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Empathic concern refers to other-oriented emotions elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of someone in need.〔Batson, C.D. (1991). The altruism question: Toward a social-psychological answer. Hillsdale: Erlbaum Associates.〕〔Batson, C.D. (1987). Prosocial motivation: Is it ever truly altruistic? In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 20, pp. 65-122). New York: Academic Press.〕 These other-oriented emotions include feelings of tenderness, sympathy, compassion, soft-heartedness, and the like. Empathic concern is often and wrongly confused with empathy. To empathize is to respond to another's perceived emotional state by experiencing feeling of a similar sort. Empathic concern or sympathy not only include empathizing, but also entails having a positive regard or a non-fleeting concern for the other person.〔Chismar, D. (1988). Empathy and sympathy: the important difference. The Journal of Value Inquiry, 22, 257-266.〕 C. Daniel Batson is one chief pioneer of the term. His mature definition of the term is "''other-oriented emotion elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of someone in need''".〔Batson, C.D. (2011). ''Altruism in Humans'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 11.〕 Batson explains this definition in the following way. ::First, "congruent" here refers not to the specific content of the emotion but to the valence—positive when the perceived welfare of the other is positive, negative when the perceived welfare is negative. . . . Third, as defined, empathic concern is not a single, discrete emotion but includes a whole constellation. It includes feelings of sympathy, compassion, softheartedness, tenderness, sorrow, sadness, upset, distress, concern, and grief. Fourth, empathic concern is other-oriented in the sense that it involves feeling ''for'' the other—feeling sympathy for, compassion for, sorry for, distressed for, concerned for, and so on.〔Batson, C.D. (2011). ''Altruism in Humans'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 11.〕 Many writers other than Batson use different terms for this construct or very similar constructs. Especially popular—perhaps more popular than 'empathic concern'—are sympathy, compassion or pity.〔These are used by numerous philosophers and social scientists including Charles Darwin, Frans de Waal, Nancy Eisenberg, and Stephen Darwall, as documented in Batson's ''Altruism in Humans'', p. 12.〕 Other terms include the tender emotion and sympathetic distress.〔These latter two terms are due, respectively, to William McDougall and Martin Hoffmann. See Batson, C.D. (2011). ''Altruism in Humans'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 12.〕 Human beings are strongly motivated to be connected to others.〔Batson, C.D. (1990). How social an animal? The human capacity for caring. American Psychologist 45: 336-346.〕 In humans and higher mammals, an impulse to care for offspring is almost certainly genetically hard-wired, although modifiable by circumstance. ==Evolutionary origins== At the behavioral level it is evident from the descriptions of comparative psychologists and ethologists that behaviors homologous to empathic concern can be observed in other mammalian species. Notably, a variety of reports on ape empathic reactions suggest that, apart from emotional connectedness, apes have an explicit appreciation of the other's situation.〔De Waal, F.B.M. (1996). Good Natured: The origins of right and wrong in humans and other animals. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Harvard: Harvard University〕 A good example is consolation, defined as reassurance behavior by an uninvolved bystander towards one of the combatants in a previous aggressive incident.〔De Waal, F.B.M., & van Roosmalen, A. (1979). Reconciliation and consolation among chimpanzees. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 5, 55-66.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Empathic concern」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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