Trait Empathy Modulates Patterns of Personal and Social Emotions During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused profound consequences on people's personal and social feelings worldwide. However, little is known about whether individual differences in empathy, a prosocial trait, may affect the emotional feelings under such threat. To address this, we measured 345 Chinese participants' personal emotions (e.g., active, nervous), social emotions (i.e., fearful and empathetic feelings about various social groups), and their empathy traits during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the representational similarity analysis (RSA), we calculated the pattern similarity of personal emotions and found the similarity between the positive and negative emotions was less in the high vs. low empathy groups. In addition, people with high (vs. low) empathy traits were more likely to have fear

SUBMITTER: He Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9231589 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature