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Manuscript_ccf56db42452017c0bc6b2626ee2d8d6

ACTIVATING EPISODIC SIMULATION INCREASES AFFECTIVE EMPATHY

Marius Vollberg1, Brendan Gaesser2, Mina Cikara1

1 Department of Psychology, Harvard University
2 Department of Psychology, University at Albany

Corresponding Author:
Mina Cikara
mcikara@fas.harvard.edu
Department of Psychology
Harvard University
33 Kirkland Street
Cambridge, MA
02138

© 2020 published by Elsevier. This manuscript is made available under the Elsevier user license
https://www.elsevier.com/open-access/userlicense/1.0/
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 1

Abstract

Affective empathy, feeling what others feel, is a powerful emotion that binds us to one

another. Here we ask whether how we mentally represent the scene in which another suffers

informs our emotions. For example, when we learn about someone suffering outside of the

here and now, such as a refugee devastated by violence or famine, does a manipulation

potentiating our ability to simulate the scene around the victim heighten our empathic

response? Expanding recent advances in the memory literature, we investigate the link

between activating our ability to imagine events—episodic simulation—and empathy for in-

group and out-group members in a series of online and laboratory studies (N = 1010).

Incidental manipulations of episodic simulation, unrelated in content and structure to the

empathy judgment task, increased overall empathy for both in-group as well as out-group

members. This relationship was mediated by participant-generated episodic detail of the

victim’s surroundings.

Keywords: Episodic simulation, Empathy, Intergroup Relations

 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 2

1. Introduction

Episodic simulation—our ability to mentally transport ourselves beyond our present

experience and imagine distant events in time and place—is central to human cognition and

behavior in ways researchers have merely begun to discover. In episodic simulation, episodic

memory provides the details that are re-combined to imagine, react to, and prepare for novel

events (Schacter, Addis, & Buckner, 2008). The cognitive architecture of this process has

received a great deal of attention over the last decade in the memory literature and more

recent research has started to document the consequences of episodic simulation in a wide

range of contexts, including delayed discounting (Palombo et al., 2016), creativity (Beaty,

Benedek, Silvia, & Schacter, 2016), and decisions to help others (Gaesser, Keeler, & Young,

2018). We take this inquiry in a new direction to examine the effects of episodic simulation

on emotion induction—using affective empathy, feeling what we imagine others feel, as a test

case.

Episodic simulation entails not only the imagining of future hypothetical events but

also the affective signals that emerge from simulating the event. Specifically, episodic

simulation and episodic memory, compared to verbal and semantic knowledge can serve to

amplify emotional reactions to stimuli, including other people (Amit & Greene, 2012; Holmes

& Mathews, 2010; Libby & Eibach, 2011). Moreover, the affective signal that arises from

episodic memory (Wimmer & Büchel, 2016) and episodic simulation, in particular, is thought

to serve an important adaptive functional role, enabling one to preview the subjective

experience and value of possible events (Bakkour et al., 2019; Benoit, Paulus, & Schacter,

2019; Benoit, Szpunar, & Schacter, 2014; Palombo, Keane, & Verfaellie, 2016). In this sense,

episodic simulation can evoke an affective signal as if the event were being directly

experienced (Schacter et al., 2008; Suddendorf & Corballis, 2007). In the case of empathy,

one possibility is that spontaneously activating episodic simulation prior to making an

empathy judgment will increase spontaneous episodic detail generation regarding the victim’s
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 3

misfortune, which will in turn boost this affective signal and increase subsequent empathy

(Vollberg & Cikara, 2018). Alternatively, it is possible that spontaneously engaging episodic

simulation could decrease empathy for others’ suffering, particularly for disliked out-group

members (Cikara, Bruneau, & Saxe, 2011) because in some studies vividly imagining

harming others actually increases positive affect about said harm (Morris, Gaesser, &

Cushman, 2018).

Affective empathy is more than just a test case for the unexplored role of episodic

simulation in emotion. Given pervasive bias in intergroup empathy (Cikara, Bruneau, & Saxe,

2011; Han, 2018) underlying mechanisms and potential interventions have been a major topic

in psychological research. One possibility is that the scene imagery we spontaneously

generate about another’s misfortunes differs at baseline, depending on who a given “other” is,

leading to downstream differences in the affective response to another’s experience. If true,

one would expect upregulating episodic simulation and thus scene imagery to increase

affective empathy. Furthermore, if we already imagine scenes of liked others with near

maximal detail prior to upregulating episodic simulation, the effect of upregulation could be

asymmetric, thereby narrowing or closing the intergroup gap.

