Looking at the eyes informs us about the thoughts and emotions of those around us, and impacts our own emotional state. However, it is unknown how perceiving direct and averted gaze impacts our ability to share the gazer's positive and negative emotions, abilities referred to as positive and negative affective empathy. We presented 44 participants with contextual sentences describing positive, negative and neutral events happening to other people (e.g. "Her newborn was saved/killed/fed yesterday afternoon."). These were designed to elicit positive, negative, or little to no empathy, and were followed by direct or averted gaze images of the individuals described. Participants rated their affective empathy for the individual and their own emotional valence on each trial. Event-related potentials time-locked to face-onset and associated with empathy and emotional processing were recorded to investigate whether they were modulated by gaze direction. Relative to averted gaze, direct gaze was associated with increased positive valence in the positive and neutral conditions and with increased positive empathy ratings. A similar pattern was found at the neural level, using robust mass-univariate statistics. The N100, thought to reflect an automatic activation of emotion areas, was modulated by gaze in the affective empathy conditions, with opposite effect directions in positive and negative conditions.. The P200, an ERP component sensitive to positive stimuli, was modulated by gaze direction only in the positive empathy condition. Positive and negative trials were processed similarly at the early N200 processing stage, but later diverged, with only negative trials modulating the EPN, P300 and LPP components. These results suggest that positive and negative affective empathy are associated with distinct time-courses, and that perceived gaze direction uniquely modulates positive empathy, highlighting the importance of studying empathy with face stimuli.

中文翻译：

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通过他人的眼睛感受：感知的凝视方向影响 ERP 和积极和消极情感移情的行为测量

看着眼睛会告诉我们周围人的想法和情绪，并影响我们自己的情绪状态。然而，我们不知道直接和回避的凝视如何影响我们分享凝视者的积极和消极情绪的能力，这种能力被称为积极和消极的情感移情。我们向 44 名参与者展示了描述发生在其他人身上的积极、消极和中性事件的上下文句子（例如“她的新生儿昨天下午获救/被杀/喂食。”）。这些被设计为引起积极、消极或很少或没有同理心，然后是所描述的个人的直接或回避的凝视图像。参与者在每次试验中对他们对个人的情感移情和他们自己的情绪效价进行评分。记录时间锁定到面部发作并与移情和情绪处理相关的事件相关电位，以研究它们是否受到注视方向的调节。相对于回避凝视，直接凝视与积极和中性条件下的积极效价增加以及积极同理心评级增加有关。使用稳健的大规模单变量统计，在神经层面发现了类似的模式。N100，被认为反映了情绪区域的自动激活，在情感共情条件下受注视调节，在积极和消极条件下具有相反的作用方向。 P200，对积极刺激敏感的 ERP 组件，受注视方向调制只有在积极的移情条件下。在早期的 N200 处理阶段，阳性和阴性试验的处理方式相似，但后来出现分歧，只有负面试验调节 EPN、P300 和 LPP 成分。这些结果表明，积极和消极的情感同理心与不同的时间过程相关，并且感知的凝视方向独特地调节了积极的同理心，突出了用面部刺激研究同理心的重要性。