Two facets of affective empathy: Concern and distress have opposite relationships to emotion recognition

Theories on empathy have argued that feeling empathy for others is related to accurate recognition of their emotions. Previous research that tested this assumption, however, has reported inconsistent findings. We suggest that this inconsistency may be due to a lack of consideration of the fact that empathy has two facets: empathic concern, namely the compassion for unfortunate others, and personal distress, the experience of discomfort in response to others’ distress. We test the hypothesis that empathic concern is positively related to emotion recognition, whereas personal distress is negatively related to emotion recognition. Individual tendencies to respond with concern or distress were measured with the standard IRI (Interpersonal Reactivity Index) self-report questionnaire. Emotion recognition performance was assessed with three standard tests of nonverbal emotion recognition. Across two studies (total N = 431) and different emotion recognition tests, we found that these two facets of affective empathy have opposite relations to recognition of facial expressions of emotions: empathic concern was positively related, while personal distress was negatively related, to accurate emotion recognition. These findings fit with existing motivational models of empathy, suggesting that empathic concern and personal distress have opposing impacts on the likelihood that empathy makes one a better emotion observer.