Abstract
Empathy plays a vital role in emotional and social functioning. Research suggests that empathy may be disrupted in disorders of negative emotion (e.g., depression, anxiety), though less work has examined how empathy is impacted in disorders of positive emotion (e.g., mania), which are associated with positive biases in emotion experience and perception. The present research explored how variation in self-reported hypomania risk was associated with performance on an objective empathic accuracy task with real-world targets. Risk for hypomania was associated with heightened moment-by-moment detection of emotional up-shifts (i.e., increases in positive emotion) for targets describing positive events; however, it was also associated with overly-positive retrospective ratings (i.e., overestimating global positive emotion) for targets describing negative events. These findings suggest that hypomania risk may lead to positive biases in detecting others’ emotion across both positive and negative life events when using both micro-level continuous and global retrospective emotion measures.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alloy, L. B., Bender, R. E., Whitehouse, W. G., Wagner, C. A., Liu, R. T., Grant, D. A., & Abramson, L. Y. (2012). High Behavioral Approach System (BAS) sensitivity, reward responsiveness, and goal-striving predict first onset of bipolar spectrum disorders: A prospective behavioral high-risk design. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 121(2), 339.
Altman, E., Hedeker, D., Peterson, J. L., & Davis, J. M. (1997). The Altman self-rating mania scale. Biological Psychiatry, 42, 948–955.
Beck, A. T., & Beck, R. W. (1972). Screening depressed patients in a family practice: A rapid technique. Postgraduate Medicine, 52, 81–85.
Cusi, A., MacQueen, G. M., & McKinnon, M. C. (2010). Altered self-report of empathic responding in patients with bipolar disorder. Psychiatry Research, 178, 354–358.
Dutra, S. J., West, T. V., Impett, E. A., Oveis, C., Kogan, A., Keltner, D., & Gruber, J. (2014). Rose-colored glasses gone too far? Mania symptoms predict biased emotion experience and perception in couples. Motivation and Emotion, 38, 157–165.
Eckblad, M., & Chapman, L. J. (1986). Development and validation of a scale for hypomanic personality. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95, 214–222.
Eisner, L. R., Johnson, S. L., & Carver, C. S. (2008). Cognitive responses to failure and success relate uniquely to bipolar depression versus mania. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 117, 154–163.
Giovanelli, A., Hoerger, M., Johnson, S. L., & Gruber, J. (2013). Impulsive responses to positive mood and reward are related to mania risk. Cognition and Emotion, 27(6), 1091–1104.
Gruber, J. (2011). When feeling good can be bad: Positive emotion persistence (PEP) in bipolar disorder. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(4), 217–221.
Gruber, J., Johnson, S. L., Oveis, C., & Keltner, D. (2008). Risk for mania and positive emotional responding: Too much of a good thing? Emotion, 8, 23–33.
Gruber, J., Mauss, I. B., & Tamir, M. (2011). A dark side of happiness? How, when, and why happiness is not always good. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 222–233.
Johnson, S. L. (2005). Mania and dysregulation in goal pursuit: A review. Clinical Psychology Review, 25(2), 241–262.
Johnson, S. L., Winett, C. A., Meyer, B., Greenhouse, W. J., & Miller, I. (1999). Social support and the course of bipolar disorder. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 108(4), 558–566.
Jones, S., Shams, M., & Liversidge, T. (2007). Approach goals, behavioural activation and risk of hypomania. Personality and Individual Differences, 43(6), 1366–1375.
Kerr, N., Dunbar, R. I. M., & Bentall, R. P. (2003). Theory of mind deficits in bipolar affective disorder. Journal of Affective Disorders, 73(3), 253–259.
Klein, D. N., Lewinsohn, P. M., & Seeley, J. R. (1996). Hypomanic personality traits in a community sample of adolescents. Journal of Affective Disorders, 38, 135–143.
Kwapil, T. R., Miller, M. B., Zinser, M. C., Chapman, L. J., Chapman, J., & Eckblad, M. (2000). A longitudinal study of high scorers on the Hypomanic Personality Scale. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 109, 222–226.
Lee, J., Zaki, J., Harvey, P. O., Ochsner, K., & Green, M. F. (2011). Schizophrenia patients are impaired in empathic accuracy. Psychological Medicine, 41(11), 2297–2304.
Lembke, A., & Ketter, T. A. (2002). Impaired recognition of facial emotion in mania. American Journal of Psychiatry, 159, 302–304.
Mansell, W., & Lam, D. (2006). “I won’t do what you tell me!”: Elevated mood and the assessment of advice-taking in euthymic bipolar I disorder. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44, 1787–1801.
Miklowitz, D. J., & Johnson, S. L. (2006). The psychopathology and treatment of bipolar disorder. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 2, 1–37.
Montag, C., Ehrlich, A., Neuhaus, K., Dziobek, I., Heekeren, H. R., Heinz, A., & Gallinat, J. (2010). Theory of mind impairments in euthymic bipolar patients. Journal of Affective Disorders, 123(1–3), 264–269.
Piff, P., Purcell, A. L., Gruber, J., Hertenstein, M., & Keltner, D. (2012). Contact high: Mania proneness and positive perception of emotional touches. Cognition and Emotion, 1, 1–8.
Romans, S. I., & McPherson, H. M. (1992). The social networks of bipolar affective disorder patients. Journal of Affective Disorders, 25, 221–228.
Samamé, C., Martino, D. J., & Stejilevich, S. A. (2012). Social cognition in euthymic bipolar disorder: systematic review and meta-analytic approach. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 125, 266–280.
Stange, J. P., Shapero, B. G., Jager-Hyman, S., Grant, D. A., Abramson, L. Y., & Alloy, L. B. (2013). Behavioral approach system (BAS)-relevant cognitive styles in individuals with high versus moderate bas sensitivity: A behavioral high-risk design. Cognitive therapy and research, 37(1), 139–149.
Thomas, J., & Bentall, R. P. (2002). Hypomanic traits and response styles to depression. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 41(3), 309–313.
Wright, S. L., Langenecker, S. A., Deldin, P. J., Rapport, L. J., Nielson, K. A., Kade, B. A., & Zubieta, J.-K. (2009). Gender-specific disruptions in emotion processing in younger adults with depression. Depression and Anxiety, 26, 182–189.
Zaki, J., Bolger, N., & Ochsner, K. (2008). It takes two: The interpersonal nature of empathic accuracy. Psychological Science, 19(4), 399–404.
Zaki, J., Bolger, N., & Ochsner, K. (2009). Unpacking the informational bases of empathic accuracy. Emotion, 9(4), 478–487.
Zaki, J., & Ochsner, K. (2009). The need for a cognitive neuroscience of naturalistic social cognition. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1167(1), 16–30.
Zaki, J., & Ochsner, K. (2012). The neuroscience of empathy: Progress, pitfalls, and promise. Nature Neuroscience, 15(5), 675–680.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest
Hillary Devlin, Jamil Zaki, Desmond Ong, & June Gruber declare that they each have no conflict of interest.
Informed Consent
All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (national and by the Yale University institutional review board). Informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to the study.
Animal Rights
No animal studies were carried out by the authors for this paper.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Devlin, H.C., Zaki, J., Ong, D.C. et al. Tracking the Emotional Highs but Missing the Lows: Hypomania Risk is Associated With Positively Biased Empathic Inference. Cogn Ther Res 40, 72–79 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-015-9720-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-015-9720-6