Minimal humanity cues induce neural empathic reactions towards non-human entities.
The present study tested whether the attribution of humanness by means of a minimal humanity cue is sufficient for the occurrence of empathic neural reactions towards non-human entities that are painfully stimulated. Vegetables have been used as a control condition to explore empathy towards humans' pain before. In the context of the present study, they were given a minimal humanity cue (i.e., a human name) or not (i.e., an adjective). Human associations with these different types of vegetables were measured and where either represented: pricked by a needle (painful condition) or touched by a Q-tip (touch condition) while recording electroencephalographic activity from a sample of 18 healthy students. Event-related potentials (ERP) indicated that those participants classified as high humanizers, showed an increased neural reaction when vegetables with a name were painfully rather than neutrally stimulated compared to vegetables without a name. These reactions occurred both in an early (P2: 130-180 ms) and a later (P3: 360-540 ms) ERP time-window. Moreover, this differential reaction on the P3 significantly correlated with participants' explicit empathic tendencies. Overall, these findings suggest that empathy can be triggered for non-human entities as long as they are seen as minimally human.
Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, University of Trento, Corso Bettini 31, 38068 Rovereto, Italy. Electronic address: jeroen.vaes@unitn.it.
Jeroen
J
Vaes
Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, University of Padova, Via Venezia 8, 35131 Padova, Italy. Electronic address: federica.meconi@unipd.it.
Federica
F
Meconi
Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, University of Padova, Via Venezia 8, 35131 Padova, Italy. Electronic address: paola.sessa@unipd.it.
Paola
P
Sessa
Center for Research on Prejudice, Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Stawki 5/7, 00-183 Warsaw, Poland. Electronic address: mateusz.olechowski@psych.uw.edu.pl.
Mateusz
M
Olechowski
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001244:Association; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003071:Cognition; D003463:Cues; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D004645:Empathy / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005260:Female; D064368:Healthy Volunteers; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
Empathy for pain; Event-related potentials; Humanness attributions; Mind attribution; Non-human entities