Prior research has explored how components other than episodic simulation shape

empathic responses, but they do not speak to the specific role of episodic memory in

simulated scenes. Cognitive processes such as perspective-taking (Galinsky & Moskowitz,

2000; Vescio, Sechrist, & Paolucci, 2003) and narrative transportation (Johnson et al., 2013;

Bruneau et al., 2015) change how we understand and feel about another’s situation. However,

scene imagery, which is an isolable outcome of episodic simulation, is dissociable from

perspective-taking (Gaesser, Shimura, & Cikara, 2019), suggesting that understanding the

unique contribution of episodic simulation and resulting scene imagery may complement our

scientific understanding of emotion—in this case, affective empathy.

 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 4

Here, we test whether activating episodic simulation increases affective empathy in a

subsequent task, whether it does so by increasing spontaneously generated episodic detail of

others’ suffering, and whether these relationships are moderated by the victim’s group

membership. No previous study has examined how increasing episodic simulation ability

affects empathy. What’s more, a major limitation of previous related research on helping is

that participants are instructed what to simulate (e.g., a helping scenario; Gaesser, Shimura, &

Cikara, 2019) making it impossible to isolate the effects of episodic simulation as a process

from the effects of the specific content participants were instructed to simulate. Across two

experiments (N = 1010), we investigate effects of episodic simulation on affective empathy

for the first time and circumvent past methodological limitations by inducing episodic

simulation in a task prior to, and entirely unrelated to the subsequent empathy judgment task

for in-group and out-group members (i.e., participants are unconstrained in whether and what

they simulate). We predicted that episodic simulation would (i) increase empathy judgments

overall and following previous research (ii) reduce the difference in empathy felt for in-group

versus out-group members.

Experiment 1

2. Material and methods

Several manipulations have been used to activate and upregulate episodic simulation.

We started with an online experiment to test our hypothesis in a large, relatively more diverse

sample. We test (i) whether imagining events (unrelated to the empathy task) in detail, relative

to no imagination, subsequently increased empathy in response to other people’s misfortunes,

and (ii) whether this increase was moderated by group identification. These hypotheses were

preregistered along with manipulation checks, robustness checks and power considerations.

This preregistration, as well as materials, data, and data analysis code for all experiments are

available on OSF: https://osf.io/sy4r5/?view_only=e0beb5fd636f4777bab3c901dde07d79.

 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 5

2.1 Participants. We conducted a bootstrapped power simulation based on a pilot study

to determine the necessary sample size to achieve 80% power to detect effects of interest. In

our pilot data, there was evidence for a main effect but not for an interaction. To appropriately

power for a the hypothesized interaction nonetheless, we modeled the size of the interaction

effect as one quarter of the main effect (Gelman, 2018). The analysis determined a target

sample of 400 participants per condition.

As pre-registered, there are several exclusion criteria for this study based on political

affiliation and attention checks. The intergroup component of the experiment is operationalized

as Republicans versus Democrats. We assign participants based on self-reported preferences,

but we typically do not know whether a given participant actually identifies with one of those

groups until they participate. Given that independents and those who prefer not to answer are

randomly allocated to a group, their responses cannot be interpreted alongside those whose

group allocation deterministically aligned with their preferences. This peculiarity needs to be

kept in mind when considering the high rates of exclusions that we anticipated in our

preregistration. Reflecting the exclusion rates from our pilot study, we estimated that 1250

participants would be necessary to yield the required 800 participants. Consequently, 1250

participants were recruited via mTurk; two participants submitted the survey but not the mTurk

HIT, resulting in 1252 usable responses.

All participants were aged 18 years or older and provided informed consent to

participate in the experiment, which was approved by the university’s IRB. Four hundred forty-

one participants were excluded because they (i) failed an attention check (263), (ii) were

neither Democrat nor Republican (170), or (iii) because their empathy (7) or group

identification (1) responses were missing (see 2.3 for further details). Our final sample

included 811 participants (369 female; Mage = 36.19; age range = 20-78; SD = 11.30; 496

Democrat).
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 6

2.2 Manipulations and measures. 2.2.1 Identification score. Participants were presented

with three questions asking how much they “like,” “value,” and “feel connected” to their

political in-group and out-group. All three questions were presented on the same page with

response options on a 7-point scale from “not at all” to “extremely” (but each group appeared

on its own page). Responses converged across these three items (Cronbach’s α = 0.95 for in-

group and 0.93 for out-group). We thus averaged responses for in-group and out-group,

respectively, and used a difference score between them to quantify participants’ identification

with in-group and out-group targets, which is a more sensitive approach than only binning

targets by group membership. For example, if a participant had an average in-group

identification score of 6 and an average out-group score of 2, we coded in-group target trials as

+4 identification and out-group trials as -4 identification.

