ABSTRACT

Empathy represents an emotional trigger of prosocial emotions and social engagement behaviour as previous research demonstrates. Departing from literature indicating that parasympathetic mechanisms are associated with the preparation of social engagement behaviour, the present research investigates how feeling with another person affects empathising individuals’ cardiovascular reactivity reflecting influences of parasympathetic mechanisms. Specifically, individuals’ high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) while being instructed to feel with a target person in need reacting with a specific emotional response to a need-causing event (with anger or sadness) was investigated. Results of one experiment (N = 124) revealed that inducing empathy with needy target persons results in increases of HF-HRV – irrespective of their emotional reaction. No relation between cardiovascular indices and self-reported prosocial behaviour was found. Accordingly, these findings indicate that inducing empathy affects phasic vagal activity implied by parasympathetic mechanisms whereas the association of cardiovascular reactivity and social engagement behaviour needs further investigation.

摘要

正如之前的研究表明的那样，移情代表了亲社会情绪和社会参与行为的情绪触发。与表明副交感神经机制与社会参与行为的准备有关的文献不同，本研究调查了与另一个人的感觉如何影响同情个体的心血管反应，反映了副交感神经机制的影响。具体而言，研究人员在被指示感受目标对象对导致需求的事件（愤怒或悲伤）的特定情绪反应时的高频心率变异性 (HF-HRV)。一项实验的结果 ( N = 124) 揭示了对有需要的目标人群产生同理心会导致 HF-HRV 增加——无论他们的情绪反应如何。未发现心血管指数与自我报告的亲社会行为之间存在关系。因此，这些发现表明，诱导共情会影响副交感神经机制所暗示的阶段性迷走神经活动，而心血管反应性和社会参与行为的关联需要进一步研究。