Abstract: A large body of research shows that people with higher empathic abilities are more skilled in dealing with interpersonal relationship and more willing to behave prosocially. Although literature related to empathy accumulates annually, there are still few studies that provide a macro-level description of this field. A traditional review or meta-analysis can only focus on a narrow topic and covers probably no more than 100 papers, and these methodologies are insufficient when faced with tens of thousands of papers, but bibliometrics can do the task. Bibliometrics exploits information of papers (e.g., author, keyword, journal, year) to describe a research field at macro-level, to picture the evolution of its research topics, and to predict future research focus. The current study used the method of bibliometrics and a tool for social network analysis to illustrate the evolution of research on empathy from 1996 to 2015, and furthermore, explored future research focus. Papers collected from Web of Science Core Collection, PsycArticles, Psychology and Behavior Science Collection, China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database, VIP Journal Integration Platform, and Wanfang Data Knowledge Service Platform are used as reference data. We used “Empathy” as the key word and retrieved the reference data published between 1996 and 2015. The search yielded 12684 publications in English and 1199 publications in Chinese, among which 9073 in English and 1178 in Chinese met our inclusion criteria that the reference data needed to specify author\keyword\journal\year information. We extracted information from the reference data with Python, analyzed the information with VOSviewer and presented the information with Gephi. The preliminary results show that in the past two decades, the field of empathy research has been developing very rapidly and the annual increase in the number of publications followed Moore's law. The data suggest an eruption in research published in Chinese from 2008 as well as one in English from 2004; empathy research has seen its focus shifting from personality traits, attitudes and emotion to social cognition. This field of research now focuses more on social neuro-cognition and emphasizes multidisciplinary collaboration, which is quite likely due to the development of scientific technology. We also found that many methods were used in empathy research, such as fMRI\Eye tracking and so on, with fMRI being the most used. This clearly evidences that technology drives science. Based on the data and link prediction theory, we could speculate that: (1) future research on empathy will focus on social cognition, such as influence of empathy and executive function on pro-social behavior, paying more attention to the third variable problem; (2) to further the popular in-group and out-group research in recent years, the next step is to address social interactions among people of different races/ethnicities; and (3) researcher will try to investigate questions on the neural-mechanism of empathy and its application to neuroplasticity, and try to tell us that people’s empathic abilities can be changed. The current study used the method of bibliometrics and a tool for social network analysis to illustrate the evolution of research on empathy from 1996 to 2015, and furthermore, explored future research focus. Papers collected from Web of Science Core Collection, PsycArticles, Psychology and Behavior Science Collection, China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database, VIP Journal Integration Platform, and Wanfang Data Knowledge Service Platform are used as reference data. We used “Empathy” as the key word and retrieved the reference data published between 1996 and 2015. The search yielded 12684 publications in English and 1199 publications in Chinese, among which 9073 in English and 1178 in Chinese met our inclusion criteria that the reference data needed to specify author\keyword\journal\year information. We extracted information from the reference data with Python (Version 3.4.3), analyzed the information with VOSviewer (Version 1.6.4) and presented the information with Gephi (Version 0.8.2). The preliminary results show that in the past two decades, the field of empathy research has been developing very rapidly and the annual increase in the number of publications followed Moore's law. The data suggest an eruption in research published in Chinese from 2008 as well as one in English from 2004; empathy research has seen its focus shifting from personality traits and communication\attitudes to emotion and social cognition. This field of research now focuses more on social neuro-cognition (neural-mechanisms of empathy) and emphasizes multidisciplinary collaboration, which is quite likely due to the development of scientific technology. We also found that many methods were used in empathy research, such as fMRI\MEG\PET\ERP\Eye tracking and so on, with fMRI being the most used. This clearly evidences that technology drives science. Based on the data and link prediction theory, we could speculate that: (1) future research on empathy will focus on social cognition, such as influence of empathy and executive function on pro-social behavior, paying more attention to the third variable problem; (2) to further the popular in-group and out-group research in recent years, the next step is to address social interactions among people of different races/ethnicities; and (3) researcher will try to investigate questions on the neural-mechanism of empathy and its application to neuroplasticity, and try to tell us that people’s empathic abilities can be changed.

Key words: empathy, bibliometric, topic evolution, social network analysis

摘要： 鉴于共情在个体社会生活中的重要作用，共情受到了许多研究者的关注。然而，共情相关的文献虽然逐年在积累，但是缺乏从宏观角度对其主题变化进行解读的研究。本研究借助文献计量学方法，呈现了1996年到2015年共情研究主题的演变趋势和今后可能的研究热点。结果表明，共情的年发表论文量符合摩尔定律；研究主题从早期的人格特质、态度、情绪，逐渐过渡到社会认知；注重多学科合作。今后的研究热点可能有：社会技能、道德、情绪识别与调节；跨文化跨种族的人际交往；共情的神经机制及神经可塑性。

关键词: 共情, 文献计量学, 主题变化, 社会网络分析