Do We Feel the Same Empathy for Loved and Hated Peers?
Résumé
Empathy allows us to understand and react to other people's feelings and sensations; we can more accurately judge another person's situation when we are aware of his/her emotions. Empathy for pain is a good working model of the behavioral and neural processes involved in empathy in general. Although the influence of perspective-taking processes (notably ``Self'' vs. ``Other'') on pain rating has been studied, the impact of the degree of familiarity with the person representing the ``Other'' perspective has not been previously addressed. In the present study, we asked participants to adopt four different perspectives: ``Self'', ``Other-Most-Loved-Familiar'', ``Other-Most-Hated-Familiar'' and ``Other-Stranger''. The results showed that higher pain ratings were attributed to the Other-Most-Loved-Familiar perspective than to the Self, Other-Stranger and Other-Most-Hated-Familiar perspectives. Moreover, participants were quicker to rate pain for the Other-Most-Loved-Familiar perspective and the Self-perspective than for the other two perspectives. These results for a perspective-taking task therefore more clearly define the role of familiarity in empathy for pain.