• 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.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.144-154
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• 2018

While depressives tend to be preoccupied with their own grief and the negative aspects, they might lack the capacity to interact with outside world. With the intention to determine whether depressives might have certain characteristics regarding empathic behavior, as behavior is highly based on responsiveness to others, we examined the relationship between emotional empathy and depression. In addition, we examined the mediating effect of self-criticism on the relationship between emotional empathy and depression. Data was collected from 146 online university students and analyzed using the correlation and multiple regression model. Results showed that perspective taking, which is the cognitive aspect of empathy, was negatively correlated with depression. Concerning the emotional aspects of empathy, both empathic responding and empathic concern were negatively correlated with depression, while personal distress was positively correlated with depression. Regression results, which set the empathy related variables as predicting variables, found perspective taking decreased depression, and personal distress enhanced depression. In addition, personal distress showed significant enhancing effect on depression and was completely mediated by self-criticism. With the result, implications and limitations of this study were discussed.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.133-156
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• 2017

This paper explores a theoretical framework, in which compassion arising from others' suffering among organizational members can be connected to EV to CSR activities via POI. We argue that compassion may generate positive identity related to being a member of a particular organization (i.e., POI), which increases to EV to CSR, ultimately leading to the enhancement of the corporate reputation. In return, an enhanced reputation for the corporation results in an increase of employees' perceived organizational identity via increase of CEI. Employees with high POI are more likely to carry out compassion and share it with others within an organization. In short, the positive circulation between compassion and EV to CSR as shown in Figure 2 demonstrates not only the ways in which compassion among organizational members can evoke EV to CSR through POI, but also how EV to CSR can facilitate compassion within an organization in terms of enhanced corporate reputation.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.97-123
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• 2015

This paper theoretically examines the mediations of media on disaster and the structure of the politics of compassion, from the cultural politics approaches. The media has treated for a long time many different forms of disaster and sentimental reactions that were bound to the human life. In the present paper we shall take a different approach from traditional ones that focus on how the media represents these subjects and how it arouses cognitive, affective, behavioral reactions of the audience. We will instead focus on how these subjects of disaster and compassion constitute new social meanings through the mediation of media. And we will investigate that the experiences of social sufferings mediated by media are related to the ethical potentiality vital to the construction of global public sphere and global civil society that need to be reshaped in the $21^{st}$ century media environment. This paper attempts to understand new cultural-politics meanings of the media as a major factor conducting the audience's new public actions through mediating sufferings of the others.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.9
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• pp.342-350
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• 2015

This study was done to explore the meaning and nature of life world on female college students with atopic dermatitis. The hermeneutic phenomenological method which was developed by Van Manen was used. Methods: The data were collected in two months through individual in-depth interviews using open-ended questions. A total of nine women with atopic dermatitis participated in the study. Results: Essential themes that fit into the context of the four existential grounds of body, other people, space and time were: rage against the body, the conflict with symptoms, unacceptable life, continued efforts. Conclusion: This study provides deep understanding of female students with atopic dermatitis who are relatively alienated from society. Based on the results of the study, health professionals could develop effective nursing interventions to improve quality of life of these women.

• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.123
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• pp.281-307
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• 2012

In the modern society, we have come to recognize human emotions such as anxiety, fear, pain, anger, sadness, longing, desire and pleasure as important topics of philosophy. How shall we study the 'problem of emotions', or in a bigger sense, the 'problem of empathy'? With this critical mind, the research into empathy can be called as a starting point for studying the deepest feelings and thoughts of human beings in connection with the feelings of other people. Most of all, in order to understand other people and to understand human being itself, the role of sympathy or empathy has been emphasized among the problems of emotions, and this trend is especially distinctive in the philosophy of psychology. I definitely acknowledge that empathy or sympathy takes loneliness and agony away from a human being and therefore it is the starting point of communication between people. However, the very fundamental question of 'what are human beings, and who are they?' is once again reminded. In other words, this thesis focuses on the fact that humans are viewed not only as the existence with a soul or heart, but also as a "unique existence" containing something "material-, life- and spiritual", and in that sense, this world is an ecological organism that contains organic connections of humans, material things, plants and animals, which should be the point of view for approach. And it is also emphasized in this study to approach the question about human beings from the religious spirituality point of view that the society with true love for neighbors could be achieved through religious practices that provide principles and value.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.38
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• pp.29-63
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• 2015

