Rhetoric of Truthfulness in the Battle Between Social Attributions and Empathic Emotions - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 300

As emerged from the structural analyses, one possible explanation for these
findings, then, deals with the cognitive antecedents of empathic emotions (in terms
of the meanings attributed to the story and its social context) and with the normative
character of the empathic process (in terms of its social desirability).
Perceived truthfulness, in fact, elicits more or less of the story's emotional
impact. In turn, this may have different effects, according to which component
of empathy is taken into account. In this sense, attribution processes underlying
empathy are clearly evident.
The differences between the various components of empathy are highlighted by
the impact of social desirability. This variable, in fact, has effects on both pure and
parallel empathy, but while the former is also activated independently of an explicit
reflection on the norms, the latter, by contrast, is elicited in a more difficult way.
In this sense, pure empathy is more generic and less costly and, for this reason,
more immediate and spontaneous, while parallel empathy (which requires a higher
identification with the target) is activated only after a process of validation of the
credibility of the victim's condition and an evaluation of the social norms to which
the reaction must be uniformed.
These results are even more intriguing if we consider that the model's structure
is confirmed independently of the target's group membership. Yet, in the outgroup
condition a strict correlation between pure and parallel empathy is also emphasized,
suggesting that this specific relationship must be more deeply investigated.
Attribution processes, in sum, are called into play in two different ways:

• The actor/observer difference is elicited by asking the participants to discriminate

between reactive (attributed to an external observer) and parallel emotions
(attributed to the target of the story);

• The effects in terms of self-reported empathy appear to be significantly mod-

erated by an activity of inference that allows our participants to evaluate the
truthfulness and the emotional impact of the story. As a matter of fact, depending
on who the actor is (ingroup/outgroup member), the story takes on a different
meaning and makes a more or less marked emotional impact on our participants.

In sum, the empathic response appears as the output of manifold and complex
phenomena: it requires innate capacities and social competences; it is the result of
a complex interlacing of cognitive and affective factors, but also the outcome of a
battle between social constructs modulated by values and beliefs shared in a certain
culture and collectivity. This study has shown that empathy may be activated also in
conflict situations and that it may be a way toward a solution since subjectivities may
make reference to a rhetoric of truthfulness. The dialogicity of empathy is supported
by a minimal dialectic that emerges in the mind's capacity to recognize as plausible
others' enunciative positions (Mininni 2013 ).
Empathy, in fact, may represent an important resource in conflict management,
especially for its polyphonic nature, which may be able to reactivate the search for
alternative senses that are made inaccessible by the conflict itself.
Being lived as a counterpoint of voices - my experience is mixed with the
other's experience - empathy may activate cognitive energies that might contrast