2.2.2 Episodic simulation manipulation. The episodic simulation manipulation used in

this pilot experiment was based on an existing manipulation (Rudoy, Weintraub, & Paller,

2009). Specifically, participants were asked to imagine either two events that could potentially

take place 10 to 30 years from now in as much detail as possible (detail condition) or were

assigned to a control condition in which participants completed nine simple math problems

(single digit addition and subtraction). This yielded two between-subjects conditions: detail

versus control. Following exclusions, these conditions were represented with the following

sample sizes per cell: 423 (control) and 388 (detail).

2.2.3 Empathy judgment task. Participants were presented with eight negative events

that were completely independent of the episodic simulation manipulation (e.g., “Eric had a

stomach ache after lunch”). The sole person in those events was labeled as an in-group member

in half of the events and as an out-group member in the other half. The pairings between events

and group were, as well as order of events randomized across participants. To measure

empathy, operationalized as sharing another’s affect (Cikara, Bruneau, Van Bavel, & Saxe,

2014), participants were asked to provide empathy judgments by rating how bad the event
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 7

happening to the other person made them feel (on a continuous scale from “not at all” to

“extremely”, internally coded as 0-100; one screen per event). This measurement approach as

well as these particular items have been validated separately (Hudson, Cikara, & Sidanius,

2019).

2.2.4 Secondary measures. Writing about future events in detail, as opposed to solving

math tasks might not just differentially impact episodic simulation; it could also change how

Before Manipulation Following Manipulation

•Consent Manipulation •Empathy responses to in- and
•Cover story (randomly assigned) out-group misfortunes, provided
•Group assignment (170 • Control condition after each item (7 excluded; NA)
excluded; not Dem or Rep) or •Secondary measures (e.g.
•Identification ratings (1 • Detail condition general affect)
excluded; NA) •Attention check (263 excluded;
failed)
•Demographics & debrief

Fig. 1.
Overview of experimental procedure in Experiment 1. Between-subjects design assessing the
effect of imagining events on empathy judgments.

people feel in general, which might in turn influence empathic responses (Li, Meng, Li, Yang,

& Yuan, 2017). To account for this, we asked participants how they felt “right now”

(“extremely bad” to “extremely good”; 0 to 100 scale) after the last empathy judgment. For

pre-specified exploratory analyses, following the affect questions, we also asked participants to

provide self-reported vividness and coherence ratings which were meant to capture how much

they thought they engaged in episodic simulation in the detail condition. Given the exploratory

nature of these

measures, we report them in the supplementary materials.

2.3 Procedure. See Figure 1 for procedure overview. To create an intergroup setting, the

manipulation was embedded in an intergroup competition between two political parties

(Republicans vs. Democrats). Participants were assigned to the respective group according to
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 8

their self-reported political affiliation. Note that this group allocation logic results in sizable

exclusions, because participants who are neither Democrats or Republicans (“independent”,

“other”, or “prefer not to answer”) are randomly allocated to one of the two parties, creating a

potential treatment difference that is best accounted for via exclusion. Note, however, that

including these participants and their corresponding identification scores yields similar results

(see supplementary materials).

To emphasize intergroup competition, participants were told that all participants are

taking part in a problem-solving challenge and that the team with the highest total score would

receive a bonus. Participants next completed the group identification questions before

proceeding to the episodic simulation manipulation or the control manipulation. Following this

between-subject condition, participants were presented with eight vignettes about which they

made empathy judgments. Following empathy judgments, participants were presented with

attention checks that required them to state correctly that they had just been asked to indicate

how they themselves felt (thus pertaining to their own affect as opposed to how the target felt),

exploratory measures, and a slider question requiring them to move the slider all the way to the

left. Lastly, participants completed a demographic questionnaire (age, gender, and ethnicity)

prior to being debriefed.

