Empathic disequilibrium: A new diagnostic and treatment tool

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's psychology researcher Prof. Florina Uzefovsky has developed a new concept she terms empathic disequilibrium, which she finds better explains social characteristics in a range of clinical conditions such as autism, schizophrenia and more.

Empathic disequilibrium is the imbalance between cognitive and emotional aspects of empathy. Cognitive empathy (CE) is the ability to understand the emotions of others, whereas emotional empathy (EE) is the tendency to resonate with and respond to the emotional experience of others with matching and appropriate emotions.

While the concepts of cognitive and emotional empathy are not new, Uzefovsky found that they failed to explain symptoms as effectively as an imbalance in the two did.

Prof. Uzefovsky has successfully applied empathic disequilibrium to aspects of autism, anxiety, psychopathic traits, and, most recently, to schizophrenia.

Her findings about schizophrenia were published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research at the beginning of December.

Her findings about autism have been published in the journals Molecular Autism, Autism Research, and Autism in Adulthood.

Empathic disequilibrium predicted schizophrenia better than empathy alone, she and her fellow researchers from Harvard and Yale Universities found.

"I invite and encourage my fellow researchers and practitioners to utilize empathic disequilibrium in their work as a powerful diagnostic and potential treatment tool," says Prof. Uzefovsky.

The most recent study was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 561/18).