The Effects Of Social Economic Situation On Empathy For Pain

From the perspective of emotional orientation, empathy can be defined as the emotional response to the viewer’s emotional state of others. In the view of cognitive orientation, it can be defined to understand other people’s ideas and emotional states. Empathy is considered as a catalyst and a proximate factor of prosocial behavior, which enable us to act positively to others. However, as social animals, the capacity of human empathy is more complex than a mere resonance with the target’s painful state. Recent brain imaging studies demonstrated that human empathy for pain was modulated by social factors, such as the affective link between individuals, the intentionality of the perceived agency who induced the pain and the social economic status.On the one hand, empathy for pain is modulated by the observers’ factors; On the other hand, it is also modulated by objects’ factors. Therefore, the present study combined them together to investigate whether empathy for pain is modulated by social economic situation.The present research includes two studies, The aim of study 1 was to investigate how the subjective economic status modulated empathy for pain. study 2 employed Event-related potentials to explore how the time course of social economic status effect on pain for empathy.Experiment 1 was a 2 (subjective socioeconomic status:high subjective economic status group, low subjective economic status group)×2 (stimulus type:pain, non-painful) hybrid design, which subjective socioeconomic status as between-subjects design, stimulate type as within-subject design. The dependent variables were tested for rating score of pain for empathy (1-9 rating scale,1=no pain,9=very painful), uncomfortable severity score (1-9 scale score,1=no uncomfortable,9=very uncomfortable). A repeated-measure ANOVAs for pain intensity yielded a main effect for subjective socioeconomic status (SSS) and stimulus type, indicating that pain intensity in high subjective socioeconomic status was significantly higher than that in low subjective socioeconomic status. However, unpleasantness ratings revealed no main effect for subjective socioeconomic status (SSS).Experiment 2 with ERP technology investigated the impact of socio-economic status of the neural mechanisms of pain empathy. Participants were selected by scores of Subjective socioeconomic scale (SSS) in order to control the difference of subjective socioeconomic. Three occupations, namely university teachers, business managers and party and government leaders, represent high social economic status. However, the rickshaw pullers, waste collection man and rural workers represent low social economic status. They were made into picture, which were presented as cues and pairs of pain vs non-painful picture as the target stimulus. They were asked to judge stimulus type while the ERP were recording.After being recorded, the participants were asked to rate the level of pain and unpleasantness that they thought the individual in the pictures was experiencing by a 9-point Likert-type scale from no pain to extreme pain and no effect to extreme unpleasantness, where 1 indicated no pain or no effect and 9 indicated extreme pain or extreme unpleasantness. Behavioral data showed that the main effect for stimulus type was found, revealing that pain intensity for painful picture was significantly higher than that of non-painful picture.EEG results showed that in the early time window of P1, there is no main effect for social economic status. For the N1 component, a main effect was found for social economic status and stimulus type, with a more negative amplitude elicited by high social economic status than did by low social economic status. In terms of P3 component, the analysis of P3 amplitude revealed that none of the main effects were significant, However, the interaction between hemisphere, social economic status and stimulus type was significant. These results reveal that subjective economic status effected empathy for pain via emotional regulation and the regulation occured at the automated processing stage.