ArticleFrontiers in psychology2014
Acute psychosocial stress and emotion regulation skills modulate empathic reactions to pain in others.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Understanding stress from a cultural perspective: the role of self-construal.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- (State) empathy: how context matters.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Review
- Article
- Stress-induced cortisol response predicts empathy for pain: The role of task-based connectivity between the insula and sensorimotor cortex during acute stress.Neurobiology of stress · 2024Article
- Downsides to the empathic brain? A review of neural correlates of empathy in major depressive disorder.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2024Review
- Scarcity mindset reduces empathic responses to others' pain: the behavioral and neural evidence.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2023Article
- Physicians prescribe fewer analgesics during night shifts than day shifts.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- An individual perspective on psychological safety: The role of basic need satisfaction and self-compassion.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Patient and Therapist In-Session Cortisol as Predictor of Post-Session Patient Reported Affect.Brain sciences · 2021Article
- Social evaluation under stress: Does acute stress affect social attributions and eye gaze?Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2021Article
- Stressed connections: cortisol levels following acute psychosocial stress disrupt affiliative mimicry in humans.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- The role of observer's fear of pain and health anxiety in empathy for pain: an experimental study.British journal of pain · 2020Article
- Uncovering the influence of social skills and psychosociological factors on pain sensitivity using structural equation modeling.Journal of pain research · 2017Article
- Low Mood Leads to Increased Empathic Distress at Seeing Others' Pain.Frontiers in psychology · 2017Article
- Exploring autistic-like traits relating to empathic attitude and psychological distress in hospital pharmacists.International journal of clinical pharmacy · 2015Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
Psychosocial stress affects resources for adequate coping with environmental demands. A crucial question in this context is the extent to which acute psychosocial stressors impact empathy and emotion regulation. In the present study, 120 participants were randomly assigned to a control group vs. a group confronted with the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), an established paradigm for the induction of acute psychosocial stress. Empathy for pain as a specific subgroup of empathy was assessed via pain intensity ratings during a pain-picture task. Self-reported emotion regulation skills were measured as predictors using an established questionnaire. Stressed individuals scored significantly lower on the appraisal of pain pictures. A regression model was chosen to find variables that further predict the pain ratings. These findings implicate that acute psychosocial stress might impair empathic processes to observed pain in another person and the ability to accept one's emotion additionally predicts the empathic reaction. Furthermore, the ability to tolerate negative emotions modulated the relation between stress and pain judgments, and thus influenced core cognitive-affective functions relevant for coping with environmental challenges. In conclusion, our study emphasizes the necessity of reducing negative emotions in terms of empathic distress when confronted with pain of another person under psychosocial stress, in order to be able to retain pro-social behavior.
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