English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse
  1. View item / 
  2. Item Summary

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT
Add to Basket
  Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released
Journal Article

Interacting and dissociable effects of alexithymia and depression on empathy

MPS-Authors
/persons/resource/persons49439

Hoffmann,  Ferdinand
Department Social Neuroscience, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons19764

Kanske,  Philipp
Department Social Neuroscience, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Max Planck Society;
Institute of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, TU Dresden, Germany;

/persons/resource/persons20000

Singer,  Tania
Department Social Neuroscience, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Max Planck Society;

External Resource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)
There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe
Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Banzhaf, C., Hoffmann, F., Kanske, P., Fan, Y., Walter, H., Spengler, S., et al. (2018). Interacting and dissociable effects of alexithymia and depression on empathy. Psychiatry Research, 270, 631-638. doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2018.10.045.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0002-6B08-E
Abstract
Major-depressive-disorder (MDD) and alexithymia have both been associated with empathy deficits. We examined whether depression and alexithymia show dissociable or interacting effects on cognitive and emotional trait and state empathy. Healthy controls with high and low alexithymia and MDD-patients with high and low alexithymia were assessed. We used the Interpersonal–Reactivity-Index-questionnaire (IRI) for trait cognitive and emotional empathy and the Multifaceted-Empathy-Test (MET) for state cognitive and emotional empathy. Firstly, we found a main effect of alexithymia, irrespective of depression, on trait and state cognitive empathy: High alexithymia subjects showed lower scores in perspective taking (IRI) and in the cognitive-empathy-component of the MET. Secondly, we found main effects of alexithymia and depression on trait emotional empathy (IRI-subscale personal distress). Moreover, we found a significant depression-by-alexithymia-interaction on trait emotional empathy: MDD-patients showed particularly high personal distress when affected by alexithymia (IRI). Thirdly, alexithymia and depression had no impact on state emotional empathy (MET). However, analyzing positive and negative trials separately, we found more emotional empathy in MDD-patients concerning negatively valenced stimuli. Our data suggest dissociable and interacting effects of MDD and alexithymia on empathy. Importantly, except for heightened personal distress, empathy deficits in MDD-patients were entirely due to concurrent alexithymia.