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Empathic Accuracy: Empirical Overview and Clinical Applications

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The Neural Basis of Mentalizing

Abstract

Perspective-taking, understanding, empathy, knowing the other, and mentalizing are core processes within human communication. Decades of clinical and social psychological research point to the cardinal role of having some accurate awareness of the inner feelings, thoughts, ideas, and intentions of the other people in our lives. The current chapter provides a review of research on empathic accuracy: the degree of accuracy we achieve in understanding the thoughts and feelings of the people we are interacting with. We will take a closer look on the fundamental processes of empathic accuracy and to its important role in close relationships and clinical settings.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Céline Hinnekens, Liesbet Berlamont & Lesley Verhofstadt

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, USA

    William Ickes

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  1. Céline Hinnekens
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  2. William Ickes
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  3. Liesbet Berlamont
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  4. Lesley Verhofstadt
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Correspondence to Céline Hinnekens .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel

    Michael Gilead

  2. Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Kevin N. Ochsner

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Hinnekens, C., Ickes, W., Berlamont, L., Verhofstadt, L. (2021). Empathic Accuracy: Empirical Overview and Clinical Applications. In: Gilead, M., Ochsner, K.N. (eds) The Neural Basis of Mentalizing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51890-5_8

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