2.4 Analysis. The effect of the experimental conditions on empathy judgments was

analyzed using multilevel modeling, implemented with the ‘lmer’ function from the package

lmerTest 2.0-6 (Kuznetsova, Brockhoff, & Christensen, 2018) in R to account for variance

explained by random effects. Following our hypothesis, the model included condition (control

and detail) and the continuous measure of group identification as fixed effects. Note that while

the group manipulation itself was dichotomous (in- or out-group targets), the continuous

identification measure more granularly reflects participants’ attitudes towards the person in a

given event. Reflecting variance explained by differences in specific stories and subject-level

clustering, “event” and subject ID were included as random intercepts. Responses were
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 9

standardized to account for differences in how people used the response scales. This also

means that regression coefficients refer to standardized weights. We estimated the model using

restricted-estimate maximum-likelihood (REML). Analyses that did not involve repeated

measures were conducted with standard linear regression using the “lm” function in R. Bayes

Factors in favor of the absence of effects in question are reported where appropriate. The

central model, assessing the effect of induction condition, as well as its interaction with group

identification on empathy judgments was specified as follows:

= + + + ∗ + +

Where represent standardized regression weights of the following fixed effects: intercept,

condition ( ), group identification ( ), and the interaction between condition and group

identification ( ∗ ). Additionally, we included random effects to cluster error related to

repeated measurements ( ) and item types ( ).

2.5 Sensitivity analyses. In addition to power simulations based on a pilot study, we

also conducted sensitivity analyses. We used Monte Carlo simulation within the simr package

(version 1.0.4; Green & Macleod, 2016) on the main model for each dataset. Power

calculations were based on sampled response variable values using the fitted model; the model

was fitted in each sample to then test for the statistical significance of a parameter. In this

experiment, we had three key parameters: main effect of group, main effect of detail versus

control, and the interaction term. Sensitivity analyses were conducted for statistically

significant parameters of interest. For each parameter, we ran 1000 simulations. Sensitivity

analyses are reported in the supplementary material.

3. Results

3.1 Group identification. Identification ratings for out-group members were

significantly lower than in-group ratings ( = -1.70; 95% CI, - 1.75 to -1.65; p < 0.001).
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 10

3.2 General affect ratings following manipulations. Participants reported slightly more

positive affect in the detail condition compared to the control condition, but this difference

was not significant ( = 0.05; 95% CI, -0.09 to 0.19; p = 0.495).

 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 11

3.3 Empathy judgments. We observed a main effect of identification such that greater

identification was associated with greater empathy judgments ( = 0.14; 95% CI, 0.12 to

0.17; p < 0.001). As predicted, we also observed a main effect of episodic manipulation:

participants reported more empathy following the detail condition compared to the control

condition ( = 0.13; 95% CI, 0.02 to 0.24; p = 0.019; see Figure 2 for both conditions and

Figure S1 for data distributions by condition). Including group identification as an interaction

term did not explain a significant amount of incremental variance ( = -0.02; 95% CI, -0.05

to 0.01; p = 0.173; BFH0 > 100), indicating that there was no evidence in this sample that the

Fig. 2.
N = 811. The relationship between group identification and empathy ratings plotted for each
condition of Experiment 1, an online experiment comparing control and detail prompts. Empathy
ratings are standardized within participants. Group identification is standardized between
participants as there is only one response per subject. Both axes refer to standard deviations.
Error bands correspond to 95% confidence intervals.

main effect of the simulation condition differed as a function of targets’ group membership.

In other words, overall empathy ratings increased for both in-group and out-group members,

but the gap between those groups remained unchanged.

These results still hold when including general affect ratings as a covariate: greater

identification was associated with greater empathy judgments ( = 0.14; 95% CI, 0.12 to
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 12

0.17; p < 0.001) and empathy ratings were also increased following the detail condition

compared to the control condition ( = 0.13; 95% CI, 0.02 to 0.24; p = 0.022). Additional

post-hoc analyses further suggested that controlling for covariates such as age and political

party left this pattern unchanged (see supplemental materials).

