Effect of empathy trait on attention to faces: an event-related potential (ERP) study

Abstract

BackgroundEmpathy is deeply linked with the ability to adapt to human social environments. The present study investigated the relationship between the empathy trait and attention elicited by discriminating facial expressions.MethodsEvent-related potentials were measured while 32 participants (17 men and 15 women) discriminated facial expressions (happy or angry) and colors of flowers (yellow or purple) under an oddball paradigm. The empathy trait of participants was measured using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1980).ResultsThe empathy trait correlated positively with both the early portion (300 to 600 ms after stimulus onset) and late portion (600 to 800 ms after stimulus onset) of late positive potential (LPP) amplitude elicited by faces, but not with LPP elicited by flowers.ConclusionsThis result suggests that, compared to people with low empathy, people with high empathy pay more attention when discriminating facial expressions. The present study suggests that differences exist in methods of adapting to social environments between people with high and low empathy.

Effect of empathy trait on attention to various facial expressions: evidence from N170 and late positive potential (LPP)

“…In particular, late LPP correlated with IRI for all facial expressions presented in the present study - happy, angry, surprised, afraid, and sad faces. We thus suggest that individuals with high empathy pay attention more than those with low empathy in the late stage (600 to 800 ms after face onset) to surprised, afraid, and sad faces, as well as to happy and angry faces [5]. Given that frontal enhancement of late LPP mirrors cognitive processing as mentioned above, the present study also indicates that empathy trait affects cognitive and voluntary attention for processing of those five facial expressions.…”

“…Given that the LPP is more positive in response to pleasant or unpleasant stimuli than to neutral stimuli [9,13,14], increased positivity of the LPP thus appears related to increased attention to stimuli [13-17]. That previous study [5] thus suggests that people with high empathy pay more attention than those with low empathy trait when discriminating between happy and angry faces.…”

Association of a Common Oxytocin Receptor Gene Polymorphism with Self-Reported ‘Empathic Concern’ in a Large Population of Healthy Volunteers

“…In line with current research [ 9 , 20 , 21 ], we calculated cumulative scores from the IRI subscales. We calculated a trait empathy score (TES) as the sum of all individual IRI scores (TES = PT+FT+EC+PD), a cognitive empathy score (CES) as the sum of perspective taking and fantasy (CES = PT+FT) and an emotional empathy score (EES) as the sum of empathic concern and personal distress (EES = EC+PD).…”

Painful faces-induced attentional blink modulated by top–down and bottom–up mechanisms

“…Pain catastrophizing is believed to play an important role in shaping the experiences of acute and chronic pain, and has been shown to be associated with attentional bias for pain-relevant stimuli ( Van Damme et al, 2002 , 2004a ). The IRI measures trait empathy; human elements such as faces and voices have been suggested to provide important cues triggering empathy ( Jabbi et al, 2007 ; Choi and Watanuki, 2014 ). The following two hypotheses were tested: (1) pain information-induced AB effects (i.e., worse target performance in the painful condition than in the neutral condition) would be observed for both tasks, and would be more significant in the top–down (dual task) model than in the bottom–up (single task) model; and (2) pain catastrophizing and/or empathy trait would be related to the target accuracy in pain condition.…”