Role play and Psychology

 

Role play is a technique to develop social relationship skills by having people act out different social roles. Role playing can help people learn attitudes and coping skills that may improve relationships and has wide applicability in industry, education, psychotherapy, parenting, and couple or marital enrichment.

Role playing may promote perspective taking, a component of empathy.

Perspective taking

 Perspective taking is a range of ability to understand an event from a different viewpoint. The different viewpoint may be that of another person or a cultural role.

  Role playing exercises may help people learn to take different perspectives. Perspective taking relates to the cognitive component of empathy.

A review of studies by Eyal and others (2018) suggests that perspective taking does not help us understand what others want. See Eyal 2018 in HBR.

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Empathy - Cognitive and Emotional

 

Empathy is the ability cognitively and emotionally recognize and understand the experience of another. Empathy is an important component of relationships. Empathy varies from low to high ability.

Cognitive empathy is the range of ability to understand the perspective (perspective taking) of another person and may be present with a high to low range of emotional empathy. 

Emotional empathy is the range of ability to feel what another person feels.

Neuropsychological studies have identified brain areas related to empathy including the motor mirror system. See the APS Observer 2018.

Differences in definitions: Some writers do not include the two components of cognitive and emotional empathy. Some write as if empathy and its components are either or--that is, a person has or does not have empathy. However, in psychology, many abilities like empathy vary in degree such that a person may range from high to low on empathy or its components of cognitive and emotional empathy.

Empathy has also been studied in animals.

Examples

Example 1: A person high in psychopathy may have high cognitive empathy enabling the person to understand the thinking or viewpoint of another, but also be low in emotional empathy, which can lead to taking advantage of another person without an awareness of their feelings.

Example 2: A downside of high emotional empathy is that it can lead to personal distress. This has been called emotional contagion in some research reports.

Concepts: Cognitive empathy,   Emotional Empathy Emotional contagion

Related concepts: perspective taking, social roles, role playing

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Compassion

The behavioral science concept of compassion is similar to the common definition of the term.

Compassion is the feeling people describe when faced with another person’s 

suffering and the motivation to help reduce the impact of the suffering.

Compassion is related to the concepts of empathy and altruism but compassion is not the same as those concepts. Compassion involves emotional and cognitive empathy—the ability to take the perspective of another person and feel similar feelings. Compassion is different because it included the motivation to help improve someone’s situation.

Compassion shares with altruism the giving of oneself or resources to another. But compassion is not the only motive for altruism.

Compassion is related to love. The biology of compassion includes the presence of the hormone oxytocin, which has been called the “love drug” or the “bonding hormone.” In brain studies, the region of the brain linked to caring for others is activated in studies of empathy and caring. During sex, both men and women produce oxytocin. It’s also produced by women during childbirth and lactation.

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One set of items to measure compassion is the Santa Clara Brief Compassion Scale (Hwang, Plante, & Lackey, 2008), which is derived from the longer, 21-item, Compassionate Love Scale (Sprecher & Fehr, 2005).

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References

Hwang, J., Plante, T., & Lackey, K. (2008). The development of the Santa Clara Brief Compassion Scale: An abbreviation of Sprecher and Fehr's Compassionate Love Scale. Pastoral Psychology, 56, 421-428. doi:10.1007/s11089-008-0117-2

Sprecher, S., & Fehr, B. (2005). Compassionate love for close others and humanity. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 22, 629–651.

Sutton, G. W., Jordan, K., & Worthington, E.L., Jr. (2014). Spirituality, hope, compassion, and forgiveness: Contributions of Pentecostal spirituality to godly love. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 33, 212-226. Academia Link     ResearchGate 

Photo credit: I took the photo of Convoy of Hope helping people on the site where the tornado of 2007 destroyed the Assemblies of God church in Greensburg Kansas, USA. The tornado wiped out over 90% of the city.

Related Posts

How to measure love

How to ask people about forgiveness

How to measure hope

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