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Withdrawal Motivation and Empathy: Do Empathic Reactions Reflect the Motivation to “Reach Out” or the Motivation to “Get Out”? by Alexa Mary Tullett A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Psychology University of Toronto © Copyright by Alexa Mary Tullett, 2012

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Page 1: Withdrawal Motivation and Empathy: Do Empathic Reactions ... · Because empathy, as a subject of psychological study, is a particularly heterogeneous construct, it is important to

Withdrawal Motivation and Empathy: Do Empathic Reactions Reflect the Motivation to

“Reach Out” or the Motivation to “Get Out”?

by

Alexa Mary Tullett

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Psychology University of Toronto

© Copyright by Alexa Mary Tullett, 2012

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Withdrawal Motivation and Empathy: Do Empathic Reactions Reflect the Motivation to

“Reach Out” or the Motivation to “Get Out”?

Alexa Mary Tullett

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Psychology

University of Toronto

2012

Abstract

Evolutionary accounts of empathy often focus on the ways in which empathy-motivated

helping can give rise to indirect fitness benefits. These accounts posit that empathy is

adaptive insofar as it motivates strategic helping behavior, but they neglect a key feature

of the empathic process – it can prepare one to act effectively within a shared

environment. In particular, adopting the affective and motivational states of others

provides a rapid and automatic way to avoid danger and threat, which play a

disproportionately large role in shaping behavior. Based on the idea that empathic

processes facilitate adaptive reactions to threat, I conducted four experiments to test the

hypothesis that empathic reactions reflect withdrawal motivation. In the first experiment I

used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure baseline right-frontal cortical asymmetry,

a reliable neural correlate of withdrawal motivation. I then assessed empathic reactions to

images of children ostensibly taken from a charity campaign. Participants who showed

greater right-frontal cortical asymmetry also showed stronger empathic reactions to the

images. In the second study I used self-report measures fear and anger to assess

dispositional withdrawal- and approach-motivation, respectively. This time, participants

indicated their empathic reactions to targets experiencing happiness and targets

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experiencing sadness. Empathy for both types of targets was positively related to fear and

negatively related to physical aggression, again supporting a link between empathy and

withdrawal motivation. In the third study I measured state withdrawal motivation by

using facial electromyography (EMG) to assess disgust expressions towards charity

images. These expressions were positively correlated with empathic reactions,

demonstrating that state withdrawal motivation is also positively related to empathy. In

the final study I manipulated approach and withdrawal emotions by having participants

make emotional facial expressions. Focusing on fear and anger, I found that participants

were more empathic when making fearful faces than when making angry faces, although

these results must be interpreted with caution, as the manipulation may not have had the

intended effects on emotional state. Taken together, these four studies provide

converging evidence of an association between withdrawal motivation and empathy,

supporting the idea that empathy plays a role in the adaptive response to threat.

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Acknowledgments

I will forever be grateful to my advisor, Michael Inzlicht, for making me feel like his

confidence in me is unwavering. My most inspiring moments have been moments spent

with him, discussing ideas. I would like to thank Elizabeth Page-Gould for her

unrelenting generosity with both her wisdom and her kindness. I would also like to thank

Jason Plaks for selflessly sharing his insight and enthusiasm. My labmates, Jenny Gutsell,

Rimma Teper, and Shona Tritt have made my life happy on a daily basis, and I still

marvel at how fortunate I have been to share the last five years with them. My family

outside of the lab has been a source of unending encouragement, and I am so lucky to

have their unconditional support. Sonia Kang and Jacob Hirsh have shown me what it

means to be brilliant academics and wonderful people, and I will continue to aspire to the

example they have set. On a daily basis I have turned to my friends Andrea Schofield and

Andrée-Ann Cyr for advice and perspective, and my work and life would be severely

impoverished without them. I am thankful to Lasana Harris and Eddie Harmon-Jones for

teaching me skills I didn’t have, and for being inspiring examples of creative scientific

minds. I will always look to Simine Vazire as a reminder of the kind of person you can be

if you let go of the things that limit your thinking, and use what you have to make other

people happy. I am grateful to Nicholas Rule, Adam Anderson, Wil Cunningham, and

Jan Wacker for generously offering their time and expertise in helping me complete this

dissertation. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the SPA area and the

Psychology Department at the University of Toronto for creating an environment that

fosters excitement and curiosity.

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Table of Contents Chapter 1: General Introduction ......................................................................................... 1

1 Objectives ................................................................................................................ 1

2 What Is Empathy? .................................................................................................... 2

3 Empathy, Emotion, and Motivation ......................................................................... 7

4 Why Does Empathy Exist? .................................................................................... 11

5 Summary ................................................................................................................ 16

Chapter 2: Frontal Cortical Asymmetry and Empathy ..................................................... 17

1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 17

2 Methods.................................................................................................................. 19

3. Results .................................................................................................................... 21

4. Discussion .............................................................................................................. 22

Chapter 3: Individual Differences in Withdrawal-Related Affect and Empathy .............. 26

1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 26

2 Method ................................................................................................................... 28

3 Results .................................................................................................................... 30

4 Discussion .............................................................................................................. 32

Chapter 4: Levator Labii and Corrugator Supercilii Activity and Empathy ..................... 35

1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 35

2 Method ................................................................................................................... 36

3 Results .................................................................................................................... 38

4 Discussion .............................................................................................................. 41

Chapter 5: Approach and Withdrawal Facial Expressions and Empathy ......................... 43

1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 43

2 Method ................................................................................................................... 44

3 Results .................................................................................................................... 45

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4 Discussion .............................................................................................................. 47

Chapter 6: General Discussion .......................................................................................... 49

1 Summary ................................................................................................................ 49

2 Limitations ............................................................................................................. 51

3 Future Directions ................................................................................................... 53

4 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 55  

 

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List of Tables

Table 1. Means and standard deviations for emotion intensity ratings of the images

Table 2. Reliabilities and descriptive statistics for key variables

Table 3. Bivariate correlations between key variables

Table 4. Predicting empathic concern and empathic contagion from emotional disposition

Table 5. Means and SDs for levator labii and corrugator supercilli EMG in response to

images

Table 6. Bivariate correlations between key variables for suffering charity images

Table 7. Bivariate correlations between key variables for non-suffering charity images

Table 8. Results of mediated moderation analysis

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List of Figures

Figure 1. Head map of asymmetry scores [Log(Right) – Log(Left)]. High and low

empathizers are identified based on a tertiary split of empathic concern scores. Red

values indicate greater activity in the left vs. right hemisphere, while blue values indicate

greater activity in the right vs. left hemisphere.