Experiment 2

4. Method

The first experiment provided initial evidence for episodic simulation’s role in fostering

empathy across group membership. Using the episodic simulation manipulation developed by

Rudoy (2009) allowed us to upregulate the detail of episodic simulation in a large, relatively

more diverse sample online. However, this manipulation is one of several that have been used

in the field to activate episodic simulation and may have incidentally recruited additional

cognitive processes across conditions. Thus in Experiment 2, we aimed to replicate the findings

from Experiment 1 using a more fine-grained manipulation to target episodic engagement. The

manipulation that has been the most widely used and validated in the literature is the episodic

specificity induction (ESI; e.g., Madore, Gaesser, & Schacter, 2014). Across labs and

experiments, the ESI has been established to selectively target and enhance episodic detail,

dissociating it from related processes such as semantic retrieval and narrative description

(Madore & Schacter, 2016). To bolster confidence that our findings are attributable to a

contribution of episodic simulation to empathy, we employed the gold standard intervention

for selectively activating episodic simulation—the ESI—and conducted the experiment in the

laboratory.

4.1 Participants. We report combined data from two experiments that were identical

with respect to our research question. We explain differences between the samples where there

are any. Based on Experiment 1, we expected a small effect of induction on empathy and

calibrated our sample size accordingly. We aimed for 100 usable subjects and adjusted the total
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 13

sample as a function of dropouts. Participants (n = 295) were recruited through the Psychology

Department Study Pool for the first wave (n = 189) and replication (n = 106), respectively (see

Figures S2-S4 for distributional information and analyses separated by sample). All

participants were aged 18 years or older and provided informed consent to participate in the

experiment, which was approved by the university’s IRB. Participants in the first sample

participated either for credit or for cash. Participants in the second sample could only

participate for credit.

Some participants reported a different political affiliation at the time of the experiment

compared to what they had stated in their study pool profile. This was the case in 54 subjects in

the first wave of data collection. Given our emphasis on genuine and consistent party

affiliation, all of these participants were excluded. In the second wave, to mitigate the number

of excluded participants, we followed up with participants the day before data collection to

clarify whether their response would be consistent with what they had reported at the time they

filled out their study pool profile. Only three subjects responded inconsistently in the second

wave. Note that we provided a supplemental analysis of those with party affiliations other than

Democrat or Republican in Experiment 1. The corresponding analysis would not be sensible

for Experiment 2, because we would include participants whose affiliation is not only different

but also inconsistent (as only those who identified as registered Democrats or Republicans

were recruited to the laboratory to begin with). Another 34 subjects failed the attention check.

Four subjects respectively were excluded because of technical difficulties (e.g., sound but no

video during manipulation). Lastly, one subject was excluded because they had responded with

a 0 on every item, yielding NAs in within-standardized responses on the dependent variable.

Our final sample consisted of 199 participants (130 female; Mage = 21.73; age range = 18-43;

SD = 4.38; 175 Democrats).

4. 2 Manipulations and measures. While Experiment 2 continued to rely on

identification scores (Cronbach’s α = 0.93 for in-group and 0.88 out-group) and empathy
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 14

ratings as core measures, it also introduced a different intervention in a within-subject design

resulting in several important changes in the manipulations and measures used.

4.2.1 Episodic Specificity Induction (ESI). As mentioned, the ESI is considered the

gold standard in manipulating episodic simulation—in contrast to the detail versus control

manipulation we used in Experiment 1. Based on standard protocol, the ESI began with a 2-

minute video of adults performing household activities in a kitchen. This was followed by a

filler task: simple arithmetic problems, which were meant to engage working memory and

make it more difficult for participants to mentally rehearse the contents of the video. After this,

participants were presented with mental imagery probes via an in-person interview which

prompted participants to report as many details as possible about the setting, actions, and

people in the video.

4.2.2 Empathy judgment task. As in experiment 1, the dependent variable consisted of

empathy judgments that participants made about events that were entirely unrelated to the

manipulation. Given that the manipulation of episodic simulation in this experiment was

within-subjects, however, participants were presented with a set of in-group and out-group

stories following each manipulation. To avoid presenting the same stimuli twice, we created 8

new events that were matched with the existing 8 events (from Experiment 1) on affect,

vividness, and coherence, resulting in a total of 16 events (4 paired with in-group and 4 paired

with out-group targets after each manipulation).

