An ERP Study Of The Effect Of Self-conscious Emotion On Pain Empathy

Self-conscious emotion is called self-conscious evaluation emotion,and is senior than the basic emotion,it produce by self-reflection individual with certain self-conscious,including the shame,embarrassment,guilt,pride and jealousy,etc..It has important influence on individual cognition,behavior and emotion.Life exists in social networks,and we need to acquire external information and adjust our psychology to complete countless social interactions.And empathy is the important foundation of countless social interactions.Empathy refers to the sharing and understanding of others’ emotional states,feelings and perceptions.It is an important way to obtain external information and is of great significance to interpersonal communication and social solidarity and progress.Pain empathy is a type of empathy that involves not only the sharing of the pains’ emotions,but also the process of recognizing and evaluating such emotions.So many previous studies have demonstrated that all individual cognition,mood and emotional state affect pain empathy for others.Previous studies mainly discuss its influence on pain empathy from the basic emotions,however,there were few studies on senior self-conscious emotions.Compared with basic emotions,self-conscious emotion is more complex,involving not only mood and emotions,but also cognition.How does it affect individual pain empathy? Do different types of self-conscious emotions have different effects on pain empathy? In conclusion,two self-conscious emotions（guilt and pride）were used to explore their effects on pain empathy and their neural mechanisms.In experiment 1,we used the story paradigm to induce different emotions and the pain rating task to measure pain empathy to investigated the behavioral and ERP characteristics of the influence of different guilt emotions on pain empathy.In addition,sadness and neutral emotions were used as a reference.A two-factor within subject design of 4（guilt emotion: self-directed guilt emotion,others-directed guilt emotion,neutral emotion and sad emotion）× 2（picture type: pain picture and non-pain picture）was adopted.The behavioral results showed that the pain evaluation degree of the painful pictures was greater than that of the non-painful pictures,pain empathy effect occurred.Found on the peak of ERP components,there is the significant interaction between emotion type and picture type in N1,N2 composition,specifically in neutral emotions and others-directed guilt emotion,pain picture significantly greater than the non-pain picture;and in sadness emotion,there is no significant difference;in self-directed guilt,the pain picture was smaller than the non-pain picture.And a similar difference was found in the average amplitude.In experiment 2,we also used the story paradigm to induce different emotions and the pain rating task to measure individual pain empathy to investigated the behavioral and ERP characteristics of the influence of different pride emotions on pain empathy.A two-factor subject design of 4（pride: true pride,arrogant pride,neutral emotion and happy emotion）×2（picture type: pain picture and non-pain picture）was adopted.The behavioral results showed that the effect occurred,and pain it is bigger in happy emotion.Pain evaluation degree of the painful pictures was greater than that of the non-painful pictures,in addition,all of true,arrogance pride and neutral emotion significantly less than happy emotion in pain intensity evaluation.No significant difference was found in the peak of ERP components,but the difference in the average amplitude of LPP components.Specifically,at Pz,P1 and P2 electrodes,the pain picture were larger than the non-pain picture in neutral emotion;secondly,at the Pz and P1 electrodes,the pain picture were significantly larger than the non-pain pictures in true pride emotion;at the Pz electrode,the pain pictures were also larger than the non-pain pictures in happy emotion;in the arrogance pride group,there was no significant difference between the two pictures.Based on the behavior and ERP results of the above two experiments,the following conclusions are drawn in this paper:（1）In experiment 1,There is the influence of pain empathy from guilt emotion,but it only in the early automatic sharing stage.Besides,self-directed guilt and sadness emotion inhibited pain empathy,while others-directed guilt promoted pain empathy.（2）In experiment 2,There is the influence of pain empathy from pride emotion,but it only in the late cognitive evaluation stage.Besides,compared with neutral emotion,arrogant pride inhibited pain empathy,in addition,true pride and happy emotion promote pain empathy,and the effect is greater than that of true pride.Self-conscious emotion affects pain empathy,self-directed guilt and arrogant pride emotion could inhibit pain empathy,others-directed guilt emotion and true pride could promote pain empathy,so the influence of pain empathy from self-conscious emotions of not only depend on neither the emotional valence nor cognitive load.Teachers should stress guide students’ self-consciousness in education and teaching,which is conducive to not only for physical and mental development,but also for moral education and interpersonal relationship.