反共情一般指对他人的不幸感到快乐,而对他人的正性情绪产生负性体验,是一种个体与观察对象情绪效价相反的情绪反应.相比探讨共情研究,对反共情的现象、影响因素、心理机制和理论建构等相对较少.本文从情绪的效价维度出发,提出了基于观察者和他人情绪效价理解共情与反共情的整合理论框架,简要总结了对二者认知加工及其脑电指标与脑网络激活的研究.基于整合机制的框架,预期正负效价相关的脑电成分与脑网络激活在共情和反共情情境下发生反转.今后研究需要深入探析二者间的认知反转调节机制,并扩展对正性情绪的共情研究.
Empathy is an essential psychological process regarding emotional experience and social interaction. According to the observers' emotional valence, empathy can be categorized into positive empathy--positive feelings on others' success, and negative empathy--negative feelings on others' misfortune. Similarly, counter-empathy refers to that observers generate opposite valence of emotional responses to others' affective state, for example, enjoy others' misfortune or envy others' success. Empathy has been widely studied from diverse perspectives. However, few studies have focused on the phenomena, impact factors, psychological mechanism, and theorization of counter-empathy. In this review, we briefly summarized inducing methods and three impact factors on both empathy and counter-empathy: (i) group identity--out- group or conflict group members might elicit greater counter-empathy compared with in-group members; (ii) social comparison--comparing performance between participants and other competitors could lead them to gloat over others' loss and envy others' gain; (iii) perspective-taking--taking others' perspective could decrease stereotypic bias and in- group bias, both of which usually lead to counter-empathy. Therefore, we inferred perspective-taking might be a potential way to mediate or even reverse counter-empathy. Next, we reviewed the literature on psychological mechanisms, electrophysiological indices and brain networks regarding empathy and counter-empathy. Previous theories on empathy and counter-empathy were summarized as followed: (i) the Theory of Mind--mentalizing had been proved to be the key cognitive mechanism of empathy, contributing to understand others' and own emotional states; (ii) deservedness and social comparison--when people think others' misfortune is deserved, they would feel a sense of schadenfreude, and when they think others' success is undeserved, they would feel envious or angry; (iii) intergroup relation--negative attitudes towar