ArticleBritish journal of pain2020
The role of observer's fear of pain and health anxiety in empathy for pain: an experimental study.
Article in British journal of pain, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 12 citations in OpenAlex.
- Empathy for pain in humans and animals differs based on species, psychosocial and cultural factors.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Examining the relationship between perceived fear of pain and empathic tendencies of nursing students and the affecting factors: a cross-sectional study.BMC nursing · 2025Article
- 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
- Biological Markers of Musculoskeletal Pain: A Scoping Review.Journal of pain research · 2024Article
- Pain Empathy and Its Association with the Clinical Pain in Knee Osteoarthritis Patients.Journal of pain research · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionEmpathy for pain is influenced by several factors, including observer beliefs. This study aimed to test the associations between empathy for pain, fear of pain and health anxiety.
methodsA total of 182 participants rated their levels of empathy towards 16 images (8 female and 8 male) of individuals in pain and provided measures of fear of pain, health anxiety as well as age, sex and the presence of current pain.
findingsBoth fear of pain and health anxiety were positively associated with empathy for pain, but in the regression model, only fear of pain was a significant positive predictor of overall empathy for pain and its three subscales: affective distress, vicarious pain and empathic concern. The presence of pain also predicted overall empathy for pain, affective distress and vicarious pain.Observer's sex and age were not significant. The pattern of results remained the same when we repeated the analysis separately for images with males and females.
conclusionThe results suggest that more fearful observers, and those in current pain themselves, have higher levels of empathy for pain. Future research should examine the mechanisms underlying this relationship and how fear of pain may influence empathic behaviours towards people in pain.
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