Over the last years, the neurobiological mechanisms of empathy have been extensively investigated. Recent investigations suggest that interoceptive processes, in particular, those that are related to the experience and perception of cardiac changes, are relevant for affect sharing, mentalizing and self-other distinction. To further investigate the association between interoception and affect-sharing, we measured emotional contagion and interoceptive accuracy in a sample of healthy participants (n = 84). Emotional contagion was assessed with an established self-report questionnaire and interoceptive accuracy was assessed with a validated heartbeat detection task. Across a series of complementary analyses, we found a sex- and valence-dependent association between interoception and affection sharing: Among female but not male participants, interoceptive accuracy was positively associated with emotional contagion for negative but not positive states of others. We provide an evolutionary-based explanation for these findings, which are consistent with previous findings showing positive associations between interoceptive accuracy, mentalizing and self-other distinction.

中文翻译：

---

内感受的准确性与价态和性别相关的情绪传染有关。

在过去的几年里，共情的神经生物学机制得到了广泛的研究。最近的研究表明，内感受过程，特别是那些与心脏变化的经验和感知相关的过程，与情感分享、心理化和自我其他区分有关。为了进一步研究内感受和情感分享之间的关联，我们测量了健康参与者样本（n = 84）的情绪传染和内感受的准确性。情绪传染通过建立的自我报告问卷进行评估，内感受的准确性通过经过验证的心跳检测任务进行评估。在一系列补充分析中，我们发现内感受和情感分享之间存在性别和效价相关的关联：在女性而非男性参与者中，内感受的准确性与对他人消极而非积极状态的情绪传染呈正相关。我们为这些发现提供了基于进化的解释，这与之前的发现一致，表明内感受的准确性、心理化和自我其他区别之间存在正相关。