Figure 2. A mediation model depicting the relationship between frontal EEG asymmetry

and empathic concern with sadness as a mediator; c is the total effect of frontal EEG

asymmetry on empathic concern and c’ is the direct effect of frontal EEG asymmetry on

empathic concern. Negative values for a and c paths indicate a positive relationship

between right-frontal EEG asymmetry and the relevant variables. Unstandardized

regression coefficients from a bootstrap procedure are provided along with their

associated standard errors. ** p < .01, * p < .05.

Figure 3. Scatterplots showing the relationships between: a) frontal EEG symmetry and

empathic concern, b) frontal EEG asymmetry and sadness, and c) sadness and empathic

concern. Negative slopes represent a positive relationship between right-frontal EEG

asymmetry and the relevant variables.

Figure 4. An example of a) a suffering image and b) a non-suffering image.

Figure 5. Empathic concern ratings as a function of facial movement condition.

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List of Appendices

Appendix A. Facial movement instructions

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Chapter 1: General Introduction

1 Objectives Typically, when empathy is examined for its adaptive value or evolutionary significance,

researchers focus on how the consequences for the target of empathy might, in an indirect

way, benefit the empathizer. Reciprocal altruism and kin selection accounts posit that

empathy encourages people to help others when it benefits the self, either through

reciprocity or through the proliferation of shared genes (Batson, Lishner, Cook, &

Sawyer, 2008; de Waal, 2008; Hamilton, 1964; Trivers, 1971). Related accounts suggest

that empathy can contribute to group-level fitness via the evocation of helping behaviors

(Henrich, 2004). Common across these accounts is the hypothesis that empathy is

adaptive for the individual because it motivates helping behaviors that have indirect

fitness benefits. Absent from these accounts, however, is the consideration of the

possibility that empathy may stem from motivational systems completely separate from

prosociality; perhaps empathy is driven, at a basic level, by the motivation to escape

dangerous situations signaled by the emotional reactions of others.

The overall aim of this dissertation is to answer the following question: Do feelings of

empathy reflect the motivation to avoid dangerous or threatening situations? In other

words, is empathy associated with withdrawal motivation? If empathy serves as an

adaptive warning signal in the face of indications of danger or threat, empathy should be

associated with the motivation to escape, and should thus be linked to withdrawal

motivation. This overarching prediction leads to three specific hypotheses that will be the

focus of the studies described herein:

Hypothesis 1. Dispositional withdrawal motivation should be associated with empathy.

Hypothesis 2. Empathy should co-occur with withdrawal-related emotions.

Hypothesis 3. Experimentally increasing withdrawal-related emotions should increase

empathic responding.

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The first of these hypotheses will be addressed in Studies 1 and 2. Study 1 will explore

the relationship between baseline right-frontal EEG asymmetry, a neural correlate of

dispositional withdrawal motivation (Davidson, Ekman, Saron, Clifford, Senulis, &

Frisen, 1990; Harmon-Jones & Allen, 1998), and empathic responding. Then, in Study 2,

I will examine the relationship between empathic responding and the dispositional

tendency to experience approach- vs. withdrawal-related affect, focusing specifically on

the emotions of anger and fear (Stemmler, Aue, & Wacker, 2007; Wacker, Heldmann, &

Stemmler, 2003). The second hypothesis will be addressed in Study 3, in which I will use

facial EMG to see whether empathic responding is correlated with naturally occurring

withdrawal-related facial expressions. Finally, I will address the third hypothesis in Study

4 by experimentally manipulating approach and withdrawal facial expressions, and

observing the consequences for empathic reactions.

2 What Is Empathy? Because empathy, as a subject of psychological study, is a particularly heterogeneous

construct, it is important to start with a working definition. Here I will adopt the

relatively broad definition of empathy provided by Preston and de Waal (2002) who

stated that empathy is “any process where the attended perception of the object’s state

generates a state in the subject that is more applicable to the object’s state or situation

than to the subject’s own prior state or situation” (p. 4). While there are important sub-

divisions to be made within this umbrella definition (as will be discussed shortly), this

definition has the advantage of acknowledging all (or almost all) of the frameworks that

people have used to conceptualize and to study empathic processes.

Historically, empathy has been divided into dichotomies based on various dimensions, all

of which have utility depending on the particular behaviors or physiological reactions that

are the focus of explanation. Increasingly, however, there is neural evidence to suggest

that there are two critical – and largely distinct – ways in which people gather

information about the thoughts, intentions, and emotions of other people (Decety &

Lamm, 2006; Singer & Lamm, 2009). The first, which I will refer to as “bottom-up,”

involves understanding another person’s affective or mental states by actually

experiencing them (or impoverished versions of them) for oneself. The second, which I

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will refer to as “top-down,” involves making inferences about another person’s

experiences by applying one’s personally derived ideas about how a given context should

influence a given individual. It should be noted that either of these processes could lead

to an emotional feeling of concern. For instance, after watching someone burn his or her

hand, one might feel concerned as a consequence simulating the pain, or as a

consequence of reasoning that the experience must have been painful. Despite the

possibility of a common outcome, these two processes are clearly distinguishable and can

usefully be conceptualized as separate.

2.1 Bottom-Up Empathic Processes

Wegner (1980) has posited that empathy may “stem in part from a basic confusion

between ourselves and others” (p. 133), while others understand empathy as an

“emotional signal of oneness” (Cialdini, Brown, Lewis, Luce, & Neuberg, 1997, p. 481).

In line with these definitions, simulation theory proposes that empathy is rooted in the

ability to internally simulate the emotional states of other (Carruthers & Smith, 1996;

Davies & Stone, 1995a; 1995b; Goldman, 2006; Preston & de Waal, 2002). This account

is supported by evidence that common neural regions subserve both the expression and

observation of emotional states such as disgust or pain (Jackson, Meltzoff, & Decety,

2005; Singer et al., 2004; Wicker et al., 2003). Generally, simulation is conceptualized as

a bottom-up process in which one “catches” the emotions, or even actions, of another

person through a process of mimicry (Gutsell & Inzlicht, 2010; in press; Preston & De

Waal, 2002). At least in the initial stages, this process results in the empathizer’s

experience matching that of the target – feeling sadness towards someone who is sad, or

adopting an angry facial expression in reaction to someone who is expressing anger –

with cognitive elaboration and self-other distinctions occurring later.

Perception action mechanism

One potential mechanism for achieving a match between our internal representations and

those of others’ is provided by the idea of a perception-action mechanism. It has been

suggested that the human nervous system is characterized by a perception-action

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organization wherein the same neural representations are used to code perceptions and

their associated actions (Preston & de Waal, 2002; Prinz, 1987). Evidence for this idea

comes from experiments that show that perceiving a given stimulus facilitates the

execution of compatible actions, and inhibits the execution of incompatible actions

(Prinz, 1997). For instance, choice reaction times are faster when response-keys

correspond to the spatial arrangement of the stimuli, compared to when they do not

correspond (Kornblum, Hasbroucq, & Osman, 1990). This type of organization is

particularly useful in that it facilitates rapid pairing between observations and actions. For

instance, if the same neural circuits are used to perceive an oncoming projectile and to

execute a “ducking response,” this could have clear adaptive consequences compared to

the alternative, which would involve the time-consuming transfer of information.

According to the Russian Doll model of empathy (de Waal, 2008), this perception-action

mechanism underlies the most basic form of empathy – emotional contagion, or catching

the emotions of others. Specifically, this model states that emotional contagion is

accomplished by the automatic activation of neural representations consistent with the

feelings of another person. One example of emotional contagion is personal distress, the

self-oriented negative affect people experience when they are exposed to the suffering of

others. This fundamental process of emotional contagion sets the stage for more complex

types of empathy such as empathic concern (also called sympathetic concern) – an

empathic reaction that requires distinguishing between internally and externally

generated emotions.

Mirror neurons

Consistent with the idea of a perception-action organization of the nervous system, it has

recently been discovered that the human nervous system contains mirror neurons –

neurons that are active during both the execution of an action, and the observation of

another person performing the action (Pellegrino, Fadiga, Fogassi, Gallese, & Rizzolatti,

1992; Mukamel, Ekstrom, Kaplan, Iacobini, & Fried, 2010). These neurons, which

comprise part of the premotor cortex, might play a key role in imitation learning

(Jeannerod, 1994; Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004), and action understanding (Rizzolatti &

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Craighero, 2004). Moreover, neural regions associated with emotional experiences like

pain and disgust have been found to demonstrate similar mirroring properties, showing

activity during both the observation and experience of these sensations (Jackson et al.,

2004; Singer et al., 2004; Wicker et al., 2003). The discovery of brain areas, and even

specific neurons, that are active both when people observe someone else’s experiences

and when they live those experiences themselves suggest a neural mechanism for the

simulation account of empathy. Furthermore, it suggests that simulation may be partly

contingent on the degree of shared characteristics and experiences between empathizer

and target (Preston & de Waal, 2002; Gutsell & Inzlicht, 2010).

2.2 Top-Down Empathic Processes

Whereas simulation theory suggests that we understand other people by sharing their

experiences in a bottom-up fashion, an alternative possibility is that understanding others

is a top-down process rooted in a cognitive understanding of how other minds work.

According to top-down accounts of empathic processes, humans have ways of inferring

the experiences of other people by deliberately evaluating their likely emotional or

mental state based on lay-psychological theories, personal experience, and context.

Theory-theory

Theory-theory proposes that people use their mental models of the world in order to make

inferences about how other people think, and feel (Carruthers, 1996; Gopnik & Meltzoff,

1997). An example of the mental steps involved in this process might be: people are

generally afraid of snakes, therefore if a person sees a snake, they must be experiencing

fear. This account can be clearly differentiated from simulation accounts, which would

propose that an individual would infer another person’s fear by experiencing the fear

themselves in an automatic, bottom-up fashion. Theory-theory also differs from

simulation theory in allowing for situations in which a person’s emotional reaction is

incongruent with the person they are observing – for instance, when a person defeats a

friend at chess, they can recognize the negative emotions of the friend while experiencing

the positive emotions associated with victory (Carruthers, 1996). In general, theory-

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theory frames empathic processes as a problem-solving task in which people take into

account personal experience and contextual variables, along with their beliefs about the

world, to help them determine the likely emotional experience of another person.

Theory of mind

In order to be able to accurately infer the contents of other people’s minds, a person must

first have an understanding that others’ minds can be different than their own. The ability

to make this distinction, and to consider the contents of another person’s mind, has been

labeled theory of mind (ToM). Historically, theory of mind abilities are assessed using

false-belief tasks – that is, tasks that require the participant to recognize that another

person can have a belief that is inconsistent with what the participant knows about the

situation (Flavell & Miller, 1998; Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). Whereas healthy

adults make this type of inference with ease, children under the age of three and people

with autism show impairments on these tasks (Wellman et al., 2001; Baron-Cohen,

1995). Recent evidence regarding the neural correlates of ToM suggests that inferring the

mental states of others relies on neural regions, particularly the medial pre-frontal cortex

(mPFC), that are involved in thinking about our own mental states (Amodio & Frith,

2006; Gallagher & Frith, 2003; Macrae et al. 2004). Further research demonstrates that

there are other regions that distinguish between thinking about the self and others (Siegal

& Varley, 2002; Vogeley et al., 2001).

Neuroscientific investigations of ToM have also demonstrated that right frontal regions

appear to play a larger role in ToM abilities than do left frontal regions. Stuss, Gallup,

and Alexander (2001) found that patients with right-frontal lesions showed impaired

performance on ToM tasks compared to patients with left-frontal or non-frontal lesions.

Similarly, a PET imaging study revealed that non-verbal ToM tasks produced increases

in activation over right mPFC, but not over left mPFC (Brunet, Sarfati, Hardy-Baylé, &

Decety, 2000). As will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 1, relatively greater activity

in the right vs. left prefrontal cortex is also associated with withdrawal motivation (Coan

& Allen, 2003; Davidson, 1995; Harmon-Jones, 2004; Harmon-Jones, Gable, & Peterson,

2010; van Honk & Schutter, 2006). Thus, the ability to distinguish the mental states of

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self and other may be reflected in patterns of neural activation that are also neural

correlates of withdrawal motivation.

