The Effect of Empathy on the Attentional Processing of Painful and Emotional Stimuli

Abstract

Background Empathy is shown to affect the attentional processing of painful stimuli and emotional stimuli. However, whether the attentional effects on emotional stimuli depend on emotional valence and the nature of the relationship between the attentional effects on different stimuli are still unknown. Methods In the present study, 25 high-empathy (HE) participants and 25 low-empathy (LE) participants were recruited to perform dot-probe tasks on painful stimuli and emotional stimuli. Results The results showed that HE individuals had weak attentional disengagement to painful pictures. More importantly, regarding emotional pictures, HE individuals showed attentional avoidance to negative emotion pictures, while LE individuals showed attentional bias to positive emotion pictures. Correlation analysis showed that the attentional bias score and attentional disengagement score were only associated with each other within the same category of stimuli (painful, positive or negative stimuli). Conclusion These results revealed that HE individuals mainly showed attentional avoidance to negative stimuli, while LE individuals mainly showed attentional bias to positive stimuli.

Selective attention to pain and empathy: Studying frequent blood donors

“…The findings of the current study were in line with the findings of Bi et al. ( 2021 ) and Pilch et al. ( 2020 ).…”

“…Specifically, similar to Bi et al. ( 2021 ) who found significant positive association between empathy and selective attention to pain‐related information (i.e., images others’ different body parts in painful situations), significant correlation was found between higher empathy and greater selective attention to pain‐related information (pain faces) in the current study. Moreover, in line with Pilch et al.…”

“…The power calculation was performed using Gpower (Faul et al., 2007 ) to ensure there is sufficient power to detect the intended selective attention difference between the groups. A sample of 24 participants (minimum 18 years old) for each group was determined adequate for finding the selective attention effect with a medium effect size ( d = 0.6) and a statistical power of 0.8 for α = .05 (Bi et al., 2021 ). Participants had normal vision (or corrected‐to‐normal).…”

“…To date, only a few studies examined the association between selective attention and empathy in the context of pain. Bi et al (2021) compared those with high and low levels of self-reported empathy in their attention to pain-related images using a dot-probe paradigm. The painrelated and neutral stimuli were images of foot, forearm, or hand in painful or nonpainful situations, respectively.…”

Associations between the personal style of the therapist, empathy and theory of mind among Argentine psychotherapists

“…Conversely, a stronger reaction to the patient's negative emotions might bias the therapist's attention towards the more emotionally salient or intense topics during the sessions, narrowing their focus. Quite in fact, it has been shown that more empathic subjects (1) show an attentional bias towards painful facial stimuli (Yan et al, 2016), ( 2) have more difficulty disengaging from painful stimuli (Bi et al, 2021), and (3) experience stronger emotional interference effects in stroop tasks (Thompson et al, 2022).…”