School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences and Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Institutes of Psychological Sciences, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
J Mol Neurosci. 2021 Feb;71(2):252-261. doi: 10.1007/s12031-020-01644-2. Epub 2020 Jun 30.
To feel other's pain would elicit empathy. Some theorists hypothesized that observing other's pain may activate the primary emotion of maternal care instinct, which may function as a precursor of empathy. The maternal care instinct and empathy share the same genetic background and neuroendocrine underpinnings. An extensive body of research has shown that maternal behaviors relate to the oxytocinergic system, which has a strong influence on empathy. These studies suggest that the maternal care instinct may mediate the effect of oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) on empathy. To provide evidence for this mediation, we used the subscale of CARE in Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS) to measure the maternal care instinct and tested two OXTR single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), rs53576 and rs13316193, in 880 high school participants (588 females, 292 males; M = 16.51 years old, SD = 0.65). Results showed that the genotype of rs13316193 was indirectly associated with empathy via CARE, suggesting a mediating role of CARE in the pathway from OXTR to empathy. These findings may contribute to an understanding of how empathy emerges when one witnesses another person in pain.
感受到他人的痛苦会引起同理心。一些理论家假设，观察他人的痛苦可能会激活母性关怀本能的主要情绪，而这种本能可能是同理心的前身。母性关怀本能和同理心具有相同的遗传背景和神经内分泌基础。大量研究表明，母性行为与催产素系统有关，催产素系统对同理心有很强的影响。这些研究表明，母性关怀本能可能在催产素受体基因（OXTR）对同理心的影响中起中介作用。为了提供这种中介作用的证据，我们使用情感神经科学人格量表（ANPS）的 CARE 子量表来衡量母性关怀本能，并在 880 名高中生参与者（588 名女性，292 名男性；M=16.51 岁，SD=0.65）中测试了两个 OXTR 单核苷酸多态性（SNP），rs53576 和 rs13316193。结果表明，rs13316193 的基因型通过 CARE 与同理心呈间接相关，这表明 CARE 在 OXTR 与同理心之间的关系中起着中介作用。这些发现可能有助于理解当一个人看到另一个人处于痛苦中时，同理心是如何产生的。
