Empathic accuracy, meta-perspective, and satisfaction in the coach-athlete relationship

This study investigated the empathic accuracy of sixty coach-athlete dyads, its antecedents (meta-perceptions of relationship) and consequences (perceptions of satisfaction). An adaptation of Ickes's (2001) unstructured dyadic interaction paradigm was used to assess empathic accuracy whereby coach-athlete dyads were filmed during training. A selection of video clips containing the dyads' interactions during a typical training session were shown to them. The dyad members were asked to report their recollected thoughts and/or feelings while making inferences about what their partners' thought and felt at specific points of interaction. Empathic accuracy was estimated by comparing the dyads' self-reports and inferences. The results of a structural equation model analysis indicated an association between members' meta-perceptions or judgments that their partner is positive about the athletic relationship and increased empathic accuracy. Increased empathic accuracy was in turn associated with higher levels of satisfaction. These results are discussed based on issues they raise for theory and measurement

Feedback of information in the empathic accuracy of sport coaches

Objective The purpose of this study was to investigate changes in the empathic accuracy of sport coaches in relation to feedback of information. Coaches' experience and qualification level were also considered. Method Sixty badminton coaches were randomly assigned to either an experimental or a control group. All coaches watched a video of an athlete's technical training session with her coach. At designated segments of the video all coaches were asked to make inferences about what the athlete's thoughts and feelings had been. Only the coaches in the experimental group were given corrective feedback on the athlete's thoughts and feelings following their inference. Empathic accuracy was estimated by comparing these inferences with the athlete's own self-reported thoughts and feelings. Results It was shown that both groups' empathic accuracy improved over the course of watching the video; however, the experimental group improved significantly more. It was found that coaches' experience was significantly associated with empathic accuracy for the control group only. Conclusions The results suggest that continued exposure to an athlete increases a coach's empathic accuracy and that this can be significantly improved with accurate feedback about that athlete

The influence of role and gender in the empathic accuracy of coaches and athletes

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in the empathic accuracy of coaches and athletes in relation to the gender of the dyad member occupying each role in the coach-athlete relationship. Method: The empathic accuracy of fifty-six coach-athlete dyads was assessed using actual recordings of their own training sessions (see Lorimer & Jowett, 2009a; 2009b). Participants viewed selected video footage of discrete interactions that had occurred during these training sessions. Participants reported what they remembered thinking and feeling while making inferences about what their partner’s had thought and felt at those points. Comparison of partners self-reports and inferences allowed their empathic accuracy to be calculated. Results: It was found that female coaches were more accurate than male coaches. Additionally, for athletes, the highest accuracy scores were displayed by female athletes working with male coaches, and the least by female athletes working with female coaches. Conclusions: The results are discussed in terms of Social Role Theory and suggest that the interaction between the expectations of coach and athlete roles and gender play a key part in how accurately coaches and athletes perceive each other

The manageability of empathic (in)accuracy during couples' conflict : relationship-protection or self-protection?

The current study sought to expand upon research on motivated empathic (in)accuracy by testing assumptions underlying the empathic accuracy model, namely if a perceiver's level of empathic accuracy is variable and might be associated with different outcomes depending the situation. More specifically, the model assumes that (a) the perception of threat in the thoughts/feelings of an interaction partner can result in a lower level of empathic accuracy, and (b) empathic accuracy can both improve and harm situational well-being on the personal and relationship level. These assumptions were tested in a laboratory-based study in which couples participated in a conflict interaction task and reported on their thought processes during a video-review task. All participants also completed a similar standard-stimulus task. A shift in participants' motivation to be accurate to a motivation to be inaccurate in response to perceived threat could not be detected. Men's higher levels of empathic accuracy for non-threatening feelings of their female partner were predictive of an increased feeling of closeness in men. Women's higher levels of empathic accuracy for non-threatening feelings of the male partner were predictive for a better mood in women. A harmful effect of empathic accuracy for threatening thoughts/feelings on situational well-being was not found

Empathic Accuracy Deficits in Patients with Neurodegenerative Disease: Association with Caregiver Depression.