In a review of imaging and lesion studies, Siegal and Varley (2002) conclude that there is

a core neural network, centered on the amygdala circuitry, which is dedicated to the

computation of mental states. The amygdala has been shown to play a key role in threat

responses to outgroup members (Cunningham, Johnson, et al., 2004; Phelps et al., 2000;

Richeson, Todd, Trawalter, & Baird, 2003; Harris & Fiske, 2006), and also in the

development and expression of conditioned fear (Baron-Cohen et al., 2000; Davis, 1992;

Phillips & LeDoux, 1992). Expanding on conceptualizations of the amygdala as a fear

center, further work has provided convincing evidence that the amygdala may play a

broader role in evaluating emotional intensity, regardless of valence (Adolphs, 1999;

Cunningham, Raye, & Johnson, 2004). Taken together, these findings suggest that

impairments in ToM may, to some extent, reflect impairments in emotional processing.

2.3 When Top-Down Meets Bottom-Up

Simulation and theory-theory are often presented as competing accounts of how people

come to understand others. There is substantial evidence, however, that one of these

theories in isolation would fall short of accounting for the range of human empathic

behavior. These two processes are both well-represented in the repertoire of human

behavior, and, although distinguishable, are to some extent overlapping and reciprocal. In

one experiment, Jenkins, Macrae, and Mitchell (2008) provided convincing evidence that

there are neurons in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) that are involved in

considering the mental states of both the self and others. This process of mental state

simulation is influenced by top-down processes like perspective-taking (Ames, Jenkins,

Banaji, & Mitchell, 2008). Perspective-taking has also been shown to produce increases

in an even more basic form of simulation – motor resonance (Gutsell & Inzlicht, 2012).

Thus, humans appear to have two distinct but interacting ways of coming to understand

their social world, and a comprehensive account of empathy must acknowledge both.

3 Empathy, Emotion, and Motivation

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Examining empathy using the frameworks provided by theories of emotion and

motivation can help to shed light on the underlying nature of the empathic response.

Because empathy almost always involves emotion, (except, perhaps, in some cases of

inferring mental states or beliefs that have little emotional content), an understanding of

the empathic process rests on an understanding of emotion. Depending on the theory of

emotion that one adopts, empathic emotions could be considered an important driving

force in human behavior or epiphenomena that are uninformative in isolation.

Furthermore, the taxonomy one uses to describe emotional processes has important

consequences for the way that we interpret both the function of emotion and the

relationships between basic emotions and other phenomena. For reasons outlined below,

we will adopt the view that emotions are functional, and that they are key components of

the basic motivational processes of approach and withdrawal (Frijda, Kuipers, & ter

Schure, 1989).

3.1 Theories of Emotion

One of the oldest debates in the history of emotion research centers around the function,

or lack of function, of emotional experience. Any discussion of the motivational nature of

empathic emotion rests on the assumption that emotion is functional, and at an even more

basic level, that emotion affects behavior. At face value such assumptions may appear

uncontroversial, but a glance at the psychological and philosophical literature shows that

this is not the case.

Emotions are epiphenomenal

Proponents of ‘epiphenomenal’ theories of emotion propose that the experience of pain,

or joy, is a byproduct of processes that guide and shape behavior. According to these

theories, the subjective experience of emotion has no capacity to effect downstream

changes in behavior – motivational processes are thought to occur independently, and

emotion is seen simply as a correlate of these more fundamental forces (LeDoux, 1996).

Evidence in support of this conceptualization comes from studies that have revealed

stimulus-response pathways that bypass neocortical regions – the regions associated with

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conscious experience (LeDoux 1986; Pickard & Silverman, 1981). These findings

demonstrate that it is possible for an organism to respond in a motivated fashion without

(or before) the conscious experience of emotion. Supporters of this view have also

suggested that motivated behavior in non-human animals provides evidence for the

epiphenomenal nature of emotion (LeDoux, 1996). This reasoning rests on the

assumption that motivated behavior in animals occurs in the absence of emotion, a claim

that has been contested by researchers who suggest that conscious and unconscious

emotional processes are an intrinsic aspect of motivated behavior in non-human animals,

and perhaps other vertebrates (Panksepp, 2009; Winkielman & Berridge, 2004).

Emotions are functional

In contrast to the epiphenomenal accounts discussed above, many researchers have

proposed that emotions have functions, and indeed that these functions may be adaptive

for the organism (Barrett & Campos, 1987; Darwin, 1872; Keltner & Gross, 1999).

Panksepp (1998; 2003) commented on the utility of thinking of emotions as “pressures”

or “drives,” noting that emotional and motivational processes emerged over time from

systems involved in basic action-generation. In general, theories that adopt this

perspective focus on the ways in which emotions may drive survival-relevant behaviors

such as avoiding threats, enforcing attachments, and encouraging cooperation (Ekman,

1992; Lazarus, 1991; Levenson, 1994; Oatley & Jenkins, 1992; Tooby & Cosmides,

1990). Far from epiphenomena, emotions are thought to provide an “intelligent interface

that mediates between input and output” (Scherer, 1994, p. 127). This perspective on

emotion has similar implications for emotion generated via empathic processes; empathic

emotion may drive adaptive behaviors in a sort of “second-hand” response to the

environment.

In order to identify the functions of emotions, including empathic emotions, one must

determine useful ways by which to characterize emotions with respect to their functional

outcomes. One possibility is that there are various discrete emotions, each with its own

physiological fingerprint, as well as its own function (Janig, 2003; Levenson, 2003;

Stemmler, 1992). To date, however, researchers have had mixed success in attempts to

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characterize these physiological and psychological fingerprints, leading to some

skepticism about this approach (Cacioppo, Berntson, Larsen, Poehlmann, & Ito, 2000).

Alternatively, others have attempted to characterize emotions along a relevant dimension

(or dimensions), and to examine the functional consequences at different points along the

continuum. Taking this approach, a substantial amount of emotion research has focused

on the dimension of valence, suggesting that the distinction between positive and

negative has implications for the cognitive and behavioral outcomes of an emotion (Lang,

1995; Taylor, 1991; Watson, 2000). For instance, it has been proposed that positive affect

indicates a safe and comfortable environment, allowing for an expansion of cognitive and

attentional resources, while negative affect does the opposite (Frederickson, 2001). More

recently, researchers have begun to propose that the dimensions of motivational intensity

and direction may provide a more useful framework for capturing variance in the

functional significance of emotions (Harmon-Jones & Gable, 2008).

A motivational perspective on emotions

In contrast to the valence approach, the motivational direction account suggests that the

most basic function of emotion is to motivate people to do one of two things: to withdraw

from a stimulus or to approach a stimulus (Davidson, 1993). Thus, empathic emotion

should serve this same function. Withdrawal motivation ensures that we evade

punishment and threat, whereas approach motivation is what prompts us to pursue

desired goals and rewards (Gray & McNaughton, 2000; Sutton & Davidson, 1997). In a

performance context, withdrawal motivation stems from fear of failure and low

performance expectancies, while approach motivation stems from striving to succeed and

high performance expectancies (Elliot & Church, 1997). In a broad analysis of

personality and temperament, withdrawal motivation was linked to neuroticism, negative

emotionality, and the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) whereas approach motivation

was associated with extraversion, positive emotionality, and the behavioral activation

system (BAS; Elliot & Thrash, 2002).

By experimentally examining the consequences of motivational intensity and direction,

above and beyond the dimension of emotional valence, researchers have come to a more

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comprehensive understanding of the functional qualities of emotions. For instance, high

approach positive affect is associated with pursuing reward, whereas low approach

positive affect is associated with obtaining reward (Knutson & Wimmer, 2007).

Furthermore, low approach positive affect is associated with broadened attention as

valence models have previously suggested, but high approach positive affect is associated

with narrowed attention relative to a neutral control conditions (Gable & Harmon-Jones,

2008; 2010). The dimension of motivational direction also appears to effectively

characterize differences in asymmetrical frontal cortical activation, a reliable neural

correlate of affective disposition (Harmon-Jones & Allen, 1997; 1998). Thus, the

dimensions of motivational direction and intensity may provide a useful way of

categorizing emotions according to their functional consequences.

Related to the concepts of approach and withdrawal, Gray and McNaughton have

provided detailed accounts of three fundamental neural systems of motivation (2000).

According to their model, known as reinforcement sensitivity theory, motivated behavior

is guided by the interaction of BAS, the fight/flight/freeze system (FFFS), and BIS. BAS

is associated with impulsivity and appetitive behaviors and is engaged by signals of

reward and non-punishment. FFFS is associated with defensive and escape behaviors and

is engaged by signals of punishment and non-reward. BIS, although originally thought to

be engaged by punishment cues (Gray, 1987), is now viewed as a conflict-detection

system, sensitive to competing signals of reward and punishment, and to reward-reward

and punishment-punishment conflicts. Integrating these systems with the motivational

constructs of approach and withdrawal is not always straightforward, but in the case of

withdrawal associated with escape/flight motivation, the FFFS is an obvious candidate

for the underlying neural substrate.

4 Why Does Empathy Exist? Given that there is a substantial amount of neural architecture devoted to simulating and

theorizing about the mental states of others, it makes sense to ask whether these processes

might have adaptive significance. Indeed, many researchers have suggested that empathy

is adaptive, and have proposed accounts of how empathy might augment evolutionary

fitness. Several of these accounts focus on an important behavioral correlate of empathy

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– helping behavior. In general, these accounts propose that empathy is adaptive in that it

leads to helping behavior, which is in turn adaptive because it indirectly increases

individual fitness. An alternative possibility, however, is that empathy has direct fitness

benefits because it prepares the empathizer to act effectively within the current

environment – particularly in response to danger or threat.

4.1 Kin Selection and Reciprocal Altruism

Famously stating “I would lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins,” Hamilton

(1964) formalized the idea that genes will become more common in the gene pool if they

cause people to behave in ways that benefit other carriers of those genes. The theory of

kin selection helped to solve one of the most puzzling problems faced by evolutionary

theorists: If success in the gene pool is determined solely be behaviors that increase one’s

own chances of survival and reproduction, why would anyone ever commit an action that

benefits another person at a cost to the self? According to kin selection, if one’s altruistic

actions benefit a person who is likely to share one’s own genes (for instance, a child, or a

sibling), this can have indirect fitness benefits for the altruist, thereby resolving the

paradox.

Extending this logic to empathy, it should be adaptive to be empathic if this leads one to

help others who are closely related. According to de Waal (2008), “This selection

pressure to evolve rapid emotional connectedness likely started in the context of parental

care long before our species evolved” (p. 282). Similarly, other researchers have

proposed that empathy reflects a “nurturance” tendency that spills over beyond one’s own

children to other vulnerable targets, including animals (Batson et al., 2005). Consistent

with the idea that empathy may promote adaptive helping of relatives, it has been shown

that manipulations of perceived similarity – a potential cue of relatedness – can augment

empathic responding (Batson, Turk, Shaw, & Klein, 1995; Krebs, 1975; Stotland, 1969).

Kin selection helps to solve the puzzle of altruistic behavior by revealing the hidden

selfishness behind seemingly selfless behavior. In a similar fashion, the idea of reciprocal

altruism proposes that some actions that seem altruistic, or selfless, are motivated by

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expectation that the benefitted party return the favor (Trivers, 1971). Again, the

overarching idea is that empathy can be adaptive when it motivates people to help others

in a manner that will have indirect personal benefits. Thus, both kin selection and

reciprocal altruism accounts propose that empathy evolved as a proximate mechanism to

accomplish an ultimate goal – increasing one’s representation in the gene pool (de Waal,

2008).

4.2 For the Good of the Group

As Henrich (2004) has theorized, prosociality might also be adaptive when considered

through the lens of group selection. Although the term ‘group selection’ has become

taboo in some circles, convincing theoretical demonstrations have shown that natural

selection acting on genes can be partitioned into ‘group-level’ and ‘individual-level’

components (Price, 1970; 1972). At a basic level, this perspective suggests that groups

where high levels of prosociality and cooperation are the norm should have higher fitness

relative to other groups. Through processes of genetic and cultural evolution, these

behaviors can then proliferate within the larger population (Henrich, 2004). If empathy is

seen as the proximate cause of helping behavior (de Waal, 2008), a logical extension of

such accounts of prosociality is that empathy is adaptive because it is good for the group.

4.3 Empathy as a Second-Hand Response to the

Environment

The above accounts focus on the adaptive value of empathy as a motivator of helping

behavior, which is thought to provide fitness benefits both at the individual and group

levels. Absent from these accounts, however, is consideration of empathy’s roots in basic

processes of information gathering. The actions and emotions of others tell us about the

environment around us, and are often good indicators of the way we should react to a

given situation. Fundamental processes of mimicry and emotional contagion, thought to

be the psychological and neural building blocks of the empathic process, play a key role

in helping us to determine important facts about the environment. For instance, a person’s

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fearful expression directed at something behind us, or their disgust expression directed at

something on our plate, could both provide important cues as to what we should do next.

Given that people’s emotional reactions facilitate adaptive behaviors (Barrett & Campos,

1987; Darwin, 1872; Keltner & Gross, 1999), it follows that simulating the emotional

states of others who share the same environmental context could serve the same function.

In other words, adopting another person’s emotional state should ready the observer for

effective interaction with their shared surroundings (Plutchik, 1980; 1990). If it is the

case that emotional contagion provides information, and not just the impetus to help, it

should occur in instances where another organism’s state is highly relevant, and it should

not always be accompanied by prosocial behaviors.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the environment is the presence of a threat (Rozin

& Royzman, 2001). As such, if emotional contagion provides information, humans and

other animals should show emotional contagion for the withdrawal-related threat

reactions of their conspecifics, without necessarily responding prosocially. Examples in

which one organism’s distress spreads to those around it – without generating prosocial

reactions – are well-documented. For instance, it has been shown that rats and pigeons

display distress in response to the perceived distress of a conspecific (Church, 1959).

Mice show an intensified pain response when they see other mice experiencing pain

(Langford et al., 2006). Human infants are more likely to start to cry if they are in the

same room as another crying infant (Hoffman, 1975; 1976). The basic process of

emotional contagion has clear adaptive implications – adopting the emotional reaction of

others is often a useful heuristic for operating within a shared environment.

It should be noted that, theoretically, it could be adaptive to adopt approach-related, as

well as withdrawal-related affect. If emotional contagion is subject to the same negativity

bias as the rest of human affective processes, however, it is likely that humans are more

efficient at simulating withdrawal-related, compared to approach-related, emotional

experiences (Rozin & Royzman, 2001). Evidence suggests that this is, indeed the case

(for a review see Vaish, Grossman, & Woodward, 2008). For instance, people show a

stronger contagion response to others’ bodily expressions of fear than to those of

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happiness (de Gelder, Snyder, Greve, Gerard, & Hadjikhani, 2004), and infants have

stronger behavioral and neural reactions to adults’ expressions of fear compared to

happiness (Carver, Vaccaro, 2007; Mumme, Fernald, & Herrera, 1996). These findings

are consistent with the idea that emotional contagion is stronger for withdrawal-related

emotions because its function in signaling threat, compared to reward, is more critical to

survival.

Although empathic concern (usually measured by asking people to report feelings of

“warmth,” “compassion,” etc.) is distinguished from emotional contagion in that it

involves other-oriented emotions, the fact that this process relies, to some extent, on

phylogenetically older processes of emotional contagion suggests that it, too, may reflect

an adaptive distress reaction (de Waal, 2008). Put another way, when a person reports

feelings of compassion for another individual, these reports may reflect a relatively

primitive motivational system involved in reactions to threat, rather than a motivational

systems driving prosociality.

Distress-relief models, such as the negative-state relief model (Cialdini, Darby, &

Vincent, 1973) and the aversive-arousal reduction model (Piliavin, Dovidio, & Gaertner,

1981), embrace a similar conceptualization of empathic processes. These models posit

that feelings of concern towards the suffering of others simply reflect the contagion of

personal distress. Furthermore, helping behavior is thought of as a distress-regulation

strategy, rather than as a behavioral manifestation of prosocial emotions. In support of

these models, research has shown that when the negative emotions elicited by others’

suffering are alleviated by a reward or positive mood-induction, people help less

(Cialdini et al., 1987; Schaller & Cialdini, 1988). In some cases perceived self-other

overlap has been found to account for the connection between empathy and helping,

suggesting that empathy leads to helping when we adopt the distress of the victim

(Cialdini et al., 1997; Maner et al., 2002). Furthermore, recent work has demonstrated

that when people are faced with human suffering they use emotion regulation strategies

to prevent themselves from being overwhelmed with the negative emotions that

accompany compassion (Cameron & Payne, 2011; Shaw, Batson, & Todd, 1994). Thus,

empathic concern and even helping behavior, may reflect a basic “escape” reaction.

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5 Summary Synthesizing theories and findings from the broad psychological domains of affect,

motivation, and empathy, a question about the nature of empathic responding begins to

emerge: Does empathic concern stem from a basic motivation to escape harm signaled by

the emotional expressions of others? Because empathic concern relies on more basic

processes of emotional contagion, and because emotional contagion can serve an

informational function that facilitates effective responses to threat, I predict that empathic

concern will be best characterized by withdrawal motivation. Specifically, I predict that

empathic concern will be associated with trait-level neural correlates of withdrawal

motivation and state-level facial expressions of withdrawal-related emotions.

Furthermore, I predict that empathic concern will show a positive relationship with fear

and a negative relationship with anger, both when measuring and manipulating these

affective variables. If these predictions are supported, this perspective on the empathic

response has the potential to deepen our understanding of the forces driving empathy, and

to generate new hypotheses about how that empathy is translated into action.

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Chapter 2: Frontal Cortical Asymmetry and Empathy  

1 Introduction If empathic concern stems from withdrawal motivation, it should be associated with

reliable neural correlates of this kind of motivational disposition. With the accumulation

of evidence regarding the emotional and behavioral consequences of frontal alpha EEG

asymmetry, it has become widely accepted that asymmetries in prefrontal cortical activity

reflect motivational direction (Coan & Allen, 2003; Davidson, 1995; Harmon-Jones,

2004; Harmon-Jones, et al., 2010; van Honk & Schutter, 2006). This account posits that

basic motivational direction – whether people are driven to move towards things or to

move away from them – maps on to patterns of asymmetrical cortical activation such that

withdrawal motivation has been associated with relative right-frontal activity, while

approach has been associated with relative left-frontal activity (Harmon-Jones & Allen,

1997; Sutton, & Davidson, 1997; cf. Wacker, Chavanon, & Stemmler, 2010).

