Abstract
How does witnessing a hateful person in pain compare to witnessing a likable person in pain? The current study compared the brain bases for how we perceive likable people in pain with those of viewing hateful people in pain. While social bonds are built through sharing the plight and pain of others in the name of empathy, viewing a hateful person in pain also has many potential ramifications. In this functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study, Caucasian Jewish male participants viewed videos of (1) disliked, hateful, anti-Semitic individuals, and (2) liked, non-hateful, tolerant individuals in pain. The results showed that, compared with viewing liked people, viewing hateful people in pain elicited increased responses in regions associated with observation of physical pain (the insular cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and the somatosensory cortex), reward processing (the striatum), and frontal regions associated with emotion regulation. Functional connectivity analyses revealed connections between seed regions in the left ACC and right insular cortex with reward regions, the amygdala, and frontal regions associated with emotion regulation. These data indicate that regions of the brain active while viewing someone in pain may be more active in response to the danger or threat posed by witnessing the pain of a hateful individual more so than the desire to empathize with a likable person's pain.
Highlights
When we watch a film that involves the downfall of a dangerous antagonist, the moment of his demise draws our focus to the pain he experiences as a result of his behavior
A previous functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging study considered whether activity in the pain matrix is modulated by racial group membership (Xu et al, 2009)
Whole brain analyses When comparing hateful targets in the pain condition with hateful targets in the control condition, we found increased activity in the right anterior insula, bilateral posterior orbital gyrus, bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), left superior frontal gyrus (SFG), bilateral dorsal premotor cortex, left paracentral gyrus, bilateral precuneus, bilateral inferior parietal lobule (IPL), right anterior middle temporal gyrus (MTG), bilateral extrastriate body area (EBA), right temporal occipital gyrus (TOG), left anterior internal capsule, left thalamus, and right cerebellum
Summary
When we watch a film that involves the downfall of a dangerous antagonist, the moment of his demise draws our focus to the pain he experiences as a result of his behavior. Witnessing the suffering of a protagonist elicits empathy for his suffering, and perhaps a shared awareness of his physical pain. Comparing these experiences, we can wonder which experience will draw a greater response at the level of the brain. Observation of in-group members experiencing pain was associated with increased activity in the ACC and the insula compared with viewing out-group members receiving the same stimulus. This study suggests that perception of these racial categories modulates activity in brain regions associated with pain processing, and may be related to our increased empathy and sensitivity to viewing in-group members in pain (Xu et al, 2009). Other factors have been found to modulate activity in the pain matrix, such as: the perceived fairness of others (Singer et al, 2006), experience with the type of painful stimulus, e.g., acupuncturists viewing needle injections (Cheng et al, 2007), interpersonal love (Chen et al, 2010), viewing individuals who experience pain differently than ourselves (Lamm et al, 2010), or different social contexts (Akitsuki and Decety, 2009)
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