OBJECTIVES:To investigate whether deficits in empathic accuracy (i.e., ability to recognize emotion in others) in patients with neurodegenerative disease are associated with greater depression in their caregivers. DESIGN:Two cross-sectional studies. SETTING:Academic medical center and research university. PARTICIPANTS:Two independent samples (N = 172, N = 63) of patients with a variety of neurodegenerative diseases and their caregivers; comparison group of healthy couples. MEASUREMENT:Patients' empathic accuracy was assessed in the laboratory using a novel dynamic tracking task (rating another person's changing emotions over time) and more traditional measures (recognizing the emotion expressed in photographs of facial expressions and by characters in films). Caregivers completed self-report inventories of depression. RESULTS:Lower empathic accuracy in patients was associated with greater depression in caregivers in both studies. In study 1, this association was found when empathic accuracy was measured using the dynamic tracking measure but not when measured using the more traditional photograph and film measures. In study 2, we found preliminary support for our theoretical model wherein lower empathic accuracy in patients is associated with increased caregiver stress (loneliness, strain, and burden), which in turn is associated with greater caregiver depression. CONCLUSIONS:Caring for a patient with deficits in empathic accuracy is associated with greater loneliness, strain, and burden for caregivers, and increased depression. Caregivers may benefit from interventions designed to compensate for the stress and interpersonal loss associated with patients' declining empathic accuracy

Empathic Accuracy and Adolescent Romantic Relationships

This dissertation describes a study that seeks to understand the role of empathic accuracy in adolescent romantic relationships. Such relationships are important in their own right and play a central role in shaping the general course of development in adolescence. Five specific questions are examined in this project. First, is there a gender difference in empathic accuracy? Second, does empathic accuracy improve over the course of a relationship? Third, does empathic accuracy improve with age? Fourth, is empathic accuracy related to relationship satisfaction? Fifth, is an individual’s hiding something when discussing disagreements related to a decrease in the partner’s empathic accuracy? To explore these questions, we use data collected from 101 middle adolescent and 105 late adolescent dating couples. We use observational coded data gathered from recorded conversations whereby couples discuss an issue of disagreement in their relationship as well as survey data. To accomplish these analyses in a way that controlled for non-independence of partner-members’ responses (which violate the assumptions of techniques such as multiple regression, and thus artificially inflates error terms), data were examined with hierarchical linear modeling. Although the ability of an individual to correctly infer the thoughts and feelings of their partner was very similar for males and females, we found that, overall, females were slightly more empathically accurate than their male partners. Relationship length was unrelated to empathic accuracy and age was only loosely associated. Controlling for age, we found that relationship satisfaction was significantly associated with empathic accuracy for males with a significant trend for females. Finally, females’ reports of hiding something was negatively associated with males’ empathic accuracy. These results using a global measure of empathic accuracy are complimented by findings with four component dimensions: connection, conflict, uncomfortable, and being persuaded. We found complex, gender-linked differences in empathic accuracy and its relation to relationship satisfaction and a partner’s report of hiding something. Specifically, when females reported higher relationship satisfaction, they were more likely to accurately perceive their partners’ negative feelings and behaviors (conflict, persuading, and discomfort) with a significant trend in perceiving their partners’ feelings of connection. However, for males, higher relationship satisfaction was negatively associated with the accurate perception of feelings of connection and positively associated with accuracy in perceiving conflict. We also found that males were less accurate at perceiving conflict when their partner reported hiding something. Findings and implications are discussed within the frameworks of a number of different paradigms, including developmental and social psychology, and feminism. Recommendations are made for discussing results in relation to the demands of interaction protocols and for more nuanced measurement systems

