Group empathy for pain is stronger than individual empathy for pain in the auditory modality.

Abstract

Humans live in collective groups and are highly sensitive to perceived emotions of a group, including the pain of a group. However, previous research on empathy for pain mainly focused on the suffering of a single individual ("individual empathy for pain"), with limited understanding of empathy for pain to a group ("group empathy for pain"). Thus, the present study aimed to investigate the cognitive neural mechanisms of group empathy for pain in the auditory modality. The study produced group painful voices to simulate the painful voices made by a group, and recruited 34 participants to explore differences between their responses to group painful voices and individual painful voices using the event-related potential (ERP) techniques. The results revealed that group painful voices were rated with higher pain intensity, more negative affective valence, and larger P2 amplitudes than individual painful voices. Furthermore, trait affective empathy scores of the participants were positively correlated with their P2 amplitudes of group painful voices. The results suggested that the group empathy for pain may facilitate affective empathetic processing in auditory modality.