Exploring the role of mental state inference and empathy in the healthcare setting
Healthcare professionals are constantly grappling with their own personal emotions regarding suffering, pain, and death, while simultaneously striving to provide the best possible care to their patients. Are negative consequences inevitable when showing empathy towards patients? What are the implications of inferring mental states and empathy in the medical context? Previous research presents conflicting evidence.
While some studies have demonstrated that empathy has a positive impact on healthcare professionals, enabling them to be more effective, provide better care, and experience greater well-being and less distress, other studies suggest that healthcare professionals reduce their empathy and inference of mental states in patients to regulate their personal emotions regarding suffering, death, and pain, as well as to improve their performance.
The overall aim of this research is to explore the role of inferring mental states and empathy in the medical context using a multi-method approach, in order to clarify their effects on healthcare professionals. Specifically, this research integrates laboratory studies with research in healthcare settings. To this end, we combined different techniques that allowed us to address the proposed hypotheses: electrophysiological measurements, electromyography activity, and self-report questionnaires.
The general hypothesis is that inferring mental states will generate different consequences for the well-being and performance of professionals, depending on the type of task they must complete and the level of empathy they demonstrate. In addition to theoretical contributions, this line of research aims to help design more efficient empathy-based intervention programs designed to minimize the potential negative consequences of healthcare activities.
Date:
February 15, 2026
Category:
