The Influence Of Facial Attractiveness On Pain Empathy: The Moderating Role Of Moral Judgment

The so-called “empathy” refers to the individual’s understanding of the emotional emotions and mental state of others and the speculation about their behavior,which is commonly known as “empathy”.As a special form of empathy,pain empathy refers to empathy for the pain of others.Pain empathy is of great significance to the survival and development of human beings,on the one hand,it can enhance prosocial behavior and promote interpersonal relationships;On the other hand,people are alert to life-threatening stimuli and stay away from danger.Many studies have shown that the degree of empathy for pain in others is affected by many factors,among which face attractiveness and moral judgment are important factors affecting pain empathy.The effect of face attraction on pain empathy is still controversial,and different scholars have different views.So how does face attraction affect pain empathy? In addition,individuals usually make good and bad evaluations of others from the moral level,so when individuals have pain empathy for others(people with different faces of attraction),will the moral level of others also affect the individual’s degree of empathy for pain? And which factor is more important for the impact of facial attractiveness and level of moral judgment on pain empathy? In order to explore the above questions,the following experiments were carried out in this study.A total of two behavioral experiments are included,both using the image priming paradigm.Experiment 1 used two factors of 2(face type:highly attractive face,low attraction face)× 2(pain type: pain picture,non-pain picture)in the experimental design of the subject,and explored the degree of pain empathy for others under different face attraction conditions.The results showed that compared with the highly attractive faces,the participants responded longer to the characters with the lowattraction faces and scored higher pain empathy ratings.Experiment 2used 2(face type: highly attractive face,low attraction face)× 2(moral judgment type: high moral judgment,low moral judgment)× 2(pain type: pain picture,non-pain picture)three-factor experimental design to explore the degree of pain empathy for others under different levels of moral judgment.The results showed that compared with low moral judgment,the participants scored higher pain empathy rating for characters with high moral judgment.Contrary to the results of experiment one,participants rated the pain empathy rating of highly attractive face characters higher.The experimental results show that the degree of individual empathy for the pain of others will be affected by many factors.(1)The degree of pain empathy of individuals to others is affected by face attraction: under the condition of face attraction factors,individuals tend to have more pain empathy responses to low-attractive faces;(2)Moral judgment plays a moderating role between face attraction and pain empathy: under the conditions of face attraction and moral level,individuals tend to have more pain empathy responses to highly attractive faces;(3)The moral factor is more important than the attractiveness of the face,that is,the beauty of the mind is the true beauty.