• Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.55-65
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• 2022

Although humans exist as Homo Empathicus, human society is actually constantly divided and conflicted between groups. The human empathy response is very sensitive to the justice of others, and depending on the level of others' justice, they may feel empathy or schadenfreude to the suffering of them. However, our empathy to others' suffering are not always fair, and have inherent limitations of ingroup-biased empathy. Depending on whether the suffering other persons belongs to an ingroup or an outgroup, we may feel biased empathy or biased schadenfreude to them without even realizing it. Recent advances in information and communication technology facilitate biased access to ingroup-related SNS or ingroup media, thereby deepening the establishment of a more biased semantic information network related groups. These processes, through interacting with the inherent limitation of empathy, can form a vicious cycle of more biased ingroup empathy and ingroup-related activities, and accelerate divisions and conflicts. This research investigated the properties and limitations of empathy by reviewing studies on the neural mechanism of empathy. By examining the relationship between empathy and justice from a neuroscientific point of view, this research tried to illuminate the modern society of division and conflict in a different dimension from the classical perspective of social science.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.35-46
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• 2015

Prior research suggested that people generally show stronger intentions to help in-group members because people experience higher levels of empathy for those who are similar to themselves. The present research demonstrated that one's levels of cosmopolitanism would moderate the mediating role of empathy on the relationship between cultural similarities and helping intentions. In particular, it was examined how the mediator (empathy) affected the relation between cultural similarity and helping intention for participants with low to high levels of cosmopolitanism. Results indicated that participants with lower levels of cosmopolitanism showed stronger empathy as targets are more culturally similar to participants' own culture. Participants with higher levels of cosmopolitanism, however, reported the same levels of empathy regardless of targets' cultural similarity. The implications and limitations of the results were discussed.