中文导读

维尔茨堡大学心理学家扩展共情测验：除痛苦外，新增喜悦与尴尬等日常情境的视频故事，并分开测量“同感”与“推断他人想法”。阅读时可留意 emotion、negative、positive、social、measure、theory、response、joy、shame、embarrass 等词，并区分“工具能测更广情绪”与“并非证明人人都以同样方式共情”。

正文

When a friend describes a happy holiday or a public mistake, listeners often feel a little of that joy or shame themselves. For years, many psychology experiments studied empathy mainly through pain, illness or loss. On November 5, 2026, the University of Würzburg reported that two new tools now measure how people share feelings and read others’ thoughts across a wider range of everyday stories.

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当朋友讲述愉快假期或当众出糗时，听的人往往也会跟着感到一点喜悦或羞愧。多年来，许多心理学实验主要借助疼痛、疾病或丧亲来研究共情。2026年11月5日，维尔茨堡大学通报两项新工具，可在更广泛的日常故事中，测量人们如何共享感受、推断他人想法。

Professor Anne Böckler-Raettig and doctoral researcher Eva Landmann expanded an earlier task called EmpaToM, first validated in 2015. The older version focused on negative scenes. Their new versions, EmpaToM-pos and EmpaToM-embarrass, keep the same basic idea: short video clips in which people tell real autobiographical stories. Listeners then rate their own feelings and answer questions that either require taking another person’s perspective or only check factual details. That design lets researchers separate affective empathy from cognitive perspective-taking, often called theory of mind.

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安妮·伯克勒-雷蒂希教授与博士研究生埃娃·兰德曼扩展了2015年首次通过验证的EmpaToM任务。旧版侧重负面情境。新版EmpaToM-pos与EmpaToM-embarrass保留同一基本思路：由真人讲述自传短故事的视频。听者随后评定自身感受，并回答需推断对方视角、或仅核对事实细节的题目。这一设计使研究者能把情感共情与常称心智理论的认知视角采择分开测量。

The videos cover four emotional contexts. Neutral clips describe routines, hobbies or work. Negative clips cover distressing events. Positive clips include success, family joy or social connection. Embarrassing clips show public mishaps. In validation studies with more than 170 participants in total, people felt happier after positive videos and specifically embarrassed after awkward ones. Empathy for joy correlated strongly with empathy for pain, which suggests that the tendency to feel with others may be a fairly stable individual trait across emotional states.

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视频覆盖四种情绪情境。中性片段描述日常、爱好或工作；负面片段涉及痛苦事件；正面片段包括成功、家庭喜悦或社会联结；尴尬片段则是当众失误。在合计超过170名参与者的验证研究中，人看完正面视频后更快乐，看尴尬内容后会感到具体的尴尬。对喜悦的共情与对痛苦的共情高度相关，提示“与他人同感”的倾向在不同情绪状态下可能相当稳定。

Cognitive perspective-taking, however, moved largely on its own. Understanding what someone is thinking did not rise and fall with how strongly a listener shared the speaker’s emotion. Willingness to help also differed by context. Positive and embarrassing stories raised helping more than neutral ones, yet negative stories still produced the strongest response. Landmann said people may help after good news to protect their own sense of well-being, while an embarrassed speaker signals respect for social norms and invites support.

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然而，认知视角采择大体独立变化。听者是否强烈共享讲述者的情绪，并不决定其能否理解对方在想什么。助人意愿也因情境而异：正面与尴尬故事比中性内容更能提高助人，但负面故事仍引发最强反应。兰德曼说，好事之后人们可能为了维持自身良好感受而伸出援手；尴尬的讲述者则表明其承认社会规范，从而更容易获得支持。

The team argues that the wider tools have greater ecological validity because real social life mixes bright and awkward moments, not only suffering. For clinical psychology, the instruments may later reveal selective deficits, such as sharing another person’s pain while struggling to share joy. The studies validate measurement tools rather than prove that every patient or culture empathizes the same way. Still, they show why empathy research that stops at sadness may miss how people connect when others succeed—or when they feel deeply embarrassed.

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研究团队认为，更宽的工具具有更高生态效度，因为真实社交既有明亮时刻也有尴尬时刻，不只是苦难。对临床心理学而言，这些工具日后或许能揭示选择性缺陷，例如能共享他人痛苦，却难以共享喜悦。这些研究验证的是测量工具，并不能证明每位患者或每种文化都以同样方式共情。不过它们说明：若共情研究止步于悲伤，可能错过人们在他人成功——或深感尴尬——时如何彼此联结。

新闻来源

• University of Würzburg · The Good, the Bad and the Cringy Moments (5 Nov 2026)
• phys.org · New tests expand empathy measurement to joyful stories and embarrassing mishaps (5 Nov 2026)
• Behavior Research Methods · The good, the bad, and the cringy (DOI 10.3758/s13428-026-03202-x)

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