Behavioral Investigation of the Influence of Social Categorization on Empathy for Pain: A Minimal Group Paradigm Study

Abstract

Research on empathy for pain has provided evidence of an empathic bias toward racial ingroup members. In this study, we used for the first time the “minimal group paradigm” in which participants were assigned to artificial groups and required to perform pain judgments of pictures of hands and feet in painful or non-painful situations from self, ingroup, and outgroup perspectives. Findings showed that the mere categorization of people into two distinct arbitrary social groups appears to be sufficient to elicit an ingroup bias in empathy for pain.

How pain empathy depends on ingroup/outgroup decisions: A functional magnet resonance imaging study

“…There were no differences in behavioral data concerning empathy for pain for ingroup and outgroup members. These results are contrary to the behavioral outcome for experimentally generated groups following a minimal group paradigm in a previous study (Montalan et al, 2012). Irrespective of the preceding findings, for racial ingroup and outgroup, there are findings supporting a racial ingroup bias, with a greater extent of this bias in the socially dominant group, for behavioral data as well (Dunham et al, 2008;Avenanti et al, 2010;Azevedo et al, 2013).…”

“…Other studies have found activation in somato-sensoric areas as well (Morrison et al, 2004;Botvinick et al, 2005;Jackson et al, 2005;Jackson et al, 2006a). Empathy for pain is modulated by pain intensity (Hein and Singer, 2008); contextual factors (Hein and Singer, 2008) such as imitation (De Coster et al, 2013); observer characteristics (Hein and Singer, 2008) such as attention processing and perspective taking ability; alexithymia (Bernhardt and Singer, 2012); prior pain experience (Preis and Kroener-Herwig, 2012;Preis et al, 2013); age (Chen et al, 2014); sex (Coll et al, 2012;Preis and Kroener-Herwig, 2012;Preis et al, 2013); and variables of the observed person (Hein and Singer, 2008) such as affection, similarity to the observer (Preis and Kroener-Herwig, 2012) or group membership (Hein and Singer, 2008;Xu et al, 2009;Hein et al, 2010;Cheon et al, 2011;Bernhardt and Singer, 2012;Montalan et al, 2012).…”

“…Results for groups generated by a minimal group paradigm have been rare. A recent study has referred to an ingroup bias for behavioral data: Empathy ratings for ingroup members have shown higher amplitude compared with ratings for outgroup members (Montalan et al, 2012). Therefore, the influence of experimentally induced groups on empathy for pain has still been unexplored.…”

“…This has been well examined for real groups (Dickter and Bartholow, 2007;Avenanti et al, 2010;Campbell and de Waal, 2011;Cheon et al, 2011;Bruneau et al, 2012). However, whether empathy is also affected by minimal group membership has rarely been explored (Montalan et al, 2012).…”

A Less Attractive Feature of Empathy: Intergroup Empathy Bias

“…For example, previous research found that similar group membership between a helper and target (regardless of whether the group was real or artiicially determined) strengthened the role of empathy and helping [46]. Similarly, mere categorization of participants into non-relevant social groups appears suicient to facilitate an ingroup bias in empathy for physical pain [47].…”