An alternative may be to use cognitive parameters.
Schulte-Rüther et al. [51] suggest that, based on recent neuroimaging work, males and females may use different cognitive and emotional processes for empathic responding which may lead to gender differences in empathy.
In certain situations people may use specific cognitive emotion regulation strategies, which may differ from other strategies that could be used in other different contextual situations.
Powerless to change past events, focusing on activities that might lead towards "forgetting" a traumatic event may allow youth to use cognitive distancing to overcome harmful memories.
We also highlight some examples of species that may be using cognitive mechanisms to change their behaviour to avoid conflict with humans.
For example, when adolescents are in challenging or emotionally demanding situations, they may use less sophisticated cognitive coping strategies for handling the situations (Kingery et al. 2006; Oetzel and Scherer 2003).
When making treatment decisions, patients may use one or more cognitive strategies.
Skills training may use a variety of cognitive and behavioural pain-coping strategies, such as activity pacing and pleasant activity scheduling.
They may use reaction-time studies from cognitive psychology (Arico et al. 2011), empirical evidence from neuroscience (Allman and Woodward 2008; Greene et. al. 2001), evolutionary biology or other sources.
