Empathy for pain: The effects of prior experience and sex

Abstract

Greater degrees of perceived similarity, being female and higher estimated pain were linked to a stronger 'emotional reaction', whereas previous exposure to pain facilitated 'perspective taking'. Pointing out similarities between people and their past experiences, as well as focusing on the imagined discomfort being felt by another person, may modulate empathy for pain.

The Role of Gender in the Interaction Between Self-Pain and the Perception of Pain in Others

“…15,43 Indeed, having experienced a painful situation similar to the one observed in others increases empathy reports for others' pain 2,33 and coherent affective context between the observer and the target also increases empathic responses. 17 However, the results from correlation analyses showed that the increase in pain ratings due to self-pain for male FEP was positively correlated with state and trait anxiety as well as fantasy capacity.…”

“…15,34 Also, shared representations might be more extensive when the observer and the target share traits such as gender. 33,34 To clarify the relationship between the experience of self-pain, others' pain, and empathy, we asked healthy male and female participants to rate the intensity of the pain perceived in different male and female facial expressions of pain (FEP) while they received painful or nonpainful thermal stimulations. Two opposing hypotheses were posited in accordance with the 2 different theoretical models described:…”

Racial Bias in Pain Perception and Response: Experimental Examination of Automatic and Deliberate Processes

“…While we did not have specific hypothesis related to perceiver sex, this main effect is consistent with a recent study suggesting women may rate the pain of others as more intense than men. 51 While there are few studies on perceiver sex differences in the perception of the pain of other people, and most do not find main effects of perceiver sex on pain perception, 1,67 hypotheses can be made based on the empathy literature. Several studies have shown that sex differences in empathy are related to differences motivation, not ability, and are due to empathy-related gender role expectations.…”

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

“…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).…”