Emotional reactions to dramatic film stimuli: The influence of cognitive and emotional empathy.

The idea that empathy may best be considered a multidimensional construct, consisting of both cognitive and emotional facets, has recently been gaining in popularity. To date, however, little research explicitly based on such a view has been carried out. We conducted the present experiment to explore the different influences of cognitive and emotional empathy on two types of responses to dramatic stimuli: positive and negative emotional reactions. Consistent with a multidimensional view of empathy, the two types of empathy exhibited different effects; positive emotional reactions were affected primarily by cognitive empathy, and negative emotional reactions were most heavily influenced by emotional empathy. The results are discussed in terms of their relevance to a multidimensional approach to the study of empathic responding.