ArticleFrontiers in psychology2025
Bystanders witnessing social exclusion exhibit reduced physiological responses of empathy: an EEG study.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Bystanders play a crucial role in bullying interventions, with empathy serving as a key facilitator of bystanders' helping behaviors toward victims. However, the physiological evidence linking bystanders' empathic responses to prosocial behaviors is limited. In addition, differences in empathic responses between active and passive bystanders have not been investigated, although bystanders have been suggested to disengage from bullying depending on the situation. This study aimed to reveal how the involvement of bystanders modulates empathic responses while witnessing social exclusion using electroencephalography (EEG), specifically focusing on the changes in the amplitudes of frontal theta and alpha band spontaneous activities as indicators. Participants engaged in an Inclusion and Exclusion condition in two sessions of the Cyberball task: witness only and witness in participation. The results showed a significant main effect of the condition on theta band power (TBP), with a decrease in TBP while witnessing exclusion. Generally, the frontal theta power is amplified as an empathic response. However, the current results indicate that frontal theta power decreased by observing social exclusion, suggesting that, regardless of bystander situations, bystanders witnessing bullying may protect themselves by decreasing empathy or moral conflict.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.