4.2.3 Written mental imagery. To assess the degree of scene imagery with which

participants imagined events happening to others, we presented participants with all 16 events

a second time at the end of the experiment (this time without targets’ group information) and

asked them to recapitulate their mental imagery in self-paced written responses. Written

responses in the first sample were extremely terse rendering them un-codable for episodic

detail. To counteract this, participants in the second sample could no longer proceed in a self-

paced fashion. Instead, they were given 5 minutes to write each response. In the interest of
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 15

feasibility regarding time and memory, participants were asked to provide just 4 instead of 16

responses (one event for each condition). From these responses we were able to code the extent

of participants’ spontaneously generated internal, episodic detail and external detail (non-

episodic information including semantic details, extended events, and repetitions). This coding

procedure was originally adapted from clinical interviews and has since been validated

elsewhere (e.g., Madore et al., 2014).

4.2.4 Secondary measures. In both samples, we also asked participants to make

vividness and coherence ratings about those events following each written response (see

supplementary materials for exploratory analyses).

Before Manipulation Manipulation I Following Manipulation I

(randomly
•Consent •Empathy responses to in- and out-group
assigned)
•Cover story misfortunes, provided after each item
•Control task
•Group assignment (57 •Attention check
excluded; not Dem or Rep) or
•Filler task
•Identification ratings •Episodic
Specificity
Induction (ESI)

Manipulation II Following Manipulation II

(remaining
•Empathy responses to in- and out-group
manipulation)
misfortunes, provided after each item (1
•Episodic excluded total; NA)
Specificity •Attention check (34 excluded total; failed)
Induction (ESI) •Written account of mental imagery during
or empathy responses
•Control task •Demographics & debrief

Fig. 3.
Overview of experimental procedure in Experiment 2. Within-subject design assessing the effect of the
Episodic Specificity Induction on empathy judgments and imagery.

4.3 Procedure. See Figure 3 for procedure overview. Following the cover story, group

assignment, and identification question, participants were presented with either the episodic

specificity induction (ESI) or a control task, before providing empathy judgments. In the

control condition, participants also watched a video and completed a filler task, but the filler
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 16

task was followed by another 5-minute arithmetic filler task instead of an interview. This

experiment was an entirely within-subjects design (counterbalancing the order of the ESI and

the control condition across participants). This means that all participants repeated the

procedure with the remaining condition (control or ESI), and an additional 5-minute filler task

was administered between conditions. Following the second condition, participants provided

written accounts of the mental imagery associated with a selection of 4 events and completed a

demographic questionnaire (age, gender, and ethnicity) prior to being debriefed.

4.4 Analysis. The data was analyzed in the same fashion as in the previous experiment

because induction condition and group identification still constituted fixed effects. To take the

within-subject structure into account, we added a random effect for the order of condition

assignment. The model was specified as follows:

= + + + ∗ + + +

As in Experiment 1, represent standardized regression weights of the following fixed

effects: intercept, induction condition ( ), group identification ( ), and the interaction

between condition and group identification ( ∗ ). We again included random effects to

cluster error related to repeated measurements ( ) and item types ( ). In addition to the

specification in Experiment 1, this model includes a random effect reflecting variability in

randomly assigned conditions ( ).

For the mediation analysis, two raters, blinded to conditions, coded the mental

imagery (i.e., episodic and external details) generated by the second sample to assess whether

increases specifically in episodic detail mediated the relationship between the ESI and

empathy ratings.

4.5 Sensitivity analyses. Sensitivity analyses were conducted for significant parameters

of interest. For each parameter, we ran 1000 simulations (see supplementary materials).
EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 17
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 18

5. Results

5.1 Group identification. As in Experiment 1, participants identified with out-group

members less than in-group members ( = -1.71; 95% CI, -1.81 to -1.61; p < 0.001).

5.2 Empathy judgments. As in Experiment 1, empathy ratings were positively related to

group identification above and beyond manipulation of episodic simulation ( = 0.07; 95% CI,

0.03 to 0.11; p = 0.002). Also replicating Experiment 1, participants reported more empathy

following the ESI compared to the control condition ( = 0.15; 95% CI, 0.09 to 0.22; p <

0.001; see Figure 4). Notably, there was no evidence for an interaction with the subcomponents

of the collapsed sample ( = 0.02; 95% CI, -0.11 to 0.14; p = 0.784; BFH0 > 100). As before, a

model including group identification as an interaction term instead of as an additive effect did

not explain a significant amount of incremental variance ( = 0.02; 95% CI, -0.04 to 0.09; p =

0.553; BFH0 > 100), corroborating persistent differences between groups despite overall

increases in self-reported empathy. According to additional post-hoc analyses, controlling for

covariates such as induction duration and political party left this pattern unchanged (see

Fig. 4.
N = 199. The relationship between group identification and empathy ratings is plotted for each
condition of Experiment 2, a laboratory experiment comparing the episodic specificity induction
(ESI) to a control task. Empathy ratings are standardized within participants. Group identification
is standardized between participants as there is only one response per subject. Both axes refer to
standard deviations. Error bands correspond to 95% confidence intervals.
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 19

supplemental materials).

