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Author reply: Empathy and Self-Recognition in Phylogenetic and Ontogenetic Perspective: Author
Response to Commentaries of Krtner and Keller and Klann-Delius
Doris Bischof-Khler
Emotion Review 2012 4: 53
DOI: 10.1177/1754073911421393
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421393

EMR

Author Reply

Empathy and Self-Recognition in Phylogenetic

and Ontogenetic Perspective: Author Response
to Commentaries of Krtner and Keller
and Klann-Delius

Emotion Review
Vol. 4, No. 1 (January 2012) 5354
The Author(s) 2012
ISSN 1754-0739
DOI: 10.1177/1754073911421393
er.sagepub.com

Doris Bischof-Khler

Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich, Germany

bear by manipulating it interactively. When the teddy bear

breaks, the playmate stops and demonstrates sorrow, which is
supposed to cause emotional contagion in the child.
Selfother distinction, as documented by mirror self-recognition (MSR),
Consequently, the child is considered to integrate his own sorallows for empathy which offers a motivational base for helping a person
row with the expressed behavior of the playmate and her
in need. Krtner and Keller propose a different, culture-related, possibility
teddy-bear-related behavior, and to thereby understand the
of helping based on shared intentional relations and emotional contagion
situation, which then leads to helping.
which could explain helping behavior in Indian children not yet capable
Here a limitation of the teddy bear setting has to be considof MSR. Due to the experimental setting, however, other releasers of
childrens sadness and helping behavior have to be considered. An
ered: The childs sorrow is not necessarily caused by emotional
alternative setting is proposed. With respect to MSR, the question of false
contagion. Children can become sad because an interesting
negatives is discussed. The issues mentioned by Klann-Delius address
acitivity has been interrupted or simply because the teddy bear
fundamental theoretical questions that cannot be answered briefly.
is broken. When they subsequently offer it to the playmate, or to
their mother, or try to repair it themselves, they could be doing
Keywords
so just because they want the play to go on. Therefore, it remains
empathy, prosocial behavior, self-recognition, selfother distinction,
an open question whether their helping motivation can truly
synchronic identification
be called prosocial in the sense of being centered upon the
other, particularly when children are not yet capable of self
Krtner and Keller (2012) advance an interesting culture- other distinction. In order to rule out this ambiguity, we
specific pathway to prosocial behavior in Indian children who designed the spoon experiment which is better qualified to disdemonstrated helping behavior even though they were not yet tinguish self- from other-centered interventions because both
capable of mirror self-recognition. Consequently, their helping participants are involved in separate activities to begin with. A
cannot yet be considered to be empathic concern because replication of the Krtner and Keller study with a more unequivempathy presupposes selfother distinction as indicated in ocal design would be highly interesting.
A further question addresses the possibility of false negamirror self-recognition. Krtner and Keller reference a
theoretical approach by Barresi and Moore (1996) which tives in mirror self-recognition. In order to identify the spot, the
postulates three developmental stages of understanding inten- child has to realize that something is wrong with his appeartionality: Although children in their first year are not yet able ance. To do so, he has to compare his mirror image with a
to attribute mental states to others, they do demonstrate a human face schema, representing what people usually look
sensitivity for intentional actions. By observing the external like, that he has developed earlier and that allows him to recrealization of intentions in a persons overt activities and ognize himself as soon as he is capable of synchronic identifitarget orientation, children may become interested in the same cation. Considering that grown ups often carry a bindi, would it
target and join in the persons activity, thereby sharing their not logically follow that the human face schema of many or
intentionwhich is considered a first understanding of most Indian children may include a dot? In this case, children
intentions. The teddy bear experiment applied by Krtner and would not see any problem with a spot on their faces and would
Keller (referred to in Krtner & Keller, 2012) fits these condi- just ignore it. Therefore, the usual mirror test might not be the
tions well: Child and playmate are both centered on the teddy most appropriate self-recognition test for use in India.

Abstract

Corresponding author: Doris Bischof-Khler, Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich, Leopoldstr. 13, D-80806 Munich, Germany.
Email: doris@bischof.com

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54 Emotion Review Vol. 4 No. 1

Krtner, Keller, and Chaudhary (2010) consider emotional

contagion the only possible releaser of empathy. A second possibility outlined in my paper is synchronic identification. It allows
for empathy in situations in which the input conveyed by the
emotional expression is either weak or lacking entirely. By identification an (at first uninvolved) observer comes to emotionally
experience the situation of another person as if it were his own
situation, and thereby understands the other persons mental state.
Klann-Delius gives a precise outline of my empathy
explanation. However, I am a little concerned by her remark
concerning the childs ability for (not yet conscious) mental
imagination (2012, p. 51). What could mental imagination
mean if it is not conscious? This and other questions and objections in her commentary lead me to believe there is a significant
misunderstanding at hand. Why is an emotion transfer considered necessary in the case of identification, and what reasons are there to think that the child has to inhibit his own
affective state in order to empathize? I do not consider either of
them to be necessary, and to answer further questions, would
imply a thorough reexamination of fundamental conceptualizations, in particular with respect to explaining emotions. This
would include such questions as how and why emotions evolved,
how they develop in ontogenesis, how they are experienced
phenomenologically, how their intentional component serves
to initiate action and problem solving, and what role, if any,
bodily feelings play in this context.
Because, at this point, our theoretical frameworks appear to
be so discordant, clarification of the issue is not possible within

the length limitations of this text. Although it would be intriguing to elaborate on all these topics, I will refrain from simply
adding a few remarks that, due to their brevity, would scarcely
suffice to clarify the issue. The same holds true with the relationship of epigenetics to maturation and socialization as suggested by Klann-Delius (2012). It is an interesting idea, but
again, the problem of disentangling the environmental effects
that were formerly confounded in the notion of nurture, and
now under the label of epigenetics, would go far beyond the
scope of this response (for detailed information, see Bischof,
2009; Bischof-Khler, 2011).

References
Barresi, J., & Moore, C. (1996). Intentional relations and social understanding. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 19, 107154.
Bischof, N. (2009). Psychologie. Ein Grundkurs fr Anspruchsvolle (2nd
ed.). Stuttgart, Germany: Kohlhammer.
Bischof-Khler, D. (2011). Soziale Entwicklung in Kindheit und
Jugend. Bindung, Empathie, Theorie of Mind. Stuttgart, Germany:
Kohlhammer.
Krtner, J., & Keller, H. (2012). Culture-specific developmental
pathways to prosocial behavior: A comment on Bischof-Khlers
universalist perspective. Emotion Review, 4, 4950.
Krtner, J., Keller, H., & Chaudhary, N. (2010). Cognitive and social
influences on early prosocial behavior in two sociocultural contexts.
Developmental Psychology, 46, 905914.
Klann-Delius, G. (2012). Empathy and self-recognition in phylogenetic
and ontogenetic perspective: Commentary on Bischof-Khler. Emotion
Review, 4, 5152.

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