2. General Methods
2.3 Experiment 1: Implicit Evaluation for Levels of Empathy Using
2.3.3 Results
The mean accuracy rate of emotional Stroop task across all subjects was 98 % (S.D.
= 3.9 %) and was not significantly different between groups (F3, 116 = 1.10, p = .352).
The mean accuracy rate of working memory task in CI condition was 96.1% (S.D. = 3.7
%) and was also not significantly different between groups (F 3,116 = 1.74, p = .162), indicating that the difficulty level of working memory tasks was similar to all participants.
Figure 5
Interaction effect of Condition ǘ TrialType in Condition-TrialType-Group ANOVA analyses.
Note: *p < .05 (post hoc Bonferroni test).
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Figure 6
Main effect of TrialType in Condition-TrialType-Group ANOVA analyses.
Note: *p < .05 (post hoc Bonferroni test).
Condition-TrialType-Group ANOVA analyses revealed no significant 3-way interaction effect of Condition × TrialType × Group, but revealed significant 2-way interaction effect of Condition Ø TrialType (F4, 464 = 4.610, p < .005) (see Figure 5), marginal significant 2-way interaction effect of Group Ø TrialType (F6, 232 = 1.977, p = .071), and significant main effects of Condition (F2, 232 = 24.680, p < .0001) and TrialType (F2, 232 = 55.514, p
< .0001) (see Figure 6). As hypothesized, there were significant Emotional Stroop effects in which the mean reaction time (mRT) was significantly longer for incongruent trials than that for congruent trials (see Figure 6). Furthermore, post-hoc analyses showed that there was significantly longer reaction time in NWHF than in PWSF condition only in the EI condition, indicating that the empathizing processes induced a greater conflict when the target stimuli was a happy face (see Figure 5).
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These results suggest that, after empathizing a negative emotional context, participants of professional controls were more likely to be emotionally interfered by a sad facial expression, whereas occupational therapists were more likely to be emotionally interfered by a happy facial expression.
Figure 7
Interaction effect of Context ǘ TrialType in Context-TrialType-Group ANOVA analysis
Note: *p < .05 (post hoc Bonferroni test).
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Figure 8
Interaction effect of TrialType × Group in the Empathy Induction condition
Note: *p < .05 (post hoc Bonferroni test).
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Figure 9 Interaction effect of Context × Group × TrialType inContext-TrialType-Group ANOVA analysis. Note: *p< .05 (post hocBonferronitest).
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The Context-TrialType-Group ANOVA analysis with data in Empathy Induction condition revealed significant 3-way interaction effect of Context × Group × TrialType (F6, 232 = 4.921, p < .0001), significant 2-way interaction effect of Context × TrialType (F2, 232 = 7.319, p < .005) and Group × TrialType (F6, 232 = 4.219, p < .005) , and main effect of TrialType (F2, 232 = 45.349, p < .0001) and marginal main effect of Context (F1,
116 = 3.659, p = .058). Results from Context Ø TrialType interaction analysis showed significant NWHF and PWSF Stroop effects both in medical and non-medical contexts.
In addition, the mRT for NWHF was significantly longer than for PWSF in medical context (p < .0001) but not in non-medical context (p = .393) (see Figure 7), which indicates that participants were more likely to be emotionally interfered by happy facial expression after empathizing a sad scenario in medical related contexts as compared to non-medical related contexts.
Based on the results of Group Ø TrialType analysis, what we found was very interesting that unlike other groups, occupational therapists was the only group showing significant shorter mRT for NWHF than PWSF (p< .001) (see Figure 8), suggesting that they are more likely to suppress the emotional interference from negative emotional contents after empathizing some negative emotional scenarios. Further, according to the result of Context × Group × TrialType interaction analysis, participants of occupational therapists showed significant NWHF stroop effect but no PWSF stroop effect in medical contexts (Figure 9 a). In contrast, both control groups (professionals and students) showed significant NWHF stroop effect in non-medical contexts (see Figure 9 b &d). These results suggest that occupational therapists seem to show stronger suppression for the emotional interference by negative emotion than by positive emotion under medical context. On the contrary, control groups had lager emotion
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36
interference when they saw sad pictures in non-medical context. Moreover, occupational therapists had significant higher NWHF interference effect than congruent effect in medical context (see Figure 9 a). This effect may even higher than other groups.
The result indicated that occupational therapists maintained or even increased their high level of empathy when they saw happy face expression in medical context despite repressing their empathetic emotion reaction when they saw sad face.
Figure 10
Differences of IRI scores between Groups.
Note: *p < .05 (post hoc Bonferroni test).
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Self-reported Questionnaires
There were no significant differences between four groups in terms of EQ: (F 3, 120 = 2.03, p = .113), whereas there was significant difference between four groups in terms of IRI (F 3, 120 = 4.162, p < .01) (see Figure 10). Post-hoc analyses revealed that the total score of occupational freshmen was significantly higher than scores of occupational therapists (p=.048) and professional controls (p <.01). However, there were no differences in the four IRI sub-items between groups (F 9, 348 = .651, p = .741).
These results suggested that EQ did not have enough sensitivity to detect the difference between the four groups. On the other hand, the result of IRI showed occupational students seemed to have higher level of empathy than the two professional groups in general. However, it still could not identify which aspect of empathy was lower in professional groups.
Correlation Analysis between Scores of Self-reported Questionnaires and the Emotional Stroop Effects (ICC)
The correlation analysis results demonstrated that there was no significant correlation between EQ and both two ICC index. This may due to lack of sensitivity of EQ. Besides, when turning to the correlation results of IRI and IRI sub scores and ICC index, there were marginal significant negative correlation between PWSF-ICC and IRI total score (Pearson correlation coefficient= -.311, p=.095),and PWSF-ICC and perspective-taking score (Pearson correlation coefficient= -.359, p=.052) in occupational therapists. These negative correlations did not approach in either PWSF-ICC of occupational therapists or in other groups. On the other hand, there was marginal significant positive correlation in PWSF-ICC and personal distress in control
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freshmen group (Pearson correlation coefficient= -.361, p=.050). All these results revealed that emotional interference effect seemed to be lower when occupational therapists presented more capacity of empathy in IRI self-reported questionnaire, and this phenomenon only existed within medical professional group. Further, PWSF-ICC had a positive relationship with personal distress in control freshmen. Those results may suggest PWSF-ICC, which may relate to personal distress, would be suppressed under sad context in occupational therapists. On the contrary, NWHF-ICC did not show these special relationships with IRI scores.
Figure 11
Differences of Subjective Empathy and Personal-distress Scores between Groups
Note: *p < .05 (post hoc Bonferroni test).
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The subjective empathy and distress level analysis showed the condition differences were significant in both subjective empathy (F1,116 = 147.53, p < .0001) and personal-distress scores (F 1,116 = 64.52, p < .0001) (see Figure 11). The empathy and distress levels in EI condition would be significantly higher than of CI condition. That implied manipulating different watching condition would indeed affect and interference the generation of empathy.
Finally, the arousal-valence AVOVA analysis showed that there were no differences in arousal level (F3, 92= 1.068, p = .367) and emotion valence (F3, 92= 2.427, p = .070) between conditions. This revealed that the observed Stroop effect difference we just mentioned about was due to the manipulation of different conditions, not to the different contextual pictures in the contexts.