Social Brain, Body and Action Lab, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada.
Cogn Emot. 2020 Mar;34(2):316-328. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2019.1625307. Epub 2019 Jun 2.
Recent research has shown that observing others in pain leads to a general facilitation of reaction times. The current study sheds further light on the relationship between pain observation and reaction time by exploring how bottom-up processes, in the form of perceived pain intensity, and top-down processes, in the form of explicit instructions to empathise, influence response facilitation after pain observation. Participants watched videos of a hand getting pierced by a needle or touched by a Q-tip. To manipulate bottom-up information, participants saw videos depicting either deep or shallow insertion of the needle. To investigate potential top-down modulation, half the participants were explicitly requested to empathise with the person in the video, while the other half were told to simply watch and attend to the video. Results from two experiments corroborate previous results showing response facilitation after pain observation. Critically, experiment 2 provides robust evidence that explicit instructions to empathise with a person in pain strengthen response facilitation. We discuss these results considering social cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology studies of empathy and pain observation.
最近的研究表明，观察他人的痛苦会导致反应时间普遍加快。本研究通过探索以下两种方式如何影响疼痛观察后的反应促进作用，进一步阐明了疼痛观察与反应时间之间的关系：一种方式是作为自上而下过程的感知疼痛强度，另一种方式是作为自下而上过程的明确同理心指示。参与者观看手被针刺或被 Q-tip 触碰的视频。为了操纵自下而上的信息，参与者观看的视频显示针的插入深度不同。为了调查潜在的自上而下的调节，一半的参与者被明确要求对视频中的人表示同情，而另一半则被要求简单地观看和关注视频。两项实验的结果证实了先前的研究结果，即观察到疼痛后会促进反应。至关重要的是，实验 2 提供了有力的证据，表明对疼痛中的人表示同情的明确指示会增强反应促进作用。我们考虑了社会认知神经科学和同理心与疼痛观察的实验心理学研究来讨论这些结果。
