Characteristics of vicarious touch reports in a general population

Abstract

Vicarious sensory perception occurs when one feels touch or pain while observing others experiencing these sensations. Here we examined vicarious sensory perception in a large sample of undergraduate students (N = 422) using videos from the Validated Touch-Video Database, which depict various tactile interactions and have been independently rated for hedonic qualities, arousal levels, and perceived threat. A substantial 83% of participants reported sensations such as touch, tingling, pressure when observing the touch videos, with 53% of participants reporting pain when observing painful touch. Reported sensations often mirrored the location of touch seen in the videos. Women were more inclined to report vicarious touch than men, and did so in more trials on average. There was also a modest but significant correlation between stronger vicarious touch experiences and higher emotional empathy scores. The frequency and intensity of reported sensations strongly correlated with the rated arousal of the videos, with painful videos being most arousing and eliciting the most frequent and intense responses. The valence of the reported sensations aligned with the assigned valence ratings of the touch videos. Pleasant videos typically induced sensations like ticklishness, tingling, or warmth, whereas painful videos elicited feelings of pain, pressure, or coldness. Similar sensations were reported, though less frequently, for videos depicting touch on non-human objects. Our criteria, consistent with prior research, suggested a high prevalence of potential mirror-touch (6%) and mirror-pain (20%) synaesthesia in our sample. Mirror-touch synaesthetes primarily described exteroceptive sensations like touch and pressure, contrasting with non-synaesthetes who more often reported tingling sensations. Overall, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of vicarious sensory perception in the general population with implications for understanding mirror-sensory synaesthesia and empathy.