2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Pain and empathy: Exploring cognitive, physiological and neural foundations of social aspects of pain
| Project/Area Number |
24653160
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
Social psychology
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| Research Institution | Hokkaido University |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
NAKAJIMA Akira 北海道大学, 大学院文学研究科, 助教 (30312325)
MATSUDA Tetsuya 玉川大学, 脳科学研究所, 准教授 (30384720)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2012-04-01 – 2014-03-31
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| Keywords | 痛み / 共感 / 視点取得 / 情動 / ストレス |
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| Research Abstract |
How can we empathize with other's misfortune and pain? This question is a fundamental problem in social sciences as well as a key contemporary issue ranging from natural disasters to economic disparities in our society. This study aimed to develop a conceptual framework which serves as a common basis for interdisciplinary approaches examining social aspects of pain. We first reviewed various experimental as well as field studies about pain experiences and extracted several key dimensions that underlie the social aspects of physical pain. We then conducted a series of experiments that combined behavioral, cognitive, physiological as well as a brain-imaging measurements to address their proximate mechanisms. The results showed that human participants could adjust levels of empathetic responses properly even at the physiological level in line with specific physical condition where the empathized other was situated.
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