Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others

“Increased pain-related activation (asterisk indicates whole-brain corrected) for women in ACC* [9, 18, 27], left FI* [242, 15,23], right FI* [30, 18,218], left SII* [260,230, 18], right SII* [63,230, 24] and brainstem* [3,218,218]; for men in left FI* [233, 33, 3] right FI [42, 33, 3] and brainstem [3,233,230].”

“It is also likely that there is some degree of interaction between the two processes, as empathic mirroring responses to the pain of others can be modulated by perceptions of their social behaviour (such as whether they are perceived to be fair or unfair; [182]).”

“, 1997), how likable the target is (i.e., Kozak, Marsh, & Wegner, 2006; Singer et al., 2006), and the group membership of the target (i.”

“For example, when we see someone accidentally cut his/her hand with a knife (Jackson et al., 2005; Singer et al., 2006; Hein et al., 2010), no additional context is required to share the target’s pain.”

“Furthermore, in a study of confederates playing an economic game and then receiving pain, the neural responses associated with empathy for the sufferer were modulated (in men at least) by the degree to which the sufferer was appraised as being fair in the game (Singer et al., 2006).”

“There is increasing evidence for a crucial involvement of anterior insula in the experience of empathy (Carr et al., 2003; Jackson et al., 2005, 2006; Singer et al., 2004, 2006; Wicker et al., 2003), but little is known about the role of this structure in aggressive behaviour.”

“One imaging study demonstrates that people derive satisfaction from seeing cooperative norm violators being punished (17).”

“…generated by investigations from diverse disciplines including brain imaging (Fehr & Rockenbach 2004; de Quervain et al. 2004; Rilling et al. 2002; Singer et al. 2006; Stone et al. 2002), electrophysiology (Stuphorn 2006; van ’t Wout et al. 2006), pharmacology (Kosfeld et al. 2005; Zak et al.…”

“005, uncorrected (note: only clusters involving five or more contiguous voxels are reported) (43, 44).”

“Such vindictive behavior is consistent with previous reports in economic games [7].”

“Neuroimaging studies have shown that empathy-related responses were signiicantly reduced in males when observing an individual who had behaved unfairly receiving pain (Singer et al., 2006).”

“Similarly, in modern laboratory studies, participants showed insensitivity to pain and suffering when the person was viewed as a wrongdoer (T. Singer et al., 2006).”

“, 2010), reduced if the person in pain has been unfair in a prior interaction (Singer et al., 2006) or are”

“…we assessed the neural network involved in overcoming one’s emotional response to an aversive stimulus that is neutral for the other using the contrast No pain: Dissimilar > Similar (i.e., needle injection into a dissimilar patient vs. a Q-tip touching a similar patient; note that both…”

“Singer et al. (2006) found that when participants played an economic game with an unfair confederate prior to scanning, male participants subsequently showed less dACC and insula in response to viewing the confederate in physical pain.”

“VC 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.”

“This distinction is often neglected (e.g., Singer et al., 2006).”

“Bilateral insular damage would be in a strategic position to disrupt the integration of higher-order visceral and associative processes with fundamental bodily states (Singer et al., 2006).”

“…empathic brain responses can be modulated by different factors such as the affective link to the other person, the perceived fairness of the other (Singer et al. 2004a, 2006), the subject’s appraisal of whether the reason the other person is suffering is justified (Lamm et al. 2007), the…”

“The receipt of past favors may thus enter into the decision of whether consolation will be provided, which is consistent with experimental empathy studies on humans, in which the degree of empathy with others varies with the history of positive or negative interactions (50, 51).”

“Other studies have shown that observing another party being treated unfairly triggers feelings of empathy (e.g., Singer et al., 2006).”

“…is usually stronger than that between the Self and the Stranger, this may also contribute to the differential empathic responses to the Loved-one and Stranger, as shown in one fMRI study that documented that affective relationship modulated the activity in the anterior insula (Singer et al., 2006).”

“…of the analyses focusing on brain activation elicited when participants either received nociceptive stimulation (self condition) or vicariously experienced their partner’s pain (other condition) largely replicated previous results obtained with a similar paradigm (e.g., Singer et al., 2004, 2006).”

“…vs. cooperative relationship with her, also seem sufficient to cause an almost complete blockage of empathic responses and can even cause anti-social responses such as counter-empathy and Schadenfreude (Decety et al., 2010; Singer et al., 2006; Takahashi et al., 2009; Yamada et al., 2011).”

“The neurobiology involved in empathy and callousness is different in males and females, with empathy-related neurocircuitry being generally more active in females (Hein & Singer, 2008; Schulte-Ruther, Markowitsch, Shah, Fink, & Piefke, 2008; Singer et al., 2006).”

“If your goal is for the target to suffer, as with a desire to punish someone who has acted unfairly (Singer et al., 2006), then you should appraise whatever contributes to the other person's wellbeing as goal-obstructive and whatever detracts from the other person's wellbeing as goalcongruent.”

“, 2009; Moayedi and Weissman-Fogel, 2009), empathy for pain (Singer et al., 2006), lack of perceived controllability (Salomons et al.”

“…underpinnings of fairness instincts, altruism, and the many other social sentiments that fall into this category (Rilling et al., 2002; Sanfey et al., 2003; de Quervain et al., 2004; King-Casas et al., 2005; Delgado et al., 2005; Singer et al., 2006; Spitzer et al., 2007 [this issue of Neuron]).”

