Monika Wróbel

Can empathy lead to emotional exhaustion in teachers? The mediating role of emotional labor

ObjectivesThe present study was designed to examine the links between empathy, emotional labor (both surface and deep acting), and emotional exhaustion as well as determine if emotional labor mediates the relationship between empathy and emotional exhaustion in teachers. It was assumed that emotional labor can take two opposite directions (positive mood induction and negative mood induction). Thus, the additional aim of the study was to analyze the mediating role of mood regulation strategies in the relationship between empathy and emotional exhaustion.Materials and MethodsA sample of 168 teachers from Łódź and its surroundings completed a set of questionnaires: Emotional Labor Scale; Mood Regulation Scales, Maslach Burnout Inventory, and Empathic Sensitivity Scale.ResultsThe results provided mixed support for the hypotheses indicating that both types of emotional labor, negative mood induction and emotional exhaustion were positively intercorrelated. Moreover, deep acting was a significant mediator in the relationship between empathy and emotional exhaustion. The analyzed link was also mediated by negative mood induction, whereas positive mood induction did not emerge as a significant mediator.ConclusionsThe study provided insight into the role of empathy and emotional labor in the development of teacher burnout. It also confirmed that deep acting and negative mood induction mediate the relationship between empathy and emotional exhaustion in teachers.

Narcissism and emotional contagion: do narcissists “catch” the emotions of others?

In this research, we investigated the association between narcissism and one central aspect of empathy, susceptibility to emotional contagion (the transfer of emotional states from one person to another). In a laboratory study (N = 101), we detected a negative link between narcissism and emotional contagion in response to experimentally induced positive affect. In an online study (N = 195), narcissism was negatively linked to experimentally induced emotional contagion regardless of valence. These findings indicate that individuals with high narcissism levels are apparently less prone to emotional contagion than individuals lower in narcissism. Hence, narcissists are less likely to “catch the emotions” of others. Furthermore, by comparing experimental assessments of susceptibility to emotional contagion with subjective self-reports, we were able to study self-insight. Across both samples, self-insight was generally low, and individual differences in self-insight were unrelated to narcissism.

A Cross-Cultural Validation of the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT)

Self-report measures of affect come with a number of difficulties that can be circumvented by using indirect measurement procedures. The Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT) is a recently developed measure of automatic activation of representations of affective states and traits that draws on participants’ ratings of the extent to which nonsense words purportedly originating from an artificial language bear positive or negative meaning. Here we compared psychometric properties of this procedure across 10 countries and provide versions in corresponding languages (Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish). The results suggest good reliability, metric invariance, and construct validity across countries and languages. The IPANAT thus turns out as a useful tool for the indirect assessment of affect in different languages and cultures.

Do I Mirror Your Mood if We’re Peas in a Pod? Similarity and Liking in the Social Induction of Affect

ABSTRACT The present study investigates whether similarity in personality traits between a sender displaying affect and a receiver observing it influences the social induction of affect. We hypothesized that exposure to a similar sender would foster concordant affective reactions, whereas exposure to a dissimilar sender would foster discordant ones. To induce affect, we used short videos presenting a sender displaying happy versus sad emotional expressions. To manipulate personality similarity, we used a software program to generate brief bogus descriptions of the sender based on the receivers’ prior responses to personality items. Our results demonstrated that dissimilarity led to decreased liking and, as a result, reduced the tendency to react with concordant affect to a happy sender’s emotional expression. However, we found no evidence supporting the induction of discordant affective reactions.

Do We Feel the Same Way If We Think the Same Way? Shared Attitudes and the Social Induction of Affect

ABSTRACT Drawing on the literature on emotional mimicry, we argue that attitude similarity between a sender and a receiver influences the social induction of affect. Studies 1, 2, and 3 supported this reasoning by showing that similarity fostered, whereas dissimilarity blocked concordant reactions to a happy sender (but not to a sad sender). We also examined the mechanism behind these effects and found that similarity influenced liking of the happy sender but did not affect liking of the sad sender. Study 4 provided causal evidence for this idea by showing that similarity influenced the induction of positive affect through liking.

I can see that you’re happy but you’re not my friend: Relationship closeness and affect contagion

In the current study, I experimentally examined whether close relationship between a sender displaying affect and a receiver observing it fosters concordant affective reactions to the sender’s emotional displays. I recruited participants as pairs of either friends or strangers. One person served as a sender and the other person served as a receiver. The sender watched a happy or sad videotaped man, whereas the receiver observed him/her on the computer screen in a separate room. The results confirmed that the sender caught happiness displayed by the videotaped man and then passed it along to the receiver but only when the pair consisted of friends. When the pair consisted of strangers, this “second-hand” happiness contagion was blocked. The spread of sadness, however, remained unaffected by relationship closeness. This effect was not driven by the receiver’s ability to correctly decode the sender’s emotional expression.