The empathy fillip: Can training in micro expressions of emotion enhance empathic accuracy?

The things I’m going to say in a list: Background Hypothesis Participants Method Results Results – A critical look Questions

What is METT

Training Micro-expressions – does it work? Hurley, C. (2012). Do you see what I see? Learning to detect micro expressions of emotion. Motivation & Emotion, 36, Looked at ability to identify micro expressions in 14-item pre and post test with 25mins training in between. 25 minutes of training. – METT + TRAINER was most effective, then METT, then other manipulations.

Empathy and the face 2 Hassenstab et al. (2007). Knowing what others know, feeling what others feel: A controlled study of empathy in psychotherapists. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 195, Compared psychotherapists and matched controls. There were no significant differences the Ekman faces test. There were differences on the Movie Assessing Social Cognition Psychotherapists show an “empathic advantage” not derived from their ability to read facial expressions. Rather this advantage comes from the ability to read between the lines of speech.

My hypothesis Traditional empathy training comes in books and practice. This training gives counsellors an empathic advantage, but not from facial expression recognition (Hassenstab, et al, 2007). Use training in facial expressions of emotion to increase counsellor empathic accuracy. Hypothesis: Psychotherapeutic professionals given a reading task will be less empathically accurate than those trained with METT.

Participants 60 psychotherapists ReadingeMETTp-value Sex Female: N (%)24 (40)25 (42)n.s. Male: N (%)6 (10)5 (8)n.s. Age44.6 (12.6)37.8 (11.5)0.03 Age Range Practice years7.42 (9.37)5.75 (6.27)n.s.

Empathic Accuracy Ickes, W. (Ed.). (1997). Empathic Accuracy. New York: Guilford Press Both partners where secretly filmed whilst waiting for the experimenter. Each partner views the footage separately and stops the video where they can remember their thoughts or emotions – they note this down. Partners then swap, re-watch the footage which is stopped for them at the point their partner made a note – they must write down what they think their partner was thinking/feeling at that point. Raters compare notes and assign marks for each “match” – the total of these match points is the empathic accuracy score.

My Empathic Accuracy Video. Start screen. Footage Stop Screen Footage Restart warning

Experimental procedure 1 Fill out consent form 2 Demographic, work, and Empathy questionnaires minutes reading OR 30 minutes eMETT 4 Empathic accuracy video 5 Debrief and questions

Results Intended sample = 60 GroupMean ScoreS.D. METT task (n=30) Reading task (n=30) Independent samples t-test, t(58)=2.05, p = 0.02, d = 0.55

Excellent, so we should all rush out and buy eMETT? Before you do, perhaps consider the following sentence: Outlier removal “depends on the situation and on the perspective defended by the researcher” Ley et al; (2013) Detecting outliers: Do not use standard deviation around the mean, use absolute deviation around the median.

3 Possible means of removing outliers 1. 3 standard deviations outside the mean: 2. Inter Quartile Range x standard deviations outside the mean? t-test, t(58)=2.05, p = 0.02, d = 0.55 t-test, t(57)=2.00, p = 0.03, d = 0.53 t-test, t(56)=1.53, p = 0.07; d = 0.41 not significant.

Questions?