The influence of social pain experience on empathic neural responses: the moderating role of gender

Abstract

Empathy for pain, the ability to share and understand the pain of others, plays an important role in the survival and development of individuals. Previous studies have found that social pain experience affects empathy for pain, but potential gender differences have not been considered. The stage of information processing during which gender is most likely to play a moderating role has yet to be clarified. In the current study, we set up two groups (social pain experience priming: social exclusion group; positive social interaction experience priming: social inclusion group) with a Cyberball game paradigm. We recorded the electrophysiological responses when participants were completing an empathy task. An early frontal P2 and N2 differentiation between painful stimuli and neutral stimuli was observed and females showed larger P2 amplitudes than males. At the P3 stage, in the social exclusion group, males showed similar parietal P3 amplitudes for painful and neutral stimuli, while females showed smaller P3 amplitudes for painful stimuli. At the central-parietal late positive potential (LPP) stage, females in the social inclusion group showed larger LPP amplitudes for painful stimuli than males. Our results suggest that gender plays a significant moderating role in how social pain experience affects empathy for pain during the late cognitive processing stage. Experiment 2 was designed to investigate the cognitive mechanism behind the results for the P3 component in females and the results partially confirmed our speculation. This study provides a neurophysiological basis for the dynamic gender differences in the effects of social pain experience on empathy for pain.Keywords Social pain • Gender • Empathy for pain • Event-related potentials (ERP)

From Loss of Control to Social Exclusion: ERP Effects of Preexposure to a Social Threat in the Cyberball Paradigm

“…In addition, a more heterogeneous sample would enable us to explore potential moderators of the reported effects, such as age or educational background. Recent studies already suggest gender differences in the processing of social pain [ 60 ].…”

The influence of psychological pain on purchase decision under different price contexts: An EEG study.

“…The LPP may shift spatially during the course of stimuli processing (Foti et al, 2009;MacNamara et al, 2009). Previous pain-related studies have found the widespread topographical distribution of the LPP (Cheng et al, 2017;Fan et al, 2022;Langeslag & Surti, 2017;Leutgeb et al, 2014). Based on these studies, we analyzed the amplitude of LPP with the pooled electrodes distributing over the frontal-central-parietal-occipital areas, including F3, Fz, F4, FC3, FCz, FC4, C3, Cz, C4, P3, Pz, P4, PO3, POz, and PO4.…”