The Influence Of Facial Attraction And Social Status On Social Pain Empathy

Empathy is a process of bringing an individual into other things and generating emotion,and it is a process of humanizing the object.In the social environment,it has a powerful interaction and bonding effect of human trace.Social pain empathy is the empathy generated by an individual for the social experience of others,which can be seen everywhere in life.The research on empathy induced by social pain has very practical research significance.According to previous studies,facial attractiveness,as one of the main social judgment cues of individuals,is undoubtedly an important factor affecting pain empathy.According to the general conclusion of previous studies,in the study of pain empathy,when the subject acts as the observer,compared with the highly attractive target,the low-attractive target is more likely to induce the pain empathy of the observer.Social status also has a similar effect on pain empathy.As an observer,subjects will reduce their pain empathy level with the improvement of their social status.In addition,social status has a moderating effect on the attractiveness of faces.It was found in a study on the recognition of target faces by subjects that when the social status of the target changes,the influence of the attractiveness of the target itself will be offset or even inversely increased.At the same time,this study studied the influence of facial attraction on social pain empathy from both physiological and behavioral levels,as well as the regulating role of social status,so as to have a more systematic and comprehensive understanding of the internal psychological process and physiological response.The research shows that the study of event-related potential has the advantage of high temporal resolution.In terms of research paradigm,in order to avoid the defects of low ecological validity in the network throwing paradigm,this study adopts the modified chat room paradigm and combines it with the event-related potential technology.According to previous studies,three parallel studies are constructed based on the three measurement indicators of social status,education,occupation and income:Experiment 1: 2(education: high education,low education)×2(face attraction:high face attraction,low face attraction)×2(social pain: social rejection(pain),social acceptance(non-pain))experiment among subjects.The results showed that when the observed target experienced social rejection,under the condition of higher education,the score of the high attractiveness target in social pain empathy score was lower than that of the low attractiveness target.Under the condition of low education,there is no significant difference between the score of target attractiveness.The results showed that,at the higher educational level,the higher facial attractiveness target caused more social pain empathy than other experimental conditions.Experiment 2: 2(occupation: high occupation,low occupation)×2(facial attraction: high facial attraction,low facial attraction)×2(social pain: social rejection(pain),social acceptance(non-pain))experiment among subjects.The results of experiment 2 show that P2 amplitude induced by rejection condition is significantly larger than that induced by acceptance condition under the condition of low occupational status and low attractiveness.When the observed target encountered social rejection,P1 induced by the target with low facial attractiveness was significantly greater than that induced by the target with high facial attractiveness in the low occupational status.However,there is no significant difference in P1 amplitude induced by target’s facial attractiveness level in high occupational status.The results showed that the exclusion condition occupied more attention resources;When the target was rejected,the arousal level of the subjects to the target with low occupation and low attractiveness was higher than that of other experimental conditions.Experiment 3: 2(income: high income,low income)×2(face attraction: high face attraction,low face attraction)×2(social pain: social rejection(pain),social acceptance(non-pain))experiment among subjects.The results of experiment 3 showed that when the observed target experienced social rejection,under the condition of low income,the target with low facial attractiveness received lower scores in the social pain empathy score than the target with high attractiveness.Under the condition of high income,there was no significant difference in the score of the target’s facial attractiveness level.The results showed that when the target was rejected,the low facial attractiveness target made the subjects produce more social pain empathy than other experimental conditions.This study found that social status had a moderating effect on the influence of facial attractiveness on social pain empathy.When the measure of social status was related to education,individuals were more inclined to recognize positive traits(high education,high attractiveness),and targets with positive traits were more likely to obtain individual pain empathy when they experienced social pain.When the measure of social status is related to occupation or income,individuals are more inclined to empathize with negative traits.When the target with negative traits experiences social pain,it is easier to get individual empathy and understanding,and the level of social status or facial attractiveness is improved.Can slow down or decrease the level of pain empathy in individuals.The results of this study further explain the influence of social factors of social pain empathy on individual empathy.In real life,whether in the process of student communication or teachers’ handling of students’ problems,when the event related to social pain is encountered,the interference caused by social status and facial attractiveness can be eliminated through the results of this experiment.It is of great significance to treat the problem objectively and rationally and deal with the problem from the essence of the event after rational thinking for preventing the negative effects of social pain phenomenon.In conclusion,this study confirms that when the level of facial attractiveness is inconsistent with the level of social status,the impact of facial attractiveness on social pain empathy will be moderated by social status.