AUTHOR=Light Sharee N. 

TITLE=The Heterogeneity of Empathy: Possible Treatment for Anhedonia?

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychiatry

VOLUME=10

YEAR=2019

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00185

DOI=10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00185

ISSN=1664-0640

ABSTRACT=<p>Traditionally, empathy has been described as a process by which an individual “tries on” the negative emotion of others (i. e., empathic concern). A corpus of empirical work has been devoted to the study of this particular form of empathy. However, in this paper, the <italic>heterogeneity model of empathy</italic> is proposed as a method for counteracting the lack of attention paid to “positive-valence empathy”—our ability to respond to the negative and positive emotion of others with appropriate positive affect. Both empathic concern and positive-valence empathy are argued to have distinguishable behavioral manifestations and at least partially distinguishable neurobiological underpinnings. The potential value of positive-valence empathy induction for therapeutic purposes is also discussed.</p>