Importance of empathy for social work practice: integrating new science.

Empathy is more important than ever to a national population worried about difficult political and socioeconomic situations. During the last 10 years, an enormous amount of research has been carried out to elucidate the nature, mechanism, and function of empathy. New research from social-cognitive neuroscience and related fields indicates that, like language or eye-hand coordination, empathy is an innate human capability that can be greatly enhanced by purposeful and informed guidance. Empathy is particularly important to social work practice. Clients experiencing empathy through treatment have improved outcomes. Empathic social work practitioners are more effective and can balance their roles better. Social work practitioners can and should learn about emerging research on empathy and use that information to better serve their client populations. This article, emphasizing research of the past decade, focuses on empathy and its benefits as an asset to social work practitioners.

[1]  Christine M. Fox,et al.  The development of the Children's Empathic Attitudes Questionnaire using classical and Rasch analyses , 2008 .

[2]  S. Freedberg.  Re-examining empathy: a relational-feminist point of view. , 2007, Social work.

[3]  C. Cliffordson.  Parents' Judgments and Students' Self-Judgments of Empathy: The Structure of Empathy and Agreement o , 2001 .

[4]  N. Eisenberg.  Emotion, regulation, and moral development. , 2000, Annual review of psychology.

[5]  David A. Lishner,et al.  “... As you Would have Them Do Unto You”: Does Imagining Yourself in the Other's Place Stimulate Moral Action? , 2003, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[6]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  Action recognition in the premotor cortex. , 1996, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[7]  G. Altoé,et al.  Determinants of adolescents' active defending and passive bystanding behavior in bullying. , 2008, Journal of adolescence.

[8]  J. Sommerville,et al.  Shared representations between self and other: a social cognitive neuroscience view , 2003, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[9]  J. Sommerville,et al.  Weaving the fabric of social interaction: Articulating developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience in the domain of motor cognition , 2006, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[10]  Nadim Joni Shah,et al.  Gender differences in brain networks supporting empathy , 2008, NeuroImage.

[11]  Claus Lamm,et al.  The Neural Substrate of Human Empathy: Effects of Perspective-taking and Cognitive Appraisal , 2007, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[12]  M. Iacoboni,et al.  The mirror neuron system and the consequences of its dysfunction , 2006, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[13]  James C. Raines.  Empathy in clinical social work , 1990 .

[14]  C. Rogers.  A Theory of Therapy , Personality , and Interpersonal Relationships , as Developed in the Client-centered Framework , 2010 .

[15]  C. Batson,et al.  Distress and empathy: two qualitatively distinct vicarious emotions with different motivational consequences. , 1987, Journal of personality.

[16]  M. Shane,et al.  The Developmental Trajectory from Amodal Perception to Empathy and Communication: The Role of Mirror Neurons in This Process , 2001 .

[17]  J. Decety,et al.  Human Empathy Through the Lens of Social Neuroscience , 2006, TheScientificWorldJournal.

[18]  J. Decety,et al.  The functional architecture of human empathy. , 2004, Behavioral and cognitive neuroscience reviews.

[19]  H. Kohut,et al.  Introspection, Empathy, and Psychoanalysis An Examination of the Relationship between Mode of Observation and Theory , 1959, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

[20]  M. Hoffman.  Toward a comprehensive empathy-based theory of prosocial moral development. , 2001 .

[21]  A. Loper,et al.  Personality features and characteristics of violent events committed by juvenile offenders. , 2001, Behavioral sciences & the law.

[22]  D. Farrington,et al.  Empathy and offending: a systematic review and meta-analysis , 2004 .

[23]  Mark H. Davis.  Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. , 1983 .

[24]  C. Rogers,et al.  The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. , 1957, Journal of consulting psychology.

[25]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  The mirror-neuron system. , 2004, Annual review of neuroscience.

[26]  S. Preston,et al.  Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases. , 2001, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[27]  W. Pithers.  Empathy Definition, Enhancement, and Relevance to the Treatment of Sexual Abusers , 1999 .

[28]  M. Iacoboni,et al.  Getting a grip on other minds: Mirror neurons, intention understanding, and cognitive empathy , 2006, Social Neuroscience.

[29]  N. Eisenberg,et al.  Empathy-Related Responding in Children , 2013 .

[30]  R. Silbereisen,et al.  Trajectories of delinquent behaviour in adolescence and their covariates: relations with initial and time-averaged factors. , 2003, Journal of adolescence.

[31]  S. Truscott,et al.  Empathy, Exposure to Community Violence, and Use of Violence Among Urban, At-Risk Adolescents , 2004 .

[32]  Carl R. Rogers,et al.  Empathic: An Unappreciated Way of Being , 1975 .

[33]  Brenda K. Bryant,et al.  An Index of Empathy for Children and Adolescents. , 1982 .

[34]  Jean Decety,et al.  Perspective Taking as the Royal Avenue to Empathy. , 2005 .

[35]  P. Jensen,et al.  What Is the Evidence for Evidence-Based Treatments? A Hard Look at Our Soft Underbelly , 2005, Mental health services research.

[36]  D. Forrester,et al.  Communication skills in child protection: how do social workers talk to parents? , 2007 .

[37]  V. Ramachandran,et al.  Mirror neurons and imitation learning as the driving force behind "the great leap forward" in human evolution , 2010 .

[38]  A. Lutz,et al.  Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice. , 2004, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[39]  A. Meltzoff,et al.  Empathy examined through the neural mechanisms involved in imagining how I feel versus how you feel pain , 2006, Neuropsychologia.

[40]  Jeffrey Weihing,et al.  Cognitions Associated With Attempts to Empathize: How Do We Imagine the Perspective of Another? , 2004, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[41]  Linda Vinton,et al.  An Evaluation of the Use of Videotape in Teaching Empathy , 1994 .