Love Affects Pain Empathy

Empathy for pain,the individual's perception,judgment and emotional response to the pain of others,is an important psychological phenomenon in our life and a typical manifestation of empathy.Many factors have proved to affect people's empathy for pain including psychological,physiological and social factors.Although interpersonal distance has also been shown to influence individual's empathy for pain,there is no detailed division of interpersonal distance.Love is an advanced interpersonal attraction and a special kind of interpersonal relationship.This study adopted the lover priming paradigm to investigate the effect of love on empathy for pain.The hypothesis was that the lover priming increased the individual's level of empathy for pain relative to other priming.In Experiment 1,a 3(priming type:the photo of the lover,the photo of a friend,the photo of a stranger)× 2(task type:pain,non-pain)design was used.In Experiment 2,we used the name of lover as stimulus materials and adopted a 3(priming type:the name of the lover,the name of a friend,the name of a stranger)× 2(task type:pain,non-pain)design similar to Experiment 1.In Experiment 3,the name of crush lover was presented as prime stimulus.Like Experiment 1,a 3(priming type:the name of a crush lover,the name of a friend,the name of a stranger)× 2(task type:pain,non-pain)design was constructed.The dependent variable was the level of empathy for pain,and the self-reported pain intensity.In Experiment 1,the results showed that the empathy for pain in lovers' photo priming was higher than that of friends and strangers,and the level of empathy for pain of individuals was significantly positively correlated with the duration of love.In Experiment 2,it was found that the empathy for pain level in lovers' name priming was higher than that of friends and strangers,and the empathy for pain level of the individuals was significantly positively correlated with the duration of love.In Experiment 3,it was found that the empathy for pain level of the individuals who were primed with the name of the secret crush lover was higher than that of friends and strangers,and there was a significant positive correlation between the empathy for pain level of the individuals and the time with secret crush love.In all three experiments,the empathy for pain level of the individuals who were primed with the name of a friend was higher than that of a stranger.However,there was no significant correlation between the level of pain empathy and the time with friends.The findings consistently demonstrated that the lover initiated and promoted the individual's empathy for pain,which was mainly reflected in the pain intensity and self-discomfort score.At the same time,there was a significant positive correlation between the level of empathy for pain and the time with crush love.