An Event-Related Potentials Investigation Of The Influence Of Empathy And Emotions On Conflict Processing

Conflict is a kind of social interact behavior in interpersonal interaction, and it can be seen everywhere in social activities. There are some new point of views on the study of interpersonal conflict, such as discussing the physiological reaction of interpersonal conflict and the impact on human physical and mental health from physiology. Some studies have found that empathy is of great significance in inhibiting violence and developing morality (Shechtman,2002).Emotion also have influence to empathy, mainly displays in improvement of positive emotions and inhibition of negative emotions (Eisenberg, 2000).However, whether empathy still exist inhibitory effect on the average intensity of conflicts, and at the same time considering the influence of the emotion on conflicts and its neural mechanisms are rarely related to explore.Therefore, this study attempts to to explore the influence of empathy and emotion on conflict processing in profit conflicts situation, using ERP technology to compare the difference of brain potentials when performing different conflicts tasks between the participants from low-empaty and the participants from high-empathy, and to deeply analysis the influence of empathy on conflict processing from the view of neural mechanism.This study included two experiments both with ERPs. Experiment 1:23 undergraduate college students from high and low empathy ability was selected (low empathy group of 13), using the ultimatum game as the experiment task, to explore the differences on brain potentials of different types of profit conflicts between these two group participants. Experiment 2:21 undergraduate college students with high and low empathy ability as the subjects (low empathy group of 10), using images from Chinese affective picture system as emtions induced materials, and also using the ultimatum games, to examine the differences between these two group subjects on brain potentials in the profit conflict in different emotions. The current study reached following conclusions:(1) In different types of profit conflict tasks, high empathy individuals’reaction time is longer than low empathy ability individuals’, and the rejection rate is lower on high empathy individuals.(2) In the frontal and central area between 220-350 ms MFN amplitude, low empathy group on conflicting proposals induced more negative MFN than no conflicting proposals, while high empathy group difference was not significant.(3) In the late reappraisal stage (500-800 ms), no conflict proposal caused more motivated in low empathy group, while in high empathy group, different types of proposal caused no significant motivation.(4) Compared with the negative and neutral condition, under positive emotions, two groups shows a lower refusal to action.In conflict situations, high empathy showed less refusal behavior in positive emotion.(5) High empathy group affected by positive emotions in 250-400 ms MFN amplitude between the negative, and different proposals induced MFN amplitude difference is not obvious;Low empathy group is not significantly affected by the different mood, conflicting proposal is better than no conflicting proposed induced MFN.(6) In 500-700 ms late reappraisal stage, low empathy group under neutral condition showed differences on LPP amplitude, while no significant difference in positive or negative emotions; high empathy group induced a significant difference on LPP amplitude only in the negative emotion.