Yamada Makiko, Decety Jean
Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, The University of Chicago, 5848 S. University Avenue, Chicago IL 60637, USA.
Pain. 2009 May;143(1-2):71-5. doi: 10.1016/j.pain.2009.01.028. Epub 2009 Feb 28.
Results from recent functional neuroimaging studies suggest that facial expressions of pain trigger empathic mimicry responses in the observer, in the sense of an activation in the pain matrix. However, pain itself also signals a potential threat in the environment and urges individuals to escape or avoid its source. This evolutionarily primitive aspect of pain processing, i.e., avoidance from the threat value of pain, seems to conflict with the emergence of empathic concern, i.e., a motivation to approach toward the other. The present study explored whether the affective values of targets influence the detection of pain at the unconscious level. We found that the detection of pain was facilitated by unconscious negative affective processing rather than by positive affective processing. This suggests that detection of pain is primarily influenced by its inherent threat value, and that empathy and empathic concern may not rely on a simple reflexive resonance as generally thought. The results of this study provide a deeper understanding of how fundamental the unconscious detection of pain is to the processes involved in the experience of empathy and sympathy.
近期功能神经影像学研究结果表明，疼痛的面部表情会在观察者的疼痛矩阵中引发共情模仿反应，即一种激活。然而，疼痛本身也预示着环境中的潜在威胁，并促使个体逃离或避开其源头。疼痛处理的这一进化上的原始方面，即因疼痛的威胁价值而产生的回避，似乎与共情关注的出现相冲突，共情关注是一种接近他人的动机。本研究探讨了目标的情感价值是否会在无意识层面影响疼痛的察觉。我们发现，无意识的负面情感处理而非正面情感处理促进了对疼痛的察觉。这表明，对疼痛的察觉主要受其内在威胁价值的影响，而且共情和共情关注可能并不像通常认为的那样依赖于简单的反射性共鸣。这项研究的结果让我们更深入地理解了疼痛的无意识察觉对于共情和同情体验所涉及的过程是多么重要。
