Abstract
There is evidence that humans mirror others’ emotional responses: brain responses to observed and experienced emotion overlap, and reaction time costs of observing others’ pain suggest that others’ emotional states interfere with our own. Such emotional mirroring requires regulation to prevent personal distress. However, currently it is unclear whether this “empathic interference effect” is uniquely social, arising only from the observation of human actors, or also from the observation of non-biological objects in “painful” states. Moreover, the degree to which this interference relates to individual differences in self-reported levels of empathy is yet to be revealed. We introduce a modified pain observation task, measuring empathic interference effects induced by observation of painful states applied to both biological and non-biological stimuli. An initial validation study (N = 50) confirmed that painful states applied to biological stimuli were rated explicitly as more painful than non-painful states applied to biological stimuli, and also than both painful and non-painful states applied to non-biological stimuli. Subsequently, across two independent discovery (N = 83) and replication (N = 80) samples, the task elicited slowing of response times during the observation of painful states when compared to non-painful states, but the magnitude of this effect did not differ between biological and non-biological stimuli. Little evidence was found for reliable relationships between empathic interference and self-reported empathy. Caution should therefore be taken in using the current task to pursue an individual differences approach to empathic interference, but the task shows promise for investigating the specificity of the mechanism involved in regulating emotional mirroring.
Highlights
Humans are thought to “mirror” others’ emotional responses: much evidence for this claim comes from neuroimaging studies showing overlap in brain responses between observed and experienced emotion (Coll et al, 2017; Jackson et al, 2005; Singer et al, 2004)
Recent data suggest that the ability to regulate mirroring of others may be important in the emotional domain. de Guzman and colleagues demonstrated that training participants to increase self-other control in the motor domain led to a reduction in corticospinal responses indicative of personal distress when observing painful versus tactile stimulation to another’s hand
These were subjected to repeated-measures ANOVA with factors of animacy and pain
Summary
Humans are thought to “mirror” others’ emotional responses: much evidence for this claim comes from neuroimaging studies showing overlap in brain responses between observed and experienced emotion (Coll et al, 2017; Jackson et al, 2005; Singer et al, 2004). Behavioural measures, whereby participants judge the laterality of an observed hand or foot in a pain or no-pain state, indicate a response time cost of observing others’ pain, even when performing an unrelated task, suggesting that others’ emotional states interfere with our own (Brewer et al, 2018; Gu et al, 2010, 2012). This is often referred to as an “empathic interference effect.”. To determine whether empathic interference effects relate to individual differences in self-reported empathy, participants in Experiments 2 and 3 completed a number of questionnaire measures
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Schedule a callMore From: Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006)
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