Consistent with this formulation, asymmetric frontal cortical activation is also closely

tied with patterns of emotional responding (Jacobs & Snyder, 1996). Emotions like

happiness and anger, which are associated with approach motivation, are linked to left-

frontal activity (Coan, Allen, & Harmon-Jones, 2001; Davidson, Schaffer, & Saron,

1985; Harmon-Jones & Allen, 1998). Meanwhile, emotions like disgust, fear, and

sadness, which are associated with withdrawal, are linked to right-frontal activity (Coan

et al., 2001, Dawson, Panagiotides, Klinger, & Hill, 1992). At a dispositional level,

baseline levels of frontal asymmetry reflect susceptibility to approach and withdrawal-

relevant emotions. For example, people who have dispositionally higher levels of right-

frontal cortical activity show stronger negative emotion to fearful or disgusting stimuli

and weaker positive affect to happy stimuli (Tomarken, Davidson, Wheeler, & Doss,

1992; Wheeler, Davidson, & Tomarken, 1993).

These dispositional differences have also been shown to have clinical implications, with

research showing that right-frontal asymmetry is associated with increased risk for

depression (Henriques & Davidson, 1990; 1991; Nusslock, et al., 2011; Schaffer,

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Davidson, and Saron, 1983). Because frontal EEG asymmetry has proven to be a stable

and reliable measure of individual differences (Tomarken, Davidson, Wheeler, & Kinney,

1992) trait measures of frontal asymmetry can provide a valuable tool in assessing

susceptibility to sadness and withdrawal-related affect.

1.1 Empathy and Frontal EEG Asymmetry

Because empathy is often viewed as an other-oriented, prosocial reaction to suffering – a

kind of “reaching out” – it has been posited that it should be associated with left-frontal

asymmetry (e.g., Goetz, Keltner, & Simon-Thomas, 2010; Lamm, Batson, & Decety,

2007). On the other hand, conceptualizations of empathy that emphasize vicarious

sharing of pain or sorrow (Ikes, 1997), or that propose a critical role for feelings of

personal distress (Cialdini et al., 1973; Ikes, 1997; Piliavin et al., 1981) raise the

possibility that empathy might, in some cases at least, be linked to right-frontal

asymmetry. If strong withdrawal motivation translates into a heightened responsiveness

to the sadness of others, greater right-frontal EEG asymmetry should be associated with

greater empathic responding to the suffering of others.

Some neuroscientific data has begun to reveal a link between right-frontal asymmetry and

empathic dispositions like affiliation motives (Quirin, Kazén, Hardung, & Kuhl, 2012).

Children who show greater right-frontopolar EEG activity during a task designed to elicit

positive emotion were more likely to show empathic concern in response to pain

expressed by the experimenter (Light et al., 2009). People with lesions to the right

ventromedial frontal cortex showed deficits in affective components of “mind-reading”

(Shamay-Tsoory, Tomer, Berger, Golsher, & Aharon-Peretz, 2005), while cortical

atrophy in the right frontal-temporal neural network has been associated with difficulties

in resolving social dilemmas (Eslinger et al., 2006).

Prosocial behavior also appears to be linked with right-frontal activity, as demonstrated

by findings showing that disrupting the functioning of the right, but not left, dorsolateral

prefrontal cortex using transcranial magnetic stimulation causes people to be less fair

during an economic game (Knoch, Pascual-Leone, Meyer, Treyer, & Fehr, 2006).

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Integrating work on the neurobiology of psychopaths, Hecht (2011) has suggested that

the affective and empathic deficits displayed by these individuals are associated with

hypoactivity in the right hemisphere. This work, combined with the reasoning that

susceptibility to withdrawal-related emotions could lead people to be better able to feel

for the suffering of other people, leads to the prediction that right-frontal asymmetry may

relate to empathic reactions.

1.2 Objectives

In this study I explored the link between baseline right-frontal asymmetry and empathic

reactions towards others’ suffering. To do this I assessed resting frontal EEG asymmetry

and analyzed self-reported sadness, personal distress, and empathic concern to images of

African children ostensibly associated with a charity campaign. Based on Hypothesis 1,

which states that dispositional withdrawal motivation should be associated with empathy,

I predicted that baseline (i.e. trait) levels of right-frontal asymmetry would be associated

with feelings of personal distress, sadness, and empathic concern towards the images.

Furthermore, because empathic concern is thought to reflect more basic processes of

emotional contagion, right-frontal EEG asymmetry should lead to greater empathic

concern via increased contagion of withdrawal-related affect. If this is the case, I should

also find that sadness and personal distress mediate the relationship between right-frontal

EEG asymmetry and empathic concern.

2 Methods

2.1 Participants

Thirty-two introductory psychology students (23 female, Mage = 19.34, SDage = 2.37)

participated for course credit and $5. One participant was excluded due to an outlying

F4F3 asymmetry value (Z > 3.0), and another was excluded due to technical malfunction

during baseline EEG recording. For all retained participants, Z scores for F4F3

asymmetry values fall within the range of -1.00 to 1.00. For three participants, specific

electrode sites were excluded prior to data analysis due to noisy data in those channels.

As a result, Ns for analyses involving asymmetry values vary from 27 to 30.

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2.2 Procedure

At the start of the experiment the participant was fitted with an EEG cap. First, baseline

EEG was recorded while participants sat still with their eyes alternately open and closed

for four blocks of 30s each. Participants were then told they would view two sets of 10

images of African children, each associated with a charity. These charity images were

found through a search of publically available online sources (i.e. Google image search).

A separate sample of introductory psychology students (N = 16) provided normative

ratings of physical suffering depicted and of emotions elicited by each of these charity

images (Table 1)1. Participants viewed the images as two counterbalanced blocks, each

consisting of 10 charity images interspersed with 10 scenery images. Images were

presented in random order with the restriction that scenery and charity images alternated.

Each image was displayed for 8s, followed by an 8s inter-trial interval. During this part

of the experiment participants were asked to simply sit still and concentrate on the

images. To ensure that participants were paying attention, they were told that they might

be asked questions about the images later in the experiment. Following this phase of the

experiment, participants viewed the two sets of charity images again and rated their

affective responses to each set of 10 images as a whole.

2.3 Self-Report Measures

In response to the charity images, participants used a 5-point scale (1 = strongly disagree,

5 = strongly agree) to indicate empathic concern (moved, sympathetic, compassionate,

warm, tender, soft-hearted), sadness (sad, feeling low, low-spirited, heavy hearted), and

personal distress (alarmed, grieved, troubled, upset, disturbed, worried, perturbed; see

Table 2 for descriptive statistics). Sadness, personal distress, and empathic concern were

analyzed independently (Batson, 1987; Fultz, Schaller, and Cialdini, 1988). Ratings for

each of these three constructs were averaged across the two sets of charity images (αs >

.75).

