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Comment on Walter's ''Social Cognitive Neuroscience of Empathy: Concepts, Circuits, and Genes''
Arthur M. Jacobs
Emotion Review 2012 4: 20
DOI: 10.1177/1754073911421388
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421388
EMRXXX10.1177/1754073911421388JacobsEmotion Review
Comment
Emotion Review
Vol. 4, No. 1 (January 2012) 2021
The Author(s) 2012
ISSN 1754-0739
DOI: 10.1177/1754073911421388
er.sagepub.com
Arthur M. Jacobs
Abstract
In his review, Walter (2012) links conceptual perspectives on empathy
with crucial results of neurocognitive and genetic studies and presents a
descriptive neurocognitive model that identifies neuronal key structures
and links them with both cognitive and affective empathy via a high and
a low road. After discussion of this model, the remainder of this comment
deals more generally with the possibilities and limitations of current
neurocognitive models, considering ways to develop process models
allowing specific quantitative predictions.
Keywords
brain mappers, empathy, functional ontology, neurocognitive process
models
In his exemplary review, Walter (2012) links conceptual perspectives on one of the most investigated social constructs in
neuroscienceempathywith crucial results of neurocognitive and genetic studies. Walter discusses seven features likely
to help distinguish between affective empathy and related
phenomena such as cognitive empathy, emotional contagion, or
sympathy. According to this multiple-component approach,
affective empathy is composed of six essential features:
affective behavior, affective experience, affective isomorphy,
perspective taking, selfother distinction, and other orientation,
whereas the feature prosocial motivation is neither necessary,
nor sufficient for it. Affective empathy shares only three features
with cognitive empathy, but five with sympathy. Since Walters
proposal so far is purely qualitative, providing no feature
weights, it is hard to say whether this means that sympathy and
affective empathy necessarily overlap more than affective
empathy and cognitive empathy. Walter also points out that in
real life and phenomenal experience, cognitive and affective
empathy and sympathy might well co-occur most often.
He augments his view on empathy by a static, descriptive,
prequantitative model that identifies neuronal key structures
and links them with both cognitive and affective empathy via a
Corresponding author: Arthur M. Jacobs, Freie Universitt Berlin, Allgemeine und Neurokognitive Psychologie, Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion (D.I.N.E.),
Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany. Email: ajacobs@zedat.fu-berlin.de
(neuro)-cognitive process models, if possible in form of simulation models that fulfill a number of criteria for model development and evaluation (Jacobs & Grainger, 1994), the second
probability can be maximized by using technical tools such as
BrainMap (Lenartowicz et al., 2010). Perhaps future issues of
Emotion Review will see applications of this functional ontology
approach to Walters neurocognitive model of empathy.
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