Forgiveness weakens women’s counter-empathy both in the stage of self-oriented and other-oriented emotional responses.
- Resource Type
- Article
- Authors
- Yu, Meiqi; Lu, Jiamei; Li, Xu; Wang, Shuyin; Shangguan, Chenyu; Wang, Xia
- Source
- Health Care for Women International. Oct2023, p1-15. 15p. 3 Illustrations.
- Subject
- Language
- ISSN
- 0739-9332
Abstract Counter-empathy may have more serious negative effects on women than on men. Sixty-four female Chinese university students participated in this study. Based on the counter-empathy model in a competitive setting, we examined how forgiveness affects counter-empathy. We manipulated the degree of participants’ forgiveness toward their opponents by changing the type of information they received from their opponents. We also measured counter-empathy through self-reported pleasantness caused by opponents’ facial expressions (smiles or frowns). We found that forgiveness can effectively alleviate women’s counter-empathy, restraining their emotional experience from being inconsistent with the offender and enhancing their empathic concern toward the offender. We preliminarily explored how forgiveness works on counter-empathy and provided insight into the use of forgiveness to maintain global women’s emotional health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]