2.4 EEG Recording and Processing

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EEG was recorded throughout the experiment using a stretch Lycra cap containing 32 tin

electrodes. Electrode placement followed the 10-20 system, and a digital average earlobe

reference was used. Electrode impedances were below 10kΩ. Vertical eye movements

were recorded to facilitate artifact identification. Recordings were digitized at 1024 Hz

using ASA acquisition software (Advanced Neuro Technology, Enschede, The

Netherlands). EEG was digitally filtered offline between 1 and 15 Hz, and corrected for

vertical electro-oculogram artifacts (Gratton, Coles, & Donchin, 1983), with signal

exceeding ±75 µV rejected by computer algorithm. Artifact-free 2.0s epochs were

extracted through a Hamming window (75% overlap) and submitted to fast Fourier

transform. Spectral power at each electrode was averaged across the two minutes of eyes-

open and eyes-closed blocks of baseline. Power values were natural-log transformed, and

asymmetry scores were calculated by subtracting left- from right-sided alpha at

homologous sites. Asymmetry scores at F4F3 were taken as indices of frontal asymmetry,

while scores at FC4FC3, CP4CP3, and P4P3 were used as non-frontal control values2.

Because alpha-power (8-12Hz) is inversely related to cortical activity (Lindsley &

Wicke, 1974), higher values on this difference score indicate greater left hemisphere

activity. I have chosen to use this metric because it is the most common in the frontal

asymmetry literature, but I discuss my results in terms of right-frontal asymmetry as that

is the focus of the present study. As such, negative correlations will indicate a positive

relationship between right-frontal asymmetry and other variables.

3. Results As hypothesized, asymmetry scores at the F4F3 site were significantly correlated with

empathic concern, sadness, and personal distress (Table 3; Figure 1). If the relationship

between asymmetry and empathy is specific to frontal regions, as expected, these

correlations should not be present for electrodes in central or parietal areas. At FC4FC3

and CP4CP3, asymmetry scores were not correlated with any of the variables of interest,

with the exception of a marginal relationship between CP4CP3 and empathic concern. At

P4P3 there were no significant relationships between asymmetry and personal distress,

but there were significant correlations with empathic concern and sadness in the opposite

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direction of those found for frontal regions. Thus, it appears that the relationship between

rightward EEG asymmetry and empathy is specific to frontal regions.

According to the Russian doll model of empathy, sadness and personal distress reflect

phylogenetically older processes of emotional contagion compared to empathic concern,

which involves the additional step of recognizing a distinction between self-and other (de

Waal, 2008). To test whether the relationship between frontal EEG asymmetry and

empathic concern could be accounted for by increased emotional contagion, I ran a

multiple mediation model testing the relationship between baseline frontal asymmetry

and empathic concern with sadness and personal distress as mediators. Parameter

estimates were obtained using bootstrap analysis with 5,000 re-samples (Preacher &

Hayes, 2008). Mediation is said to be significant if the 95% bias-corrected confidence

interval for the parameter estimate does not contain 0. In this model, personal distress did

not emerge as a significant mediator (CI: [-1.62, 3.29]), and as such I re-ran this model

excluding personal distress (Figure 2; Figure 3). For the new model predicting empathic

concern from right-frontal asymmetry with sadness as a mediator, the confidence interval

for sadness did not contain 0, (CI: [-4.18, -.70]), indicating that sadness was a significant

mediator of the relationship between baseline frontal EEG asymmetry and empathic

concern. Mediation tests that assume normality (Sobel, 1982) also indicate significant

mediation, Z = -2.67, p = .008. When sadness was accounted for, the relationship

between right-frontal asymmetry and empathic concern was no longer significant, c’ = -

.03, p = .97. Thus, the relationship between right frontal asymmetry and empathic

concern can be explained by the fact that people with greater levels of right frontal

asymmetry tend to react with greater sadness to the images.

4. Discussion Consistent with my predictions, results indicated that individuals who displayed more

dispositional right-frontal asymmetry were more likely to experience empathic concern

when viewing charity images. In addition, this relationship was fully mediated by

feelings of sadness in response to these images. These findings expand our understanding

of empathy by demonstrating that it is associated with a pattern of dispositional brain

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activity that reflects withdrawal. Furthermore, these findings are consistent with the

suggestion that empathic concern reflects the motivation to escape.

One implication of these findings is that empathy, although measured with positive-

sounding words like “warmth” and “compassion,” might be an unpleasant emotional

state. People who showed neural activity suggestive of a heightened tendency to

experience withdrawal-related emotions were also the ones who were most likely to

report empathic concern. Consistent with distress-relief models of helping, these results

suggest that people who are more susceptible to “feeling the pain” of others are the ones

who are most likely to empathize. This interpretation raises an important question: is

baseline right-frontal asymmetry associated with empathy only when the target is

displaying withdrawal-related emotions? Theories of empathy that focus on internal

simulation of others’ affective states have led to the hypothesis that empathy may be

augmented when there is overlap between the affective state of the observer and target

(Preston & de Waal, 2002). Thus, people who show a dispositional rightward bias in

frontal asymmetry may empathize with suffering targets because their withdrawal

tendencies are congruent with the withdrawal-related emotions of the targets (c.f.

Harmon-Jones & Allen, 1998). Alternatively, right-frontal asymmetry may be associated

with greater empathy to both positive and negative targets, suggesting that this pattern of

brain activity encourages a generalized increase in empathic concern regardless of the

affective state of the target. This possibility will be addressed in Study 2.

My interpretation of the findings is also informed by emerging research on empathy’s

relationship with the error-related negativity (ERN; Gehring, Goss, Coles, Meyer, &

Donchin, 1993). The ERN is a neural signal that is involved in the aversive affective

reaction to conflict and error (Hajcak & Foti, 2008; Inzlicht & Al-Khindi, in press;

Inzlicht & Tullett, 2010; Luu, Collins, & Tucker, 2000; Yeung, 2004; see Olvet &

Hajcak, 2008, for a review). Consistent with these findings, the ERN is thought to be

generated by the midcingulate cortex, a brain region involved in the integration of

cognitive control, pain, and negative affect (Shackman et al., 2011). Importantly, new

research finds that ERN amplitude is larger for those with greater baseline right-frontal

asymmetry (Nash, McGregor, & Inzlