The effect of emotional information from eyes on empathy for pain: A subliminal ERP study.
Facial expressions are deeply tied to empathy, which plays an important role during social communication. The eye region is effective at conveying facial expressions, especially fear and sadness emotions. Further, it was proved that subliminal stimuli could impact human behavior. This research aimed...
| Main Authors: | , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2019-01-01
|
| Series: | PLoS ONE |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226211 |
| _version_ | 1819016509762043904 |
|---|---|
| author | Juan Song Yanqiu Wei Han Ke |
| author_facet | Juan Song Yanqiu Wei Han Ke |
| author_sort | Juan Song |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Facial expressions are deeply tied to empathy, which plays an important role during social communication. The eye region is effective at conveying facial expressions, especially fear and sadness emotions. Further, it was proved that subliminal stimuli could impact human behavior. This research aimed to explore the effect of subliminal sad, fearful and neutral emotions conveyed by the eye region on a viewer's empathy for pain using event-related potentials (ERP). The experiment used an emotional priming paradigm of 3 (prime: subliminal neutral, sad, fear eye region information) × 2 (target: painful, nonpainful pictures) within-subject design. Participants were told to judge whether the targets were in pain or not. Results showed that the subliminal sad eye stimulus elicited a larger P2 amplitude than the subliminal fearful eye stimulus when assessing pain. For P3 and late positive component (LPC), the amplitude elicited by the painful pictures was larger than the amplitude elicited by the nonpainful pictures. The behavioral results demonstrated that people reacted to targets depicting pain more slowly after the sad emotion priming. Moreover, the subjective ratings of Personal Distress (PD) (one of the dimensions in Chinese version of Interpersonal Reactivity Index scale) predicted the pain effect in empathic neural responses in the N1 and N2 time window. The current study showed that subliminal eye emotion affected the viewer's empathy for pain. Compared with the subliminal fearful eye stimulus, the subliminal sad eye stimulus had a greater impact on empathy for pain. The perceptual level of pain was deeper in the late controlled processing stage. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-21T02:48:46Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-159934dfa19f400a9fcc2129fdbafe2e |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1932-6203 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-21T02:48:46Z |
| publishDate | 2019-01-01 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PLoS ONE |
| spelling | doaj.art-159934dfa19f400a9fcc2129fdbafe2e2022-12-21T19:18:29ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032019-01-011412e022621110.1371/journal.pone.0226211The effect of emotional information from eyes on empathy for pain: A subliminal ERP study.Juan SongYanqiu WeiHan KeFacial expressions are deeply tied to empathy, which plays an important role during social communication. The eye region is effective at conveying facial expressions, especially fear and sadness emotions. Further, it was proved that subliminal stimuli could impact human behavior. This research aimed to explore the effect of subliminal sad, fearful and neutral emotions conveyed by the eye region on a viewer's empathy for pain using event-related potentials (ERP). The experiment used an emotional priming paradigm of 3 (prime: subliminal neutral, sad, fear eye region information) × 2 (target: painful, nonpainful pictures) within-subject design. Participants were told to judge whether the targets were in pain or not. Results showed that the subliminal sad eye stimulus elicited a larger P2 amplitude than the subliminal fearful eye stimulus when assessing pain. For P3 and late positive component (LPC), the amplitude elicited by the painful pictures was larger than the amplitude elicited by the nonpainful pictures. The behavioral results demonstrated that people reacted to targets depicting pain more slowly after the sad emotion priming. Moreover, the subjective ratings of Personal Distress (PD) (one of the dimensions in Chinese version of Interpersonal Reactivity Index scale) predicted the pain effect in empathic neural responses in the N1 and N2 time window. The current study showed that subliminal eye emotion affected the viewer's empathy for pain. Compared with the subliminal fearful eye stimulus, the subliminal sad eye stimulus had a greater impact on empathy for pain. The perceptual level of pain was deeper in the late controlled processing stage.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226211 |
| spellingShingle | Juan Song Yanqiu Wei Han Ke The effect of emotional information from eyes on empathy for pain: A subliminal ERP study. PLoS ONE |
| title | The effect of emotional information from eyes on empathy for pain: A subliminal ERP study. |
| title_full | The effect of emotional information from eyes on empathy for pain: A subliminal ERP study. |
| title_fullStr | The effect of emotional information from eyes on empathy for pain: A subliminal ERP study. |
| title_full_unstemmed | The effect of emotional information from eyes on empathy for pain: A subliminal ERP study. |
| title_short | The effect of emotional information from eyes on empathy for pain: A subliminal ERP study. |
| title_sort | effect of emotional information from eyes on empathy for pain a subliminal erp study |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226211 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT juansong theeffectofemotionalinformationfromeyesonempathyforpainasubliminalerpstudy AT yanqiuwei theeffectofemotionalinformationfromeyesonempathyforpainasubliminalerpstudy AT hanke theeffectofemotionalinformationfromeyesonempathyforpainasubliminalerpstudy AT juansong effectofemotionalinformationfromeyesonempathyforpainasubliminalerpstudy AT yanqiuwei effectofemotionalinformationfromeyesonempathyforpainasubliminalerpstudy AT hanke effectofemotionalinformationfromeyesonempathyforpainasubliminalerpstudy |