5.3 Mediation by spontaneously generated episodic versus external details. The open-

ended scene imagery responses from the second sample were coded with high inter-rater

reliability (both raters coded all responses, standardized Cronbach’s α = 0.96); subsequent

analyses are based on scores averaged across coders for episodic and external details,

respectively. Participants provided more internal details about empathy items following the

specificity induction compared to following the control condition ( = 2.05; 95% CI, 0.84 to

3.26; p = 0.001); external details were not significantly affected by induction condition ( =

0.26; 95% CI, -0.06 to 0.59; p = 0.12; see Supplemental Figures 5 and 6 for raw distributions

of details by condition).

We used the ‘mediation’ package (Tingley, Yamamoto, Hirose, Keele, & Imai, 2014)

to estimate the average causal mediation effect (ACME) of episodic details on the relationship

between the ESI and empathy judgments. The ACME relates to the indirect path and answers

the question: how would treatment-induced changes in episodic detail affect empathy if the

treatment condition itself was held constant? Episodic details showed a significant ACME

(ACME = 0.04; 95% CI, 0.01 to 0.09; p = 0.008). Another metric to consider, is the

proportion of variance mediated relative to the total effect. This proportion was also

significant for episodic details ( = 0.23; 95% CI, 0.01 to 1.40; p = 0.048). By contrast,

external details did not show the same pattern of mediation (ACME = 0.004; 95% CI, -0.02 to

0.03; p = 0.745; and = 0.01; 95% CI, -0.20 to 0.31; p = 0.759). In summary, although we

did not power for this specific analysis, the results suggest that the link between the ESI and

empathy ratings was mediated by spontaneously generated episodic detail but not non-

episodic, external detail.

6. Discussion
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 20

After engaging in tasks that increased episodic detail generation, participants reported

feeling worse in response to negative events happening to others, supporting the hypothesis

that the degree to which we spontaneously imagine the scene surrounding a person suffering

heightens our empathic response. This link was further supported by the mediation analysis in

Experiment 2 suggesting that the increases in affective empathy were accounted for by

increased episodic detail about the empathy-inducing events.

Notably, this increase in empathy was independent of group identification—it worked

even for out-group members—but did not reduce the gap in empathy for in-group versus out-

group members as we hypothesized. This contrasts with previous findings in which imagining

helping increased overall willingness to help but also reduced differences in willingness to

help in- versus out-group members (Gaesser et al., 2019). In those experiments, however,

participants were instructed to vividly simulate a helping scenario, and the link between

simulation and helping was mediated by both (i) how vividly participants imagined the scene

and (ii) perspective-taking with the target. Together these results suggest that assembling the

scene increases the affective signal across all social contexts but that perspective-taking may

be additionally required to overcome a group-based gap.

Why would inducing episodic specificity change affective responses? Recollection

and imagination have been shown to boost generative processes from creativity to decision

making (Gaesser et al., 2018; Palombo, Keane, & Verfaellie, 2016), which has helped refine

our understanding of the underlying psychological mechanisms. Inducing specificity biases

people towards a more detailed retrieval-orientation related to the construction of events (i.e.,

integrating a location with people and objects to form a scene that unfolds over time as an

episode specific in time and place). Given the shared processes between remembering and

imagination (Schacter et al., 2012), this bias is thought to persist when mentally constructing

novel events that are not limited to autobiographical experiences (Madore, Jing, & Schacter,

2019). In parallel, there is also evidence that more elaborate mental simulation can influence
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 21

affect. For example, Caruso and Gino (2011) showed that considering immoral actions with

one’s eyes closed increased self-reported mental imagery, which in turn increased self-

reported feelings of guilt. Here we begin to let these parallels intersect by highlighting the role

of memory-mediated scene construction in affective responses.

