Synchrony with distress in affective empathy and compassion

Moderate similarity leads to empathic concern, but high similarity can also induce personal distress towards others' pain

Empathic concern and personal distress are common vicarious emotional responses that arise when witnessing someone else's pain. However, the influence of perceived similarity on these responses remains unclear. In this study, we examined how perceived similarity with an injured target impacts vicarious emotional responses. A total of 87 participants watched a video of an athlete in pain preceded by a clip describing the athlete's trajectory, which indicated either high, moderate, or low similarity to the participants. Emotional self-reports, facial expressions, gaze behavior, and pupil diameter were measured as indicators of the participants' emotional responses. Participants in the moderate- and high-similarity groups exhibited greater empathic concern, as evidenced by their display of more sadness compared with those in the low-similarity group. Furthermore, those in the moderate-similarity group exhibited less avoidance by displaying reduced disgust, indicating lower personal distress compared with those in the low-similarity condition. Nevertheless, the high-similarity group displayed just as much disgust as the low-similarity group. These findings suggest that perceived similarity enhances empathic concern to others' suffering, but that high similarity can also lead to personal distress. Future studies on empathy should explore distinct vicarious states using multimodal measurements to further advance our understanding of these processes.

Emotion contagion and physiological synchrony: The more intimate relationships, the more contagion of positive emotions

The study aimed to explore how interpersonal closeness (friends vs. strangers) and emotion type (positive vs. negative) influenced emotion contagion and physiological synchrony between interacting partners. Twenty-eight friend dyads (n = 56) and 29 stranger dyads (n = 58) participated in an emotion contagion laboratory task. In each dyad, one participant, the 'sender', was randomly asked to watch a film clip (neutral, positive, or negative), while their partner, the 'observer' passively observed the sender's facial expressions. Participants' electrocardiograms (ECG) and facial electromyography (EMG) signals were recorded using the BIOPAC system. Results revealed that observing the sender's facial expressions led to the observer's spontaneous mimicry and emotional contagion, accompanied by enhanced physiological synchrony between interacting partners. In the positive emotion condition, the observers reported more positive emotions and displayed stronger zygomaticus major activity in friend dyads than in stranger dyads. Greater physiological synchrony (heart rate and heart rate variability) between interacting partners was also observed in friend dyads than in stranger dyads in the positive emotion condition. These results indicate that positive emotion contagion is more likely to occur between close partners than negative emotion contagion.

Situational assessment of empathy and compassion: Predicting prosociality using a video-based task

Classical psychometric approaches in social science measure individuals' tendency to experience empathy and compassion. Using abstract questionnaire items, they place high demand on subjects' capacity to introspect, memorize, and generalize the corresponding emotions. We employed a Socio-affective Video Task (SoVT)-an alternative approach that measures situationally elicited emotions-and assessed its predictive power over prosocial behavior against classical questionnaires in a sample of Israeli university students. We characterized the conceptual embedding of the SoVT concerning other measures of prosocial affect and cognition, and tested group identification as an alternative precursor to prosocial behavior. Eighty participants rated their reactions to videos that presented the suffering of others or everyday scenes on scales of negative affect (providing a proxy for elicited empathy) and compassion. We then administered classical questionnaires that target empathy (the Interpersonal Reactivity Index) and compassion (the Compassionate Love Scale), as well as measures of hypothetical and real-life helping and prosocial attitudes-including conflict attitudes and intergroup bias. While compassion ratings in the SoVT failed to predict prosociality more accurately than classical questionnaires, the SoVT empathy index succeeded and correlated strongly with other precursors of prosociality. These results support video-based situational assessment as an implicit and robust alternative in the measurement of empathy-related processes.

The moderating role of attachment in the association between physiological synchrony in married couples and supportive behavior in the transition to parenthood

Despite supportive behaviors playing a central role in intimate relationships, the extent to which physiological and psychological factors are involved in the quality of the observed spousal support, remains largely unknown. From a physiological stance, cardiac synchrony has been identified as an important component involved in dyadic interpersonal interactions. This study aims to examine whether individual differences in attachment determine, at least to some extent, whether cardiac synchrony enhances or impedes the quality of the observed spousal support. Specifically, this study examines whether attachment style moderates the biobehavioral link between positive cardiac synchrony and observed spousal support. A total of 58 couples expecting their first child participated in a supportive interaction while their cardiovascular responses were recorded, and the quality of their caregiving behaviors was coded. Results indicated that couples' cardiovascular dynamics were synchronized during the supportive interaction. Furthermore, attachment moderated the association between positive cardiac synchrony and the behavioral manifestation of support, such that cardiac synchrony was negatively associated with the quality of support when offered by caregivers with higher scores of attachment anxiety. Our findings show that for those caregivers who have higher levels of anxious attachment-being synchronized with their care seeking spouses is associated with difficulties in providing effective support. We discuss these findings in the context of the emotion regulation difficulties characteristic of anxious attachment patterns. These findings suggest that future work could benefit from performing comprehensive studies that consider physiological, behavioral, and psychological constructs simultaneously.