Research On The Influence Of Subjective Social Status On Pain Empathy

Empathy,can refer to a kind of mental ability or a state of mind,generally speaking,empathy refers to the individual's perception or imagination on other individual's feelings,and to some extent experience to other individual's feelings.Empathy for pain as out the hot spot in the research of empathy,refers to the individual to other individual's pain feeling of a kind of empathy.Empathy can be divided into empathy for physical pain and empathy for social pain.Empathy for physical pain is the state of empathy caused by the physical pain of the pain object,while empathy for social pain is the state of empathy caused by the social pain of the pain object,which is usually social exclusion.Social exclusion refers to the rejection and neglect of individuals by others or other groups.Social exclusion can be triggered in the laboratory through certain methods.In this study,from the perspective of the relationship between social status and empathy for pain,trying to explore the relationship between them,and empathy for physical pain were used in experiment 1,empathy for social pain were used in experiment 2.Refer to the social status,we choose the subjective social status,which is a good prediction effect of mental health and more suitable for college students.Experiment 1 aims to explore the relationship between subjective social status and empathy for physical pain,it is a 2(picture type: painful pictures,neutral pictures)x 2(subjective social status: high-status and low-status)mix design,the picture type is the within-subject factor,the subjective social status is the between-subject factor,the experiment selected 59 undergraduate subjects,including high status group of 28 individuals,and low status group of 31 individuals.The dependent variable was the rating score of the pictures.The results of experiment 1 showed that the scores of painful pictures in the low-status group were significantly higher than those in the highstatus group.Experiment 2 used the chatroom paradigm and eye-track technology to explore the relationship between social status and empathy for social pain.It is a 2(social exclusion: exclusion,inclusion)×2(social status of selectors: high-status,low-status)within-subject design.In this experiment,26 college students were selected,and the dependent variables of the experiment is eye-track indexes.The analysis showed that in the feedback stage of the chatroom task,compared with the fake subject was included,the subjects showed the response of pupil diameter dilation when the fake subject was excluded.In the area of interest of the fake subjects,the average diameter of the pupil when fake subject was excluded was significantly larger than that of the pupils when fake subject was included.When the area of interest was fake subject and the selector was high-status,the pupil diameter under the condition of exclusion was significantly larger than that under the condition of inclusion.In the feedback stage,refers to the total fixation duration of the two areas,it is always shown that the fixation time of the included object is significantly higher than that of the excluded object.Under the condition of exclusion,when the selector is high-status,the total fixation duration of the two candidates is longer than when the selector is of low-status.In summary,this study considered that subjective social status is an influential factor of empathy for pain,that is,subjects with low subjective social economic status had a higher level of empathy for pain than subjects with high subjective social economic status.The results of experiment 2 showed that the subjects paid more attention to the included candidate in the chat room task,but the pupil data showed that when they paid attention to the excluded candidate,they had stronger attention involvement and physiological arousal.In addition,participants paid more attention to the process of the task when the selector was high-status.These evidences suggest that the chatroom paradigm can indeed trigger subjects' empathy for social pain towards the fake subject,and that this empathy is influenced by the social status of the selector.