Master of Science

thesisTheoretical models of romantic relationships consider empathy, or the ability to understand and feel the thoughts and feelings of another, to be an essential ingredient of successful romantic relationships. Empathy is thought to promote optimal relationship functioning by enhancing intimacy, increasing the effectiveness of social support, and improving the likelihood that spouses can effectively manage and resolve conflict. Building on these theoretical ideas, improving empathic ability in couples is one of the fundamental goals directing Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy, a therapy with among the strongest empirical support for treating relationship distress. Yet, despite the theoretical importance of empathy for relationship processes, little is currently known about situational factors associated with empathic accuracy (correctly understanding the thoughts and feelings of a spouse) during relationship interactions. Converging evidence implicates stress as a common life experience likely to substantially impair empathic accuracy, though this possibility has not been studied empirically. The current study is a pilot study using an experimental design and video recall procedure to examine the effect of a standardized stress task on romantic couples’ empathic accuracy during a conflict discussion. Associations between empathic accuracy and relationship functioning variables are also examined. Results indicate that couples assigned to the stress condition demonstrated significantly reduced empathic accuracy compared with those in a control condition. Associations between empathic accuracy and each partner’s self-report of relationship satisfaction, intimacy, and support were nonsignificant. However, there was a trend-level association between higher empathic accuracy and lower self-report of demanding behaviors. Results are discussed in terms of the deleterious effects of stress and empathic accuracy’s association with relationship functioning

Demand behavior and empathic accuracy in observed conflict interactions in couples

The study reported in this research note sought to extend the research on motivated empathic accuracy by exploring whether intimate partners who are highly motivated to induce change in their partner during conflicts will be more empathically accurate than partners who are less motivated. In a laboratory experiment, the partners within 26 cohabiting couples were randomly assigned the role of conflict initiator. The partners provided questionnaire data, participated in a videotaped conflict interaction, and completed a video-review task. More blaming behavior was associated with higher levels of empathic accuracy, irrespective of whether one was the conflict initiator or not. The results also showed a two-way interaction indicating that initiators who applied more pressure on their partners to change were less empathically accurate than initiators who applied less pressure, whereas their partners could counter this pressure when they could accurately read the initiator's thoughts and feelings

Variation in the oxytocin receptor gene is associated with behavioral and neural correlates of empathic accuracy

The neuromodulators oxytocin and serotonin have been implicated in regulating affective processes underlying empathy. Understanding this dependency, however, has been limited by a lack of objective metrics for measuring empathic performance. Here we employ a novel psychophysical method for measuring empathic performance that quantitatively measures the ability of subjects to decode the experience of another person's pain. In 50 female subjects, we acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging data as they were exposed to a target subject experiencing variable degrees of pain, whilst performing an irrelevant attention-demanding task. We investigated the effect of variation in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) and the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) on the psychophysical and neurometric variability associated with empathic performance. The OXTR rs2268498 and rs53576 polymorphisms, but not the SLC6A4 5-HTTLPR, were associated with significant differences in empathic accuracy, with CC- and AA-carriers, respectively, displaying higher empathic accuracy. For OXTR rs2268498 there was also a genotype difference in the correlation between empathic accuracy and activity in the superior temporal sulcus (STS). In OXTR rs2268498 CC-carriers, high empathic accuracy was associated with stronger responsiveness of the right STS to the observed pain. Together, the results show that genetic variation in the OXTR has significant influence on empathic accuracy and that this may be linked to variable responsivity of the STS

Does Empathic Accuracy Mediate the Relationships Between Individual Psychological Characteristics and Adolescent Romantic Relationship Functioning?

This study investigated empathic accuracy in adolescent romantic relationships. The project examined the relationships between psychological characteristics and relationship outcomes (i.e., satisfaction and aggression) to determine if the relationships were mediated by empathic accuracy. Participants were 92 heterosexual couples aged 14-18 years old who lived in rural areas in Utah and Arizona. Couple members completed surveys assessing attitudes and behaviors in their relationships and a video-recall procedure in which partners rated their own and their partner\u27s behaviors during problem-solving discussion. Empathic accuracy was generally not related to psychological characteristics or outcomes. It became apparent that there were limitations with the methodology used to measure empathic accuracy. Due to the very strong correlations between participants\u27 ratings of themselves and their ratings of their partners, ratings of self and partner were collapsed for each interaction variable to capture interpretations/biases employed by the participants in evaluating aspects of their interactions. The global video-recall ratings were then analyzed to determine if they mediated the relationships between psychological characteristics and outcomes. Rejection sensitivity emerged as an important psychological characteristic, and interpretations of conflict and sarcasm mediated the relationship between rejection sensitivity and outcomes of aggression and satisfaction