Empathy in sports, exercise, and the performing arts

Objectives: This review article provides a summary of the main findings from empirical studies that used empathy measurements in the domains of sports, exercise, and the performing arts (i.e., music, dance, and theatrical acting). Method & results: The use of body movement is considered a common denominator across performance domains. Embodied accounts of cognition claim that the capacity to understand an individual's cognitive and affective states depend on the observer's sensorimotor experience and seek to identify the factors influencing this process. To describe the bidirectional links between empathy and performance domains, we divided the empirical studies into two categories: those that investigated factors influencing or inducing empathy, and those that investigated possible influences of empathic tendencies on neurocognitive functions and performance. Therefore, the review includes sections on (1) effects on empathy, including (a) gender, (b) learning and performance, and (c) prosocial contexts; and (2) the effects of empathy on (a) the brain and physiology, (b) perception performance relations, and (c) prosocial behavior. This work has proven to be informative in unraveling the links between empathy and perceptual-motor processes across intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intergroup levels of analysis. Conclusions: The reported findings are examined in relation to embodied accounts of perceptual-motor performance. Issues related to interdisciplinary dialog, implications for research, and applied practice are also discussed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.