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Concern is a psychological and emotional state with respect to a subject that indicates both interest and potentially worry about that subject.
Concerns may be defined as "the feelings, preoccupation, thought and consideration given to a particular issue or task".[1]
"An aroused state of personal feelings and thought about a demand as it is perceived is concern. To be concerned means to be in a mentally aroused state about something".[2]
Philosopher Jesse Prinz has characterized concern as an alternative to empathy:
Concern is a cousin of empathy. It is a fellow‐feeling that arises when we consider another's plight. In the empirical literature, concern is usually measured differently than empathy. Empathy, as defined here, is an emotion we share with another. Concern is a negative sentiment caused by the recognition that someone is in need. It does not necessarily correspond to what anyone else is feeling.[3]
Prinz uses the example of a person observing a drug addict, noting that a person who felt empathy for a drug addict should want the addict to have their addiction satisfied, while the person who felt concern would be more inclined to "worry about the addict's well‐being".[3] Scholars generally agree that "empathic concern is an other-oriented emotional response".[4]
In the context of clinical empathy, the concept of "detached concern" was developed by sociologists Renée Fox and Howard Lief in 1963, as a means of providing objective, detached medical care while maintaining enough concern for the patient to offer emotional understanding.[5]
Philosopher Shaun Nichols has proposed the existence of an internal psychological "concern mechanism".[6] Alvin Goldman notes that in Nichols' model, "psychopaths may possess and deploy perspective taking for high-level mindreading, but this doesn't imply activation of the concern mechanism".[7]
See also
edit- Concern (computer science), a particular set of information that has an effect on the code of a computer program
- Empathic concern, other-oriented emotions elicited by, and congruent with the perceived welfare of, someone in need
- Expression of concern, in publishing, a notice issued by a publisher against a particular publication, warning that it may contain errors or be otherwise untrustworthy
- Least-concern species, a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation
- Reasons for concern, in climate change, specific risks that increase with increases in the Earth's global mean temperature person in need.
References
edit- ^ Myungweon Choi and Wendy E. A Ruona, "Individual readiness for organizational change. In H. Skipton Leonard, Rachel Lewis, Arthur M. Freedman, and Jonathan Passmore (eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of the Psychology of Leadership, Change, and Organizational Development (2013), p. 337, citing Gene E. Hall, Archie A. George, and William L. Rutherford, Measuring stages of concern about the innovation: A manual for use of the SoC questionnaire (Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, 1977).
- ^ Gene E. Hall and Shirley Hord, Change in Schools: Facilitating the Process (1987), p. 59.
- ^ a b Jesse Prinz, "Against Empathy", The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 49(1) (2011), 214–233.
- ^ Bettina Lampert and Christine Unterrainer, "Detached concern, me and my clients—Professionals' emotion regulation, burnout, and patients' care quality at work", in Wilfred J. Zerbe, Charmine E. J. Härtel, and Neal M. Ashkanasy, eds., Emotions and Identity (2017), p. 114.
- ^ Lief & Fox (1963). "Training for "detached concern" in medical students". The Psychological Basis of Medical Practice.
- ^ Shaun Nichols, Sentimental Rules: On the Natural Foundations of Moral Judgment (2004), p. 56-60.
- ^ Alvin Goldman, Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading (2006), p. 294.
- This open draft remains in progress as of June 7, 2022.
- This open draft remains in progress as of August 8, 2024.