ArticleCognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience2017
Social contexts modulate neural responses in the processing of others' pain: An event-related potential study.
Article in Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Meta-analysis of ERP investigations of pain empathy underlines methodological issues in ERP research.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2018Pooled it
- Music induced happy mood suppresses the neural responses to other's pain: Evidences from an ERP study.Scientific reports · 2017Trial
- Empathy for pain in humans and animals differs based on species, psychosocial and cultural factors.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Approach or Avoidance? The Impact of Pain Expectation on Pain Empathy: An ERP Study.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Scarcity mindset facilitates empathy for social pain and prosocial intention: behavioral and neural evidences.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- Peer Status Influences In-Group Favoritism in Pain Empathy During Middle Childhood: Evidence from Behavioral and Event-Related Potentials Studies.Brain sciences · 2024Article
- The Empathy for Pain Stimuli System (EPSS): Development and preliminary validation.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
- Intact painful sensation but enhanced non-painful sensation in individuals with autistic traits.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Scarcity mindset reduces empathic responses to others' pain: the behavioral and neural evidence.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2023Article
- Are women more empathetic than men? Questionnaire and EEG estimations of sex/gender differences in empathic ability.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2023Article
- Empathy for pain in individuals with autistic traits during observation of static and dynamic stimuli.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
- ERP Indicators of Self-Pain and Other Pain Reductions due to Placebo Analgesia Responding: The Moderating Role of the Fight-Flight-Freeze System.Brain sciences · 2021Article
- The Effect of Social Distance on Intertemporal Choice of Reward Processing: An Event-Related Potentials Study.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2021Article
- The linkage between first-hand pain sensitivity and empathy for others' pain: Attention matters.Human brain mapping · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Two hypotheses have been proposed regarding the response that is triggered by observing others' pain: the "empathizing hypothesis" and the "threat value of pain hypothesis." The former suggests that observing others' pain triggers an empathic response. The latter suggests that it activates the threat-detection system. In the present study, participants were instructed to observe pictures that showed an anonymous hand or foot in a painful or non-painful situation in a threatening or friendly social context. Event-related potentials were recorded when the participants passively observed these pictures in different contexts. We observed an interaction between context and picture in the early automatic N1 component, in which the painful pictures elicited a larger amplitude than the non-painful pictures only in the threatening context and not in the friendly context. We also observed an interaction between context and picture in the late P3 component, in which the painful pictures elicited a larger amplitude than the non-painful pictures only in the friendly context and not in the threatening context. These results indicate that specific social contexts can modulate the neural responses to observing others' pain. The "empathic hypothesis" and "threat value of pain hypothesis" are not mutually exclusive and do not contradict each other but rather work in different temporal stages.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.