More Empathic Responses for Pain in Facial Muscles Are Modulated by Actor’s Disattractiveness and Being Female, & Perspective Taken by Observer

Empathic Responses for Pain in Facial Muscles Are Modulated by Actor’s Attractiveness and Gender, and Perspective Taken by Observer. Kamila Jankowiak-Siuda, Anna Duszyk, Aleksandra Dopierała, Krzysztof Bujwid, Krystyna Rymarczyk and Anna Grabowska. Front. Psychol., March 21 2019. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00624

Subject: Although empathy for pain is an often studied phenomenon, only few studies employing electromyography (EMG) have investigated either emotional responses to the pain of others or factors that modulate these responses. The present study investigated whether the sex and attractiveness of persons experiencing pain affected muscle activity associated with empathy for pain, the corrugator supercili (CS) and orbicularis oculi (OO) muscles, in male and female participants in two conditions: adopting a perspective of “the other” or “the self.” Fifty one participants (27 females) watched movies showing situations that included the expression of pain, with female and male and more and less attractive actors under both conditions, while the CS and OO EMG were recorded. Perspective did not affect CS muscle activity, but OO muscle activity tended to be higher in women than men under the imagine-self condition. CS muscle activity, but not OO muscle activity, was modulated by the actors’ gender and attractiveness. CS muscle activity was stronger in response to the pain of less attractive than more attractive actors, and to the pain of female actors compared to male actors. Moreover, a positive correlation was found between empathic concern, as a trait, and CS muscle activity, but only in the imagine-self condition.


Introduction

One hundred and fifteen years ago, having described empathy as Einfühlung (“feeling into”), Theodor Lipps suggested that the perception of emotions of other persons triggers analogous emotions in the observer (Montag et al., 2008). The phenomenon assumes the existence of autonomic and somatic reactions in the observer leading to similar emotions, so-called “inner imitation.” Emotional mimicry can be considered an expression of imitation. This phenomenon is also an aspect of contemporary concepts of empathy, such as the perception-action model (PAM) of empathy (Preston and de Waal, 2002). PAM posits that the perception of the emotional state of others leads to the automatic activation of a representation of the same emotion in the observer, including autonomic and somatic reactions. Thus, PAM points to emotional mimicry as the most primal component of empathy (Hatfield et al., 1992; Preston and de Waal, 2002). This idea has received support from findings showing that the prevention of motor imitation of facial expressions makes recognizing emotions and affective sharing difficult (Sonnby-Borgström, 2002; Oberman et al., 2007; Dimberg et al., 2011). However, recent studies have revealed that facial mimicry is a more dynamic process than initially assumed (Sato et al., 2008; Rymarczyk et al., 2016a). Some studies indicate that facial mimicry depends on a number of modulating factors (Hess and Fischer, 2014; Seibt et al., 2015). The reaction of facial muscles to basic emotions depends on the sex or other characteristics of the observer. For example, the facial muscles have a noticeably greater reaction to basic emotions in highly empathic people (Dimberg et al., 2011; Balconi and Canavesio, 2016; Rymarczyk et al., 2016b). In addition, the reaction of the facial muscles is altered by levels of oxytocin (Korb et al., 2016). The type of the stimulus (dynamic vs. static) (Weyers et al., 2006; Sato et al., 2008; Rymarczyk et al., 2016a,b, 2018) also affects the reaction of the facial muscles to basic emotions.

Only a few studies using electromyography (EMG) have investigated emotional responses to the pain of others and the factors that modulate these reactions. Sun et al. (2015) showed that the activity of the corrugator supercili (CS) muscle increased in a group of research subjects who watched a short movie clip in which a person experienced pain (needle sticking), in comparison with a group who watched only part of the same movie (needle sticking the finger). Lamm et al. (2008) showed that the activity of the orbicularis oculi (OO) muscle was higher in study participants who watched a movie showing reactions to pain and who were instructed to imagine that they had experienced the pain (the “imagine-self” perspective), as compared to the “imagine-others” perspective (imagine what the person in the movie feels). In addition, Lepron et al. (2015) showed how a sense of responsibility for the suffering of another person affects emotional mimicry. Greater activity was observed in the OO and CS muscles and greater discomfort was reported by subjects who felt greater responsibility for other people’s pain, compared to subjects in the lesser responsibility condition.

In essence, two muscles (the CS and OO) may have special significance for the processing of empathy with pain. It should be noted that Lamm et al. (2008) and Sun et al. (2015) found positive correlations between the activity of the CS and OO muscles with scales measuring empathy, i.e., empathic concern (feeling compassion for others) and perspective taking (tendency to take another person’s perspective), from the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) (Davis, 1980).

Attractiveness is considered an important factor in social cognition for perceiving and empathizing with the pain of others (Jankowiak-Siuda et al., 2015). Research has shown that attractiveness has a particularly strong relationship with the reactions of the facial muscles of observers. For example, the attractiveness of a person’s face was found to be negatively correlated with the activation of the CS and the legator labii superioris (LLS) while viewing photographs of attractive and unattractive people (Principe and Langlois, 2011). Less attractive faces activated the LLS and CS more strongly. Neither the gender of the observer nor the gender of the person in the photograph were related to the activity of these facial muscles (Principe and Langlois, 2011). To date no relationship has been found between the reactions of the facial muscles of observers empathizing with a suffering person and the gender or attractiveness of the person suffering from pain. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine whether the gender or attractiveness of a person experiencing pain affects the activity of muscles associated with empathy for pain (the CS and OO) in male and female participants. In addition, the study measured the correlations of the electrical activity of the CS and OO facial muscles with the three empathy dimensions of the IRI (Davis, 1980): empathic concern, personal distress (feelings directed toward oneself), and perspective taking.

The perception of pain and empathy depends on adopting perspectives – whether we imagine how another person feels (“imagine-others”) or how we would feel (“imagine-self”) (Batson et al., 1997; Lamm et al., 2008). Imagining others evokes empathic concern, whereas imagining the self produces both empathic concern and personal distress; however, the latter is more in the way of egoistic negative emotions (Batson et al., 2003; Lamm et al., 2007). Thus, it is interesting to test whether perspective taking affects the activity of the CS and OO muscles when the attractiveness of the target varies. Based on available research findings we predict CS activity to be higher when observing unattractive women, no matter what perspective was adopted. However, we also predict OO activity to be higher for the imagine-self perspective than for the imagine-others perspective. Finally, we expect positive correlations between CS activity and empathic concern and between OO activity and perspective-taking.

The participants in the present study were shown dynamic pain stimuli in movies showing natural, everyday situations, in which they saw the whole body and the facial expressions of pain of actors (the targets) and the location of the injury. These stimuli were used because they have higher ecological validity than movies showing only the injured body part or expressions that mimic pain (Sun et al., 2015). Moreover, Sun et al. (2015) suggest that such situations are more likely to elicit empathy for pain. The present research measured relative changes in the activity of the CS and OO muscles during consecutive scenes. This enabled us to determine how the activity of the muscles changed in different scenes (showing the target’s neutral facial expression, the action leading to the pain, the actual pain stimulus, and the target’s facial expression of pain) depending on the sex and attractiveness of the target and the perspective taken by the observer.