Sensitivity to suffering of others is a core factor in social cohesion and evolutionary success. The emergence of such sensitivity may occur via two neuro-functional mechanisms. One is sharing the pain and distress of others, which relies on affective empathy. The other involves a caring concern for others' wellbeing, termed compassion. Both affective empathy and compassion are triggered by cues of pain and distress, exhibited by suffering targets. Yet, the mechanisms underlying distress processing in empathy and compassion are not clear. In the current research, we investigated synchrony with a target's distress, as a putative mechanism for continuous processing of distress cues. Participants viewed a video of a target in distress when given two different instructions: they were asked to continuously rate their distress in the affective empathy condition, or their feelings of care in the compassion condition. We used these dynamic ratings as well as participants' autonomic and facial responses to assess multi-channel synchrony with the target's self-rated distress fluctuations. Dynamic ratings and facial corrugator responses were significantly positively synchronized with the target's distress. For the corrugator responses, synchrony with the target was more pronounced than synchrony with participants' own ratings. Autonomic responses exhibited negative synchrony with the target's distress. Synchrony was higher in the affective empathy than in the compassion condition, across channels. These results point to the key role of subjective and physiological synchrony with the target's distress in empathic sharing of negative experiences. They also highlight the attenuation of embodied resonance with distress in compassionate experiences.

中文翻译：

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在情感同理心和同情心中与痛苦同步

对他人痛苦的敏感性是社会凝聚力和进化成功的核心因素。这种敏感性的出现可能通过两种神经功能机制发生。一种是分担他人的痛苦和痛苦，这依赖于情感同理心。另一个涉及对他人福祉的关心，称为同情. 情感同理心和同情心都是由受苦目标所表现出的痛苦和痛苦的线索触发的。然而，同理心和同情心的痛苦处理机制尚不清楚。在目前的研究中，我们研究了与目标遇险的同步性，作为持续处理遇险线索的假定机制。当给予两个不同的指示时，参与者观看了处于困境中的目标的视频：他们被要求不断评价他们在情感移情条件下的痛苦，或他们在同情心中的关怀感受状况。我们使用这些动态评级以及参与者的自主神经和面部反应来评估多通道同步与目标的自评痛苦波动。动态评级和面部皱纹反应与目标的痛苦显着正同步。对于瓦楞纸人的反应，与目标的同步比与参与者自己的评级同步更明显。自主反应与目标的痛苦表现出负同步。跨渠道的情感同理心的同步性高于同理心条件下的同步性。这些结果指出了主观和生理同步与目标痛苦在共情分享负面体验中的关键作用。