Empathy for pain motivates actions without altruistic effects: evidence of motor dynamics and brain activity
Open accessAbstract
Empathy has been supposed to be a proximate mechanism of altruistic behavior. We investigated whether empathy for pain drives actions without altruistic effects and how such actions modulate neural responses to others' pain. In two experiments, we asked healthy adults to press a button for no reason when viewing video clips showing faces with pain expressions receiving needle penetration or faces with neutral expressions receiving a cotton swab touch. Experiment 1 found that participants pressed a button with greater response force when watching painful than non-painful stimuli. Participants who reported greater unpleasant feelings pressed the button harder when viewing painful stimuli. Experiment 2 revealed that passively viewing painful vs non-painful stimuli increased blood-oxygen-level-dependent signals in the middle cingulate cortex, supplementary motor cortex, and bilateral second somatosensory and inferior frontal cortex, which, however, were reduced by the action of button press without altruistic effects. In addition, individuals who reported higher personal distress illustrated greater decrease of the second somatosensory activity induced by button press. Our results indicate that empathy for pain motivates simple actions without altruistic effects that in turn reduce neural responses to others' pain, suggesting a functional role of action execution in self distress relief when viewing others' suffering.
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The effect size of brain activities in response to others' suffering was between 0.39 and 0.84.
“On the basis of the previous fMRI study of empathy for pain (Han et al., 2017), the effect size of brain activities (including aMCC, bilateral AI and bilateral SII) in response to others' suffering was between 0.39 and 0.84 (a middle effect size).”
From A neurobiological association of revenge propensity during intergroup conflict (2020) · cites this paper as Han et al., 2017
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- Authors
- Han, X., He, K., Wu, B., Shi, Z., Liu, Y., Luo, S., Wei, K., Wu, X., & Han, S.
- Affiliations
- Peking University (CN)
- The Military General Hospital of Beijing PLA (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Han, Shihui
- Venue
- Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2017-02-17
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 893-901
- ISSN
- 1749-5016 (ISSN-L)
- 1749-5024
- PMC
- PMC5472110
- OpenAlex
- W2589932811
- Cited by
- 23
- References
- 51
- Citations by year
- 2025: 3 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 2
- FWCI
- 4.31
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Empathy and Medical Education
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- empathy for pain, altruism, action motivation, middle cingulate cortex, supplementary motor area, secondary somatosensory cortex, inferior frontal cortex, personal distress, motor dynamics
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Altruism, Brain, Brain Mapping, Empathy, Female, Gyrus Cinguli, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Motivation, Oxygen, Pain, Photic Stimulation, Somatosensory Cortex
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