This paper attempts to re-read Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire from a non-Aristotelian perspective, particularly focusing on the audience performativity. In Chapter 6 of the Poetics, Aristotle says that tragedy has a final purpose or end (telos) and that is to inspire a catharsis (literally "purification") of pity and fear by means of representation and to give pleasure from experiencing their relief. However, a dramatic theoretician Augusto Boal argues that Aristotelian catharsis is not to get rid of pity and fear through their vehement discharge; rather, the basic function of catharsis is the purging of antisocial elements from the social body and the restoration of order because catharsis occurs when the spectator, terrified by the spectacle of the catastrophe, is purified of his "hamartia" which looks similar to the tragic flaw of the hero in the play. Thus, Boal asserts that Aristotle's coercive system of tragedy manipulates the emotions of the passive spectator. By contrast, in non-Aristotelian aesthetics, tragedy functions not as legitimation for a particular political configuration but as the performance of ethical acts-through which all the participants, including not only the actors but also the audience, communicate more actively about practical problems and actively work in order to make sense of themselves, others, and society. Here, the audience is required to restore and reinforce his/her capacity to think and to act; thus, an unquestioning, passive, indifferent attitude is not allowed. In these contexts, this paper explores how Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire involves the audience in the responsibility for what occurs on the stage, in order to urge the audience's ethical judgements and responsible acts. This paper argues that what this play asks of us is not catharsis, the purging of pity and fear, but empathy toward the other's pain, beyond pity and fear, to carry out our responsibility of sharing in and caring for the other's suffering. That is to say that it will be an ethical way to "re-member" Blanche DuBoi-the iconic Williams victim "dis-membered" by traumatic memories and open wounds and is thus unable to complete her grieving and mourning-as one of us, not as the other. It will be the only way to remember right regarding her tragedy.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.332-343
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• 2017

This study examined the impact of interaction between dispositional empathic concern (DEC) and message framing on effects of the international aid campaign. DEC refers to a trait with which people tend to sympathize with and be concerned about others in need. Message framing is differentiated by positive or negative type. The results supported the prediction that the interaction between DEC and framing would have an effect on responses to messages advocating international relief activities. The overall findings show that the interaction was mainly the result of positive framing eliciting more favorable responses (behavioral intention and perceived relationship closeness) from higher DEC individuals than lower ones. The interaction effect on behavioral interaction was mediated by perceived relationship closeness.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.53-59
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• 2024

The novel "The Grapes of Wrath" shows the painful reality of Americans during the Great Depression through the migration journey of the Tom Jod's family, who had no choice but to move from Oklahoma to California and their hardships in California. This presents empathy for their wrath and offers hope for a brotherly solution. This article presents institutional solutions against each novel situation from the perspective of the Constitution, labor law, and competition law. From a constitutional perspective, the poverty of Oklahoma's smallholders is not a result of choice, but is caused by the natural environment and capital concentration, so it is suggested that the government have to intervene to guarantee a minimum standard of living to realize equal rights. From a labor law perspective, worker supply projects are unconstitutional because they constitute intermediate exploitation of labor, and immigrants like the Joad family have the right to form labor unions. From a competition law perspective, it was shown that the large landowners' setting of fruit prices constitutes predatory pricing, and the farmers' attempts to pay similarly low wages constitute collusion. Through this, the attempt was made to recognize that the law is a means to resolve the public wrath that may currently exist, and to show that the story in the novel can bring empathy and understanding to minorities. It is hoped that reading novels can be a way to help interpret the law and sympathize with others as an indicator of a just society.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.12
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• pp.205-217
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• 2016

The objective of this study was to understand the fundamental aspects of the laughter therapy using the Van Manen's hermeneutic phenomenological method. Participants of this study included twelve elderly people-four men and eight women-who agreed to participate in this study underwent laughter therapy at a senior citizen's center. Data were collected through focus interviews, a literary work, and a work of art. The essential themes of this study are a healthy life (restoration of health, refreshed feeling), a happy life (stress relief, put idle thoughts out of one's mind, vitality in daily routine, double pleasure through laughter, re-juvenescence with reminiscence), and a wishful life (became optimistic while leaving behind suffering, look forward to things). Healthy life was defined as experiencing the basic motive power of life, happy life was defined as experiencing delightfulness through relationships with others and empathy, and wishful life was defined as experiencing an affirmative life integration through overcoming suffering from losses. In conclusion, laughter therapy showed to improve health, personal relations and life integration for elderly people. Therefore, utilization of laughter therapy will help to improve independence and self-esteem in elderly people.