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Self-Interest Induces Counter- Empathy at the Late Stage of Empathic Responses to Others’ Economic Payoffs

Previous studies have found that individuals exhibit empathic responses when others are treated unfairly. However, there remains a lack of clarity over the extent to which self-interest regulates these empathic responses, and in identifying which component of empathy is more likely to be affected. T...

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Autores principales: Jie, Jing, Luo, Pinchao, Zhuang, Mengdi, Li, Beibei, Pang, Yu, Li, Junjiao, Zheng, Xifu
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6398428/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30858815
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00372
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author Jie, Jing
Luo, Pinchao
Zhuang, Mengdi
Li, Beibei
Pang, Yu
Li, Junjiao
Zheng, Xifu
author_facet Jie, Jing
Luo, Pinchao
Zhuang, Mengdi
Li, Beibei
Pang, Yu
Li, Junjiao
Zheng, Xifu
author_sort Jie, Jing
collection PubMed
description Previous studies have found that individuals exhibit empathic responses when others are treated unfairly. However, there remains a lack of clarity over the extent to which self-interest regulates these empathic responses, and in identifying which component of empathy is more likely to be affected. To investigate these issues, an experiment was designed based on a money distribution task with two conditions [observation condition (OC) vs. participation condition (PC)], and carried out using scalp-recorded event-related potentials (ERPs). Behavioral data showed that the participants’ empathic responses were consistent with their coplayers’ emotional expressions in the OC, whereas they were inconsistent with the coplayers’ expressions in the PC. The electrophysiological data showed that the neural encoding of facial expressions (reflected in the N170) was not affected by self-interest. However, the late stage of empathic responses (LPP) showed a decline when participants’ self-interest was involved. Disadvantageous inequality and relatively fair distribution to others elicited a more pronounced feedback-related negativity (FRN) than advantageous inequality distribution in both the OC and PC. As the late stage of empathic responses is also indexed by the LPP amplitude, these results indicate that the participants were more concerned for their own outcomes than for others’ benefits when self-interest was involved, which reduced their empathy toward their coplayers at the late stage of empathic responses.
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spelling pubmed-63984282019-03-11 Self-Interest Induces Counter- Empathy at the Late Stage of Empathic Responses to Others’ Economic Payoffs Jie, Jing Luo, Pinchao Zhuang, Mengdi Li, Beibei Pang, Yu Li, Junjiao Zheng, Xifu Front Psychol Psychology Previous studies have found that individuals exhibit empathic responses when others are treated unfairly. However, there remains a lack of clarity over the extent to which self-interest regulates these empathic responses, and in identifying which component of empathy is more likely to be affected. To investigate these issues, an experiment was designed based on a money distribution task with two conditions [observation condition (OC) vs. participation condition (PC)], and carried out using scalp-recorded event-related potentials (ERPs). Behavioral data showed that the participants’ empathic responses were consistent with their coplayers’ emotional expressions in the OC, whereas they were inconsistent with the coplayers’ expressions in the PC. The electrophysiological data showed that the neural encoding of facial expressions (reflected in the N170) was not affected by self-interest. However, the late stage of empathic responses (LPP) showed a decline when participants’ self-interest was involved. Disadvantageous inequality and relatively fair distribution to others elicited a more pronounced feedback-related negativity (FRN) than advantageous inequality distribution in both the OC and PC. As the late stage of empathic responses is also indexed by the LPP amplitude, these results indicate that the participants were more concerned for their own outcomes than for others’ benefits when self-interest was involved, which reduced their empathy toward their coplayers at the late stage of empathic responses. Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-02-25 /pmc/articles/PMC6398428/ /pubmed/30858815 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00372 Text en Copyright © 2019 Jie, Luo, Zhuang, Li, Pang, Li and Zheng. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Jie, Jing
Luo, Pinchao
Zhuang, Mengdi
Li, Beibei
Pang, Yu
Li, Junjiao
Zheng, Xifu
Self-Interest Induces Counter- Empathy at the Late Stage of Empathic Responses to Others’ Economic Payoffs
title Self-Interest Induces Counter- Empathy at the Late Stage of Empathic Responses to Others’ Economic Payoffs
title_full Self-Interest Induces Counter- Empathy at the Late Stage of Empathic Responses to Others’ Economic Payoffs
title_fullStr Self-Interest Induces Counter- Empathy at the Late Stage of Empathic Responses to Others’ Economic Payoffs
title_full_unstemmed Self-Interest Induces Counter- Empathy at the Late Stage of Empathic Responses to Others’ Economic Payoffs
title_short Self-Interest Induces Counter- Empathy at the Late Stage of Empathic Responses to Others’ Economic Payoffs
title_sort self-interest induces counter- empathy at the late stage of empathic responses to others’ economic payoffs
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6398428/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30858815
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00372
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