Katharina Förster

Abstract When we empathize with someone going through something, we often draw on our past experiences with the someone and the something. These kinds of experiences ground "thick empathy", a form of empathy that has been largely overlooked in the psychology and neuroscience literature. Consider how a mother, empathizing with her daughter about to give birth, can draw on her own experience of childbirth, and her relationship with her daughter, to deeply grasp what her daughter is going through in a way that others who lack those experiences cannot. I argue that thick empathy deserves more empirical attention because it is associated with well-being and helps us build networks of effective mutual social support. My analysis highlights novel risks and dilemmas posed by "empathy machines" that promise to enhance or even replace human empathy and are becoming increasingly popular as a potential solution to widespread loneliness. Even when empathy machines provide value to individuals, their widespread adoption risks imposing collective emotional and epistemic costs that ultimately make it harder for us to empathize well. Keywords: empathy, understanding, experience, thick description, ethnography, phenomenal knowledge, interpersonal knowledge, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, chatbots

New preprint: Empathy, Thick and Thin
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

It is perhaps foolhardy to attempt to say something new about a topic as widely studied as empathy. I tried anyway! 1/

Yes 💔

I think that a lot of people migrated to linkedin - but maybe that is only relevant to my community

Social Science Research Coordinator in School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford, California, United States The Department of Psychology’s Psychophysiology Lab is seeking a full-time Social Science Research Coordinator (RC) position. The RC will be an...

The Stanford Psychophysiology Lab (PI: James Gross) is hiring a new lab manager! If you have a superstar student interested in emotion, please share this ad with them! Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.

Job ad: careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/social-...

#psychjobs

New paper from me at Cognition and Emotion! "Deep neural network models of emotion understanding" I discuss how deep nets can be used as cognitive models of emotion perception, prediction, and regulation: doi.org/10.1080/0269...

(h/t @ltjaql.bsky.social for the illustrations!)

Highly recommended Position with @alzietlow.bsky.social at @cfmhlab.bsky.social at TUD ✨⭐️

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Two more weeks to apply 🚀

A scoping review of Longitudinal Neuroimaging Studies:
-conclusion-
Longitudinal fMRI studies of CBIs in healthy participants and clinical populations showed increased prefrontomesolimbic activity, altered occipital and posterior parietal activity, and increased fronto-striatal connectivity.
1/3

Ausschreibung

JOB ALERT 🚀

I am looking for a clinical psychologist to supervise my clinical team at uni hamburg.

Please dm me if you have any questions and please share!

Ich suche eine Forschungsambulanzleitung (E14, entfristet) an der Uni Hamburg.

Job Ad:
www.uni-hamburg.de/stellenangeb...

Incredibly proud that @annimekelburg.bsky.social published her bachelor thesis uniting two of the coolest topics longitudinal neuroimaging and compassion interventions 💫

Check it out 🙌

Excited to be at @pug2025.bsky.social ✨

Congratulations ✨⭐️💫🌟

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We hope that our results on brain aging in the course of affective disorders will make it through peer-review this year! Our preprint also comes with open materials and open data: osf.io/qadxz/

Please share @traplabms.bsky.social @kanskelab.bsky.social @kanske.bsky.social @biodgps-dgpa.bsky.social

We then decided to explore wether the brain age gap at baseline was also predictive of future worse outcomes, for example, wether a patient is hospitalized or not. However, the cross-validation of our prediction with an accuracy of 64.3% was not significant.

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Patients were consistently estimated with an older brain age resulting in a larger brain age gap than healthy participants, confirming previous results on brain aging. However, we also found that patients with a worse outcome during follow up already had a larger brain age gap at baseline.

... and how the longitudinal course of affective disorder relates to the brain age gap. We found something that we did not expect. 😱

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We investigated the "brain age gap" - thedifference between actual and estimated age derived from MRI scans - in patients with affective disorders in a long-term prospective design. Our research question was wether the brain age gap differs between patients and healthy participants ....

MRI-derived estimation of biological aging in patients with affective disorders in a 9-year follow-up - a prospective marker of future recurrence Background: We investigated associations of the brain age gap (BAG), the difference between actual and estimated age derived from MRI scans, with disease course over nine years in patients with affect...

🧠 Excited to share our preprint "MRI derived estimation of biological patients with affective disorders in a 9-year follow up - a prospective marker of future recurrence" with Nils Winter
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

After being under review for <400days we can't wait to share our results.

Congrats to all #DPK2025 awardees including @annikakonrad.bsky.social @katfoerster.bsky.social Julia Martini & Daniel Badeja from @tudresden.bsky.social for excellent #supervision, #openscience & posters

@dgps.bsky.social @kanskelab.bsky.social

Come and chat with us #DPK2025

Such a great symposium - Thank you for having me ✨

We'll be @DPK2025 - check out the fantastic talks by @katfoerster.bsky.social @annikakonrad.bsky.social @ingmarheinig.bsky.social @larapuhlmann.bsky.social @kanske.bsky.social & more
@dpk-kongress.bsky.social @dgps.bsky.social @tudresden.bsky.social
tu-dresden.de/mn/psycholog...

Very important work!

Thank you!! Could not have done it without you as my mentor 😊

Very happy to join the newest class of rising stars 💫⭐️ of @psychscience.bsky.social

Thank you @drlambchop.bsky.social
Stefan Hofmann
@kanske.bsky.social for your your support ✨

Only one week left to apply ✨🚀

Less than two weeks to apply ✨🚀

Thank you! :)

Thank you 💫