Reducing Social Stress Elicits Emotional Contagion of Pain in Mouse and Human Strangers

Abstract

Empathy for another's physical pain has been demonstrated in humans [1] and mice [2]; in both species, empathy is stronger between familiars. Stress levels in stranger dyads are higher than in cagemate dyads or isolated mice [2, 3], suggesting that stress might be responsible for the absence of empathy for the pain of strangers. We show here that blockade of glucocorticoid synthesis or receptors for adrenal stress hormones elicits the expression of emotional contagion (a form of empathy) in strangers of both species. Mice and undergraduates were tested for sensitivity to noxious stimulation alone and/or together (dyads). In familiar, but not stranger, pairs, dyadic testing was associated with increased pain behaviors or ratings compared to isolated testing. Pharmacological blockade of glucocorticoid synthesis or glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptors enabled the expression of emotional contagion of pain in mouse and human stranger dyads, as did a shared gaming experience (the video game Rock Band) in human strangers. Our results demonstrate that emotional contagion is prevented, in an evolutionarily conserved manner, by the stress of a social interaction with an unfamiliar conspecific and can be evoked by blocking the endocrine stress response.

Does mindfulness meditation increase empathy? An experiment

“…Mindfulness meditation may thus counteract the harmful effect of stress on empathy. Indeed, when people are stressed, blocking their stress response restores their empathy (Martin et al, 2015). Since participants in our study were not in a stressful situation (e.g., they were not socially excluded themselves), this might explain why the mindfulness exercise did not improve empathy overall.…”

“…One study showed that people are generally less empathic toward strangers than toward familiar individuals, mainly because interacting with strangers is stressful. Blocking people's endocrine stress response, then, increased people's empathy toward strangers (Martin et al, 2015). Thus, mindfulness-based training could increase empathy simply by reducing stress (Chiesa & Serretti, 2009), a process that is not unique to mindfulness meditation.…”

Resilience: what is it, why do we need it, and can it help us?

“…6 Unstressed doctors are safer and better at their job. 7 There are many definitions of resilience but it is best considered as the individual's ability to adapt to and manage stress and adversity: essential qualities for GPs.…”

Laboratory environmental factors and pain behavior: the relevance of unknown unknowns to reproducibility and translation

“…In most cases, animals are tested in groups, and social factors can alter results as well. We and others have found that pain sensitivity can be increased (by emotional contagion [110][111][112][113] or social SIH 88,111 ), or decreased (by social SIA 88,110 or social buffering [114][115][116][117][118] ) when animals are in close proximity (through either visual 110 or olfactory 113,119 mechanisms), depending on their social status (siblings, familiars, or strangers) and the threat level determined by their degree of physical access to each other. Our laboratory surprisingly observed that the mere presence of a male (but not female) experimenter in the testing room could produce stress in mice and rats, producing olfactory-mediated SIA that robustly affected apparent "baseline" pain sensitivity 119 .…”