Subjective Socioeconomic Status Affects Pain Empathy: The Moderation Effect Of Situation And Emotion

Differences in socio-economic status will lead to different levels of empathy.Social cognitive theory holds that people with lower socio-economic status have a higher level of empathy;Processing mode theory holds that people with higher socio-economic status have a higher level of empathy;There is also research evidence that there is no relationship between socio-economic status and prosocial behavior.In order to explore the reasons for the many differences in this result,this study aims to explore the regulatory variables of the relationship between the two factors from the two factors of situation and emotion,and try to explain the reasons for the reversal result of people with higher socio-economic status on the level of empathy.The details are as follows:Experiment 1 studied the relationship between subjective socio-economic status and pain empathy.The modified Mac Arthur subjective economic status scale was used to measure subjective socio-economic status,so as to better fit the current situation of domestic college students;The measurement of pain empathy adopts the picture inducing paradigm,that is,the pictures of hands or feet in pain or non-pain state are presented to the subjects,and the pain score is made.The results confirmed the view of social cognitive theory that the level of pain empathy in low subjective socio-economic status was higher than that in high subjective socio-economic status.Some studies have shown that based on the consideration of reputation and self-esteem,the public situation of donation scenario will directly reverse the prosocial behavior of people with high socio-economic status.On this basis,in Experiment 2,situational factors(public situation and anonymous situation)were added as adjustment variables before the measurement of pain empathy,that is,in the public situation,the subjects knew their score and personal information would be sent to the expert group for secondary evaluation,while the anonymous situation was sent to the expert group for secondary evaluation without providing personal information and performance.The results of Experiment 2 also found that in the public situation,the subjects with high subjective economic status will show a higher level of pain empathy,but at the same time,the subjects with low subjective economic status will show a higher and more significant level of pain empathy than the subjects with high subjective economic status;On the contrary,in the anonymous situation,there is no significant difference in the level of subjective social class.The results of Experiment 2 show that the public situation is of great significance to the high and low subjective socio-economic status.Some studies believe that the result of reversal behavior of subjects with high socio-economic status in the public situation is that the prosocial behavior publicly displayed produces the expected sense of pride(self-oriented positive emotion)and becomes the motivation to improve the level of pain empathy in the future.In addition,based on the research on rights and emotions,improving rights will increase the experience and expression of positive emotions,while reducing rights will increase the experience and expression of negative emotions.In Experiment 3,before the measurement of pain empathy,the steps of emotional manipulation were added,that is,the subjects were asked to recall the contents of the corresponding emotions(the things that make you feel most proud and guilty and the daily emotion of nearly a week as the neutral baseline emotion),and simple written description was required to strengthen the activation of relevant emotions.At the same time,Experiment 3also added guilt emotion(self-oriented negative emotion)as a comparative reference.The results showed that for subjects with high subjective socio-economic status,compared with those in guilt and neutral emotion,being in Pride did significantly increase their level of pain empathy,but there was no significant difference between guilt and neutral emotion;For subjects with low subjective economic status,compared with neutral emotion,pride or guilt will significantly increase their level of pain empathy,but there is no significant difference between pride and guilt.The results of Experiment 3 show that pride is of great significance for high and low subjective socio-economic status.To sum up,the relationship between socioeconomic status and empathy may be adjusted by situational factors and emotional factors,that is,subjects with high socioeconomic status will significantly improve their empathy level based on considerations such as reputation and self-esteem in the public situation,resulting in feelings of pride.At the same time,this emotion will also become the driving force to improve their empathy level in the future.In addition,for the performance of subjects with low subjective socio-economic status,there is a result that is inconsistent with the previous research conclusions,that is,in the public situation,subjects with low subjective socio-economic status will also show a higher level of empathy,and will also arouse a higher level of pain empathy when experiencing pride and guilt.In short,based on the conclusions of this study,it is not difficult to find that the relationship between socio-economic status and empathy is not as simple as plane and linear.In addition to the situational and emotional factors in this study,there may also be the regulation of other factors,such as the relative deprivation of all levels,the influence of target levels and group differences.The role of these factors needs to be further confirmed by future research.