“Enjoy these: (Boroditsky, 2000; Singer et al., 2004, 2006; Aziz-Zadeh et al., 2006; Gibbs, 2006; Wilson and Gibbs, 2007; Casasanto, 2008; Boulenger et al., 2009; IJzerman and Semin, 2009; Schubert and Koole, 2009; Landau et al., 2010; Sapolsky, 2010; Desai et al., 2011; Lee and Schwarz, 2011, 2012;…”

“This measure has been shown to positively correlate with the magnitude of neural activity related to empathy, for instance, that of insula activity during pain observation (Singer et al., 2006; Singer, et al., 2004).”

“In recent years,mathematically portrayed economic exchange games have added a new approach to assessing a subject’s model of their partner and themselves during an active interpersonal exchange (Delgado et al., 2005; King-Casas et al., 2005; Rilling et al., 2002, 2004; Sanfey et al., 2003; Singer et al., 2006).”

“Previous studies have shown that people tend to punish social norm violations (Singer et al., 2006) and are less willing to cooperate with people who have previously rejected them (Hillebrandt et al.”

“…attention (Gu and Han, 2007), cognitive appraisal (Lamm et al., 2007a), medical expertise (Cheng et al., 2007), and likeability of the person in pain (Singer et al., 2006) are significant factors that influence the participants' pain ratings as well as the neural response to the pain of others.”

“illustrated that bilateral anterior insular cortex is significantly correlated with empathy for pain, but not sensory-component of pain (Singer et al., 2004; Singer et al., 2006; Singer et al., 2008).”

“Compared to male participants, females often perform better in emotional tasks (e.g., [22]), and show more empathic brain responses to others’ emotions [4] and pain [5,19], even toward dislikable targets [ 27 ].”

“…activations in brain areas relevant for reward processing when participants witness the pain or misfortunes of outgroup members or people from other races (Avenanti, Sirigu, & Aglioti, 2010; Cikara, Botvinick, & Fiske, 2011; Hein et al., 2010; Singer et al., 2006; Xu, Zuo, Wang, & Han, 2009).”

“Singer et al. (2006) investigated the empathic neural response of men and women under fMRI.”

“Human males are also hypothesized to be more involved in decisions regarding justice than females (e.g. Singer et al. 2006), which could also be true in other primates, including chimpanzees.”

“, 2002), altruistic punishment (Singer et al., 2006), and rewards for a favored charity (Moll et al.”

“…(Keysers et al., 2004; Blakemore et al., 2005; Bufalari et al., 2007; Ebisch et al., 2008; Schaefer et al., 2009; Gazzola et al., 2012) or pain (Singer et al., 2004, 2006; Avenanti et al., 2005, 2009a; Valeriani et al., 2008; Lamm et al., 2011; Voisin et al., 2011) vicariously activates those…”

“While this conclusion may seem trivial, it actually brakes new grounds in the context of empathy research: most current models of empathy for pain or distress in human neuroscience used prerecorded stimuli [2,4,9,10,11,72,73,74] or used live interactions but prevented participants from viewing the reactions of their p…”

“Several fMRI studies (Singer et al., 2004; Morrison et al., 2004; Jackson et al., 2005; Botvinick et al., 2005; Singer et al., 2006; Saarela et al., 2007) have demonstrated that exposure to somebody in pain elicits increased activity ublished by Elsevier B.V.”

“Neural responses induced by empathy for others’ pain have also been shown to be modulated by perceived fairness (Singer et al., 2006), group membership (Forgiarini et al., 2011), emotional closeness (Beeney et al., 2011), emotional context (Han et al., 2009), self-relatedness (Perry et al., 2010),…”

“gender [20]) and individual differences in self-reported state and trait empathy [9 ].”

“Prior work has shown that social context can importantly alter our reactions to the suffering of others (de Quervain etal., 2004; Lanzetta & Englis, 1989; Singer et al., 2006).”

“For example, after witnessing a partner behave either fairly or unfairly, individuals showed decreased AI activity to perceived pain in those who played unfairly compared with those who played fairly because they did not like those who played unfairly [23].”

“Studies have also begun to indicate the general brain regions involved with the punishment of non-cooperators in dyadic trust game contexts (de Quervain et al., 2004; Singer et al., 2006).”

“Recent fMRI studies could show that the neural response to another person’s physical pain was modulated by the observer’s appraisals due to prior interactions with a protagonist [31] or own professional experience [32].”

“, 2007), as well as in other paradigms of pain empathy (Singer et al., 2006).”

“…of goaldirected actions [Fliessbach et al., 2007; Kawagoe et al., 1998; O’Doherty et al., 2004; Schultz and Romo, 1988]) in combination with behavioral and questionnaire measures suggests that people derive satisfaction from punishing norm violators [de Quervain et al., 2004; Singer et al., 2006].”

“In keeping with the notion of “mirroring,” these results suggest that the observation, or even the mere awareness [116, 117], of another person in a particular emotional state may automatically activate the neural representation of the same state in the observer.”

“Together, these findings support the hypothesis that the insula is most active when a personal norm is violated (which can be a reciprocate norm for prosocial individuals or a defect norm for proself individuals) (Singer et al., 2006; Montague and Lohrenz, 2007).”

“At a most basic level, women score higher on selfreport measures of empathy than men, which may be due to gender-role stereotypes (77) as gender differences are not clearly present in neural empathy responses [but seem to depend largely on context effects, (78)].”

“This was indicated by striatal activation during the punishment of a defector (de Quervain et al., 2004; Singer et al., 2006).”

“…this study does not assess participants’ own empathy—or their baseline use of online technology—it also provides the possibility for a negative relationship between online technology and sociability, given the relationship between empathy and trust (Batson & Moran, 1999; Singer et al., 2006).”