Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Cognitive Psychology Unit, Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands.
Sci Rep. 2024 Jul 15;14(1):16252. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-66787-3.
As social animals, humans tend to voluntarily engage in pro-social behavior to prevent harm to others. However, to what extent prosocial behavior can be reflected at the level of less voluntary cognitive processes remains unclear. Here, we examined how threat to others modulates exogenous attention. Fifty-four participants performed an exogenous spatial cueing task where the participant's performance determined whether electric shocks would be delivered either to themselves or to their anonymous co-participant. Threat of shock to the co-participant elicited orienting and reorienting responses that were faster than in the safe condition and did not differ from performance when participants avoided shocks to themselves. This attentional improvement was not due to speed-accuracy trade off and was associated with arousal, i.e., increased pupil dilation in both threat conditions. Together, these findings suggest that pro-social behavior triggers automatic attentional processes which may be relevant for providing immediate help without relying on reflexive processes.
作为社会动物，人类往往会自愿采取亲社会行为，以防止他人受到伤害。然而，亲社会行为在多大程度上可以反映在不太自愿的认知过程中尚不清楚。在这里，我们研究了他人受到威胁如何调节外源性注意。54 名参与者进行了外源性空间线索任务，参与者的表现决定了电击是施加在自己身上还是施加在匿名的共同参与者身上。对共同参与者的电击威胁引起了定向和重新定向反应，比在安全条件下更快，与参与者避免自己受到电击时的表现没有区别。这种注意力的提高不是由于速度-准确性权衡，而是与唤醒有关，即两种威胁条件下瞳孔都有扩张。总之，这些发现表明，亲社会行为触发了自动注意过程，这可能有助于在不依赖反射过程的情况下立即提供帮助。
