Exploring the Role of Emodiversity in Preserving Empathy and Well-being in the Face of Stress

Cheung Elaine O, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. This postdoctoral fellowship award supports a rising scholar who is investigating a novel approach to addressing the problems of empathy decline and burnout in medicine. Stress disrupts the capacity for empathy, and can have adverse consequences for physical and psychological health. Certain fields, such as medicine, are characterized by both high levels of stress and the necessity for empathy. Empathy has been found to decrease over the course of medical training, as stress, burnout and depression increase. Most psychological interventions for people coping with life stress (e.g., medical students, people coping with the stress of a chronic illness, people coping with bereavement) have focused on teaching skills for reducing stress and negative emotion, or on increasing positive emotion. However, attempts at emotional improvement can backfire, and can paradoxically increase levels of stress and emotional distress. Rather than trying to control or improve emotion when confronted with stress, the current project explores whether cultivating a diverse emotional repertoire, termed emodiversity, in which the individual accepts and experiences a wide variety of emotions, both positive and negative (e.g., fear, anger, sadness, joy, contentment), may promote a more balanced and flexible approach to coping with stress. Specifically, the current project examines the protective role of emodiversity in medical training, and explores whether an intervention aimed at increasing emodiversity (LAVENDER: Leveraging Affect and Valuing Empathy for Nurturing Doctors' Emotional Resilience) may help to protect against empathy decline and burnout in medical training. Stress narrows attention and erodes the capacity for empathy. Over time, stress can lead to burnout and can negatively impact physical and psychological health. Most psychological interventions for people coping with serious life stress have focused on either reducing stress and negative emotion, and/or increasing positive emotion. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that attempts at emotional improvement (striving to reduce negative emotion and enhance positive emotion) can backfire and can paradoxically increase levels of stress and emotional distress. Rather than emphasizing emotional improvement, the current project seeks to leverage recent developments in affective science to investigate whether cultivating greater emotional diversity, termed emodiversity, may promote a more balanced and flexible approach to coping with stress. Emodiversity has been associated with superior physical and psychological well-being, over and above the effects of mean levels of positive and negative emotion. Emodiversity has been theorized to promote well-being by preventing specific emotions (e.g., anxiety, sadness) from dominating the emotional ecosystem. The present investigation will explore whether emodiversity may similarly serve to protect against empathy decline and burnout in the face of stress by allowing individuals to experience and empathize with others' emotions, even amidst high levels of stress. The current project will examine the protective role of emodiversity in medical trainees: a population characterized by both high levels of stress and the necessity for empathy. Using a two-pronged approach (both observational and experimental) this project will: 1) test the associations among emodiversity, emotion, stress, empathy, and well-being in two ongoing cohort datasets of medical students and residents, and 2) develop and test an intervention for increasing emodiversity in medical trainees (LAVENDER). Ultimately, this program of research may provide evidence to support widespread integration of the LAVENDER intervention into medical education and may facilitate the development of interventions, therapies, and policies aimed at cultivating empathy and well-being in other high-stress professions (e.g., police, military).