top of page
Image by Photoholgic

Empathy &
similarity to self

Implications of empathy and similarity for a variety of outcomes, ranging from technology use to emotion recognition to prosocial behavior

Konrath, S. (2007). Self-expansion theory. In R. Baumeister & K. Vohs (Eds). Encyclopedia of Social Psychology, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Reference Tracking

Konrath, S., Bushman, B. & Campbell, W. K. (2006). Attenuating the link between threatened egotism and aggression. Psychological Science, 17, 995-1001

Konrath, S., O'Brien, E., & Hsing, C. (2011). Changes in dispositional empathy in American college students over time: A meta-analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 15, 180-198.

Konrath, S., Novin, S., & Li, T. (2012) Is the relationship between alexithymia and aggression context-dependent? Impact of group membership and belief similarity. Personality and Individual Differences, 53, 329-334

O’Brien, E., Konrath, S., Gruhn, D. & Hagen, A.L. (2013) Empathic concern and perspective taking: Linear and quadratic effects of age across the adult lifespan. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 68, 168-175. 

Konrath, S. & Grynberg, D. (2016) The positive (and negative) psychology of empathy. In Watt, D. & Panksepp, J. (Eds) The Neurobiology and Psychology of Empathy, Nova Science Publishers, Inc, Chapter 3, p. 63-107

Konrath, S. (2017). Warm coffee, sunny days, and prosocial behavior. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40.

Konrath, S. & Luminet, O. (2017, under revision) How induced self-focus versus other-focus affects emotional recognition and verbalization. Self and Identity.

Zarins, S. & Konrath, S. (2017) Changes over time in compassion-related variables in the United States. Seppälä, E., Simon-Thomas, E., Brown, S., Worline, M., Cameron, D., & Doty, J. (Ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science, Oxford University Press, New York, Chapter 25, p 331-352.

Chopik, W., O’Brien, E., & Konrath, S. (2017) Differences in Empathic Concern and Perspective Taking Across 63 Countries. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 48, 23-38.

Kang, Y., Cooper, N., Pandey, P., Scholz, C., O'Donnell, M. B., Lieberman, M. D., Taylor, S. E., Bach, R., Defever, A., Chopik, W., & Konrath, S. (2017) Geographic variation in empathy: A state-level analysis, Journal of Research of Personality, 68, 124-130.

Strecher, V. J., Dal Cin, S., Konrath, S., Polk, T., Resnicow, K., An, L., & Falk, E. B. (2018) Effects of Self-Transcendence and Affirmation Priming on Neural Responses to Health Messages and Behavior Change, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

Konrath, S. (2018) Empathy, narcissism, and visual arts engagement. Chapter in Designing for Empathy: Perspectives on the Museum Experience, Gokcigdem, E. (Ed). Rowman & Littlefield.

Oh, J., Chopik, W., Konrath, S., & Grimm, K. (2019) Longitudinal Changes in Empathy across the Lifespan in Six Samples of Human Development, Social Psychological and Personality Science. Tian, Y. & Konrath, S. (2019) The effects of similarity on charitable giving in donor-donor dyads: A systematic literature review. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations.

Kou, X., Konrath, S., & Goldstein, T. (2019) Arts engagement, prosocial traits, and prosocial behavior. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, & the Arts.

Tian, Y. & Konrath, S. (2019) Can Too Much Similarity to the Self Backfire? The Effects of Different Levels of Similarity on Charitable Donations. Current Psychology.

Konrath, S. (2019) Museums as weavers of the invisible strings that connect us. Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association.

Konrath, S., & Handy, F. (2021). The Good-looking Giver Effect: The Relationship Between Doing Good and Looking Good. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 50(2), 283-311.

Grynberg, D. & Konrath, S. (2020) The closer you feel, the more you care: Positive associations between closeness, affect and cognitive empathy for pain. Acta Psychologica. 

Konrath, S. & Kisida, B. (2020) Does arts engagement increase empathy and prosocial behavior? A review of the literature. In Bobick, B. & Hershey, L. (Eds.) Engagement in the city: How arts and culture encourage development in urban areas. Rowman & Littlefield Publishing.

Zhou, K., Aiello, L.M., Šćepanović, S., Quercia, D., & Konrath, S. (2021) The Language of Situational Empathy. Proceedings ACM Human Computer Interaction, 5, CSCW1, Article 13, https://doi.org/10.1145/3449087

Martingano, A.J., Konrath, S., & Herrera, F. (2021) Virtual reality improves emotional, but not cognitive, empathy: A meta-analysis. Technology, Mind, & Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000034

Konrath, S., Siddiqui, S., & Pervez, S. (2021) Muslim Education Reform: Prioritizing Empathy and Philanthropic Acts. Journal of Education in Muslim Societies. 

Martingano, A.J., Henritze, E., Brown, A., & Konrath, S. (under revision, 2021) The limited benefits of using virtual reality 360-videos to promote empathy and charitable giving.

Martingano, A.J. & Konrath, S. (2022) How cognitive and emotional empathy relate to rational thinking: Empirical evidence and meta-analysis. The Journal of Social Psychology, 162, 143-160.

Konrath, S. & Luminet, O. (2022) How induced self-focus versus other-focus affects emotional recognition and verbalization, Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science, 6, 27-50.

Martingano, A.J., Konrath, S., Okaomee, A., & Zarins, S. (2022) Empathy, narcissism, alexithymia, and social media use. Psychology of Popular Media, 11, 413-422.

Pettit, K., Messman A., Scott, N., Puskarich, M., Wang, H., Alanis, N., Dehon, E., Konrath, S., Welch, R. & Kline, J. (2022) Multi-Institutional Intervention to Improve Patient Perception of Empathy in Emergency Care. Emergency Medicine Journal, 39, 420-426.

bottom of page