ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the theoretical relationships proposed by Scherer can be used in explaining empathic responses. Understanding the ways in which cognitive appraisals affect empathic responses requires a more elaborate depiction of cognitive processing. The relationships explained by Bower and Cohen provides explanations for the elicitation of empathy through all of Hoffman's modes. The empathy modes can be divided into three groups: nodes based on the empathizers' existing memory structures; a node that probably relays online sensory neural feedback to parent emotion nodes; and nodes through which the emotion is elicited by online assessments without the use of explicit emotional memories. Scherer's theory presents clear relationships between appraisal configurations and pure emotion states. These relationships constitute emotion interpretation rules in Bower and Cohen's theory. Thus, the relationships between specific cognitive appraisals and emotional states for both empathy and accurate decoding can be deduced from Scherer's theorizing.
