Gender Difference Of Empathy

Empathy can be defined as the process by which an individual infers the affective state of another by generating an isomorphic affective state in the self, while retaining knowledge that the cause of the affective state is the other. In social activities, empathy, which enables people social interpersonal interact smoothly, is an important ability for others’ emotion recognition and emotion understanding. It makes it possible for human beings to understand others’subjective states and communicate with others successfully. Many researchers paid attention to empathy gender differences. A lot of self-reported questionnaire researches showed females’superiorities but there were inconsistent results in fMRI and ERP researches. Some results showed females’superiorities in empathy while some results showed no gender difference existed. The consistent results about empathy gender differences were that females did better in emotional recognition but males had superiority in self-other distinction. During empathetic self and other interactions, the awareness of the self related emotion in response to other individuals indicates a distinction between the self and the other perspectives. Previous researches about empathy gender differences in terms of self-other distinction were mainly on emotional contagion using emotional expressions or stimuli related to pain. The results showed males’superiority in self-other distinction. However, few researches have been conducted about daily positive and negative life events. Based on a previous paradigm of emotional perspective taking task, the present study investigates the gender differences of self-other distinction of empathy and neural mechanism by behavioral and fMRI experiments so as to further understand the empathy gender differences in our daily life.Exp.1 investigated the gender differences of empathy in term of self-other distinction by emotional perspective taking task by behavioral study.There were 3 factors including gender, valence and persective(2×2×2). Gender was between factor. Valence, which meant the valence of the stimuli including positive events and negative events, was within factor. Perspective including self-task and other-task was within factor. Stimuli were made based on interview and social adaptability questionnaires and were positive and negative events. The stimuli were cartoon images with sentences describing the cartoon images. The stimuli were rated before the formal experiment about the valence, understandability and inner consistence to make sure that the stimuli were easy to understand and arouse empathy. Stimuli were shown on the screen, and subjects were required to rate "how happy or distress you are in this situation as picture (Self condition) or how happy or distress she/he is in the situation (Other condition)" and the participants were needed to give emotional rating results (from 0 to 4).50 college students (26 females) finished emotional perspective taking task. The three-way ANOVA analysis was conducted. Behavioral results showed the main effect of gender was significant. The scores of females were higher than males. The main effect of valence was significant. The scores of positive events were higher than negative events. The main effect of perspective was significant too. The scores of other task were higher than self tasks. There were interation between gender and perspective. The scores of other task were higher than self task significantly for males while not for females. The results indicated that males have significantly greater self-other distinction(other task VS self task) than females on both positive condition and negative condition.In order to exclude the subjects’ confusion of self task and other task at the same procedure, Exp.2 recruited 123 subjects finishing the similar task as the Exp.l but the subjects just finished either self task or other task. There were 3 factors too(2 X 2 X 2). Gender and perspective were between factors. Valence was within factor. The main effects of valence and gender were significant. The scores of females were higher than males. The scores of positive events were higher than negative events. The main effect of perspective was not significant. The results indicated that there were interaction of gender and perspective. Males had higher emotional response scores finishing other task than self task on positive condition. There was a great trend that males scored higher finishing other task than self task on negative condition. However, no siginificant difference existed in females. Exp.2 confirmed the results in Expl.. During the empathy, males had much stronger self-other distinction ability than females.Exp.3 paid attention to the neural mechanisim of the empathy self-other distinction in Exp.l by fMRI. In Exp.3,37 Chinese undergraduates (18 females) were enrolled to complete the empathy computer-based test which was similar to Expl.. fMRI results suggested that males had higher neural activation in Left anterior cingulated cortex, Medial frontal gyrus, Left calcarine and Putamen comparing self with other perspective, and males have higher neural activation in Right precuneus comparing other with self perspective during negative condition. The BOLD signal of Right precuneus (the males self-other distinction brain area) was potsitive correlated with the behavioral results of self-other distinction. During positive task there was no significant gender difference and . there was no significant self-other distinction brain area.According to the present study, we can get the following conclusions.1)According to the behavioral results, males have superiority in self-other distinction no mater during negative or positive condition.2) Males’ superiority in self-other distinction may be related to Right precuneus only when they finished negative tasks.3) The present research provides now proof for males’s superiorities in self-other distinction. The results suggests that although the behavioral empathy is similar between males and females, the neural mechanisim may be different. During the process of empathy females mainly depend on emotional contagion while males depend on more cognitive resources to understand others’ emotional state.