from neural systems for imitation to limbic areas. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100(9), 5497-5502.
  30. Gallese, V. (2001). The ‘shared manifold’ hypothesis. From mirror neurons to empathy. Journal of consciousness studies, 8(5-7), 33-50.
  31. Goleman, D., & Ekman, P. (2007). Three kinds of empathy: Cognitive, emotional, compassionate. Accedido el, 17.
  32. Batson, C. D. (1991). The altruism question: Towards a social-psychological answer. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
  33. Batson, C. D., & Shaw, L. L. (1991). Evidence for altruism: Toward a pluralism of prosocial motives. Psychological Inquiry, 2, 107–122.
  34. Worthington Jr, E. L., Mazzeo, S. E., & Canter, D. E. (2005). Forgiveness-promoting approach: Helping clients REACH forgiveness through using a longer model that teaches reconciliation.
  35. Jan, F. and Jan, M. (2015) Burnout Syndrome during Pediatric Residency Training. Open Journal of Pediatrics, 5, 218-222. doi: 10.4236/ojped.2015.53033.
  36. Brazeau CM, Schroeder R, Rovi S, Boyd L. Relationships between medical student burnout, empathy and, professionalism climate. Acad Med. 2010;85(10 Suppl):33–36.
  37. Potter, P., Pion, S., & Gentry, J. E. (2015). Compassion Fatigue Resiliency Training: The Experience of Facilitators. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 46(2), 83.
  38. Lamothe, M., Boujut, E., Zenasni, F., & Sultan, S. (2014). To be or not to be empathic: the combined role of empathic concern and perspective taking in understanding burnout in general practice. BMC family practice, 15(1), 15.
  39. Schroeder, J., & Fishbach, A. (2015). The “Empty Vessel” Physician Physicians’ Instrumentality Makes Them Seem Personally Empty. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1948550615597976.
  40. Haque, O. S., & Waytz, A. (2012). Dehumanization in medicine causes, solutions, and functions. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(2), 176-186.