There are several limitations to the present investigation. First, we focused on the link

between episodic simulation and emotion. Using empathy as a test case, we asked participants

to report other-regarding emotions. While self-reported empathy is reliably related to altruistic

behaviors such as cooperation (Batson, Ahmad, & Lishner, 2012), we did not directly assess

behavioral outcomes. Building on the link between episodic simulation and empathy

presented here, such downstream consequences of episodic simulation are a potential topic for

future research. Note, however, that other research has already established a direct link

between episodic simulation and prosocial behavior in the form of economic donations

(Gaesser et al., 2018, 2019). Second, in both experiments, we presented participants in the

control condition with math tasks. However, math control conditions have been widely used

in research on episodic simulation and episodic memory and are indistinguishable from “gist”

conditions in which participants are presented with the same stimuli as in the detail condition

but only report general impressions, suggesting that conditions differences are indeed being

driven by an increase in episodic detail caused by the specificity induction (Madore et al.,

2014; Madore et al., 2016; see also Madore et al., 2019 for relevant discussion). Nonetheless,

because the ESI has not been used in the context of empathy, it is possible that the control

task influenced empathy responses through mechanisms other than scene imagery (e.g.,

cognitive effort). As an example: experiencing empathy requires effort (Cameron et al.,

2019); a cognitively taxing task might further reduce one’s propensity to empathize.

However, rule-based tasks like single digit addition are likely less cognitively effortful than

episodic induction, in which case a cognitive effort account would yield the opposite pattern

of findings of those observed here. Third, we assessed how intergroup bias might moderate
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 22

the link between episodic simulation and empathy. However, our design is agnostic to the

specific political party with which people identify. Are Democrats and Republicans different

in their susceptibility to episodic simulation manipulations? While our data do not show

significant effects of participants’ party, the imbalance and size of our sample (i.e., too few

Republicans in both experiments) does not license inferential conclusions about this

relationship. Beyond differences between these specific groups, it is important to point out

that intergroup empathy bias has been documented across a wide range of groups, real and

artificial (Cikara, Bruneau, et al., 2011; Han, 2018). While Republicans and Democrats

constitute salient and polarized groups, there is no strong basis to expect conceptually

different patterns of results depending on the kind of group so long as groups are competitive

(Cikara & Van Bavel, 2014). Future studies could use other groups, real or artificial, to

further validate effects of episodic simulation across those contexts while also limiting

exclusions.

It is worth noting that our findings dovetail with recent work revealing that patients

with impairments in episodic simulation, who had undergone resection of medial temporal

lobe tissue as treatment for epilepsy, did not show increased empathic concern after having

been instructed imagine episodes of helping others in need (Sawczak, McAndrews, Gaesser,

& Moscovitch, 2019). Also of relevance is a recent study in which increased specificity about

worrisome events improved emotion regulation as indexed via lower self-reported anxiety

(Jing, Madore, & Schacter, 2019). The present investigation innovates in three

complementary ways: We have subjected (1) large samples to (2) incidental manipulations of

episodic simulation and documented the effect of manipulation on (3) second-order emotion

in an intergroup context.

Having combined tools from memory research and affective science into a novel

experimental design we have inevitably removed these tasks from the context in which they

have been validated. Converging evidence would thus be particularly helpful to corroborate
 EPISODIC SIMULATION AND AFFECTIVE EMPATHY 23

and further our mechanistic understanding of this finding. One exciting future direction is to

probe neural activity in regions associated with episodic simulation (e.g., hippocampal

formation) and empathy (e.g., anterior insula) in order to compare coupling differences

among these regions between conditions (see Wagner, Rutgen, & Lamm, 2020 for evidence

of spontaneous coupling of these regions in empathy for pain). If episodic simulation has

downstream consequences on affective empathy, functional connectivity would be expected

to increase following the episodic specificity induction compared to the control condition.

Another exciting avenue would be to directly manipulate episodic associations and detail via

brain stimulation (e.g., Thakral et al., 2017) and observe subsequent effects on empathy.

There is a great deal of research examining how emotions affect memory formation

and retrieval; however, our findings provide new insights into the opposite causal pathway—

how episodic representations constructed from memory shape emotion. More specifically,

social psychology has tackled the boundaries of empathy and perspective-taking for similar

and dissimilar others from a wide range of perspectives, but scene imagery and contextual

representations have received relatively little attention. In complement, memory research has

rigorously dissociated episodic memory and manipulations of episodic simulation from other

forms of memory (e.g. semantic), but indirect effects of memory-dependent processes on

social and emotional outcomes are largely unexplored. In combining social psychological and

memory research our findings inform both fields.

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