The interaction between pain and attractiveness perception in others

Jing Meng,Zuoshan Li,Lin Shen,Weiwei Peng,Xiong Li

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-62478-x

Jing Meng, Zuoshan Li + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-62478-x

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Abstract

When considering the “beauty-is-good” stereotype, facial attractiveness should facilitate empathy for pain. On the other hand, having in mind the “threat value of pain” hypothesis, pain cues would be more salient, and thus, its processing would not suffer influence by facial attractiveness. The event-related potential (ERP) allows investigating if one of these theories could predict individuals’ responses regarding the perception of pain or attractiveness in others’ faces. We tracked 35 participants’ reactions to pictures depicting more and less attractive faces displayed in a painful and non-painful condition. Each participant completed the following two tasks when presented the images of faces: (1) the Pain Judgment Task, in which participants should rate the pain levels, and (2) the Attractiveness Judgment Task, in which participants should rate the attractiveness. Results showed that participants exhibited differences rating more and less attractive faces in the non-painful pictures, but not in the painful pictures. These results were observed in P3 and LPC amplitudes in the Pain Judgment Task, as well as in N170 and P2 amplitudes in the Attractive Judgment Task. Our results suggested that both explicit and implicit empathic pain processing inhibited the processing of attractiveness perception. These findings supported the “threat value of pain” hypothesis. Besides, in the Attractive Judgment Task, the N170 and P2 amplitudes for more attractive painful pictures were larger than those for more attractive non-painful pictures. In contrast, no significant difference was found between the amplitudes for painful and non-painful, less attractive pictures. Our findings suggest that explicit facial attractiveness processing for more attractive face images potentiates the implicit empathy for pain processing, therefore partly supporting the “beautiful-is-good” stereotype.

Highlights

When considering the “beauty-is-good” stereotype, facial attractiveness should facilitate empathy for pain
The present study aimed to explore the interplay between others’ pain and physical attractiveness as perceived by participants
ACCs to the more attractive faces were lower than to the less attractive faces (More attractive painful: 69.82 ± 29.30% vs. Less attractive painful: 94.53 ± 6.93%, F1,34 = 22.14, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.39), whereas no significant difference was observed between the more attractive and less attractive faces for non-painful pictures (More attractive non-painful: 81.24 ± 18.45% vs. Less attractive non-painful: 85.25 ± 27.00%, F1,34 = 0.44, p = 0.512, ηp2 = 0.01). These results suggest that participants tended to judge more attractive faces with pain cues as less attractive

Summary

Introduction

When considering the “beauty-is-good” stereotype, facial attractiveness should facilitate empathy for pain. Results showed that participants exhibited differences rating more and less attractive faces in the non-painful pictures, but not in the painful pictures. Our results suggested that both explicit and implicit empathic pain processing inhibited the processing of attractiveness perception These findings supported the “threat value of pain” hypothesis. Our findings suggest that explicit facial attractiveness processing for more attractive face images potentiates the implicit empathy for pain processing, partly supporting the “beautiful-is-good” stereotype. According to the “threat value of pain” hypothesis, others’ pain, serving as warning signals to avoid or escape[5,6,7,8], would elicit negative emotional reactions[21,22,23,24], suppressing the perception of physical attractiveness, as evidenced by decreased attractiveness ratings and neural responses

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