How Interpersonal Motor Coordination Contributes to Empathic Accuracy: Disentangling Mechanisms in Empathizers and Targets

• Applicants: Dr. Antje Rauers; Professorin Dr. Michaela Riediger
• Subject Area: Developmental and Educational Psychology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 506643803

Empathic accuracy is the ability to read other people’s thoughts and feelings. Despite its significance for socio-emotional adjustment, the reasons for situational and age-related differences are not yet well understood. The proposed project aims to contribute a better understanding of the respective interpersonal mechanisms. Building on past research, we hypothesize that interpersonal motor coordination, that is, non-random alignment of interactants’ movements, fosters interpersonal understanding by supporting mutual motivational reinforcement between empathizer and target. We propose that empathizers who are motivated to understand another person’s thoughts and feelings tend to align their movements to those of this other person. We also predict that such motor following supports empathic accuracy through interpersonal dynamics that facilitate empathizers’ access to relevant information. For empathizers, we expect that motor following enhances their attentional focus and perspective seeking. For targets, we hypothesize that empathizers’ motor following evokes feelings of closeness and thus encourages expressiveness. We furthermore maintain that these processes help explain why previous research found adult-age differences in empathic accuracy for negative but not positive mental states, which may have motivational reasons. Two work packages are proposed to investigate these ideas. Work package 1 involves analyses of existing video recordings of interactions between unacquainted women to investigate the role of motor following for empathic accuracy, as well as the underlying mechanisms. The sample includes n = 102 younger and n = 106 older women who completed a dyadic interaction paradigm assessing empathic accuracy. Motor following will be operationalized using motion energy analysis, and the hypothesized mechanisms of empathic accuracy, using micro-behavioral and content coding of the interaction. Work package 2 involves an experimental manipulation of empathizers’ empathic motivation to test the assumptions (1) that high empathic motivation yields enhanced motor following, (2) that this supports motivational reinforcement between interlocutors, and (3) that motivational processes underly valence-dependent differences in older adults’ empathic accuracy. Participants will be N = 180 male and female older adults (70+ years) who will be scheduled as unacquainted same-sex dyads. Participants will be randomly assigned to either a group with experimentally increased empathic motivation, or a control group. Participants will complete a dyadic interaction paradigm to assess empathic accuracy, as well as various self-report and behavioral measures of empathic and expressive motivation. The project will advance the understanding of interpersonal mechanisms of empathic accuracy and of respective adult age-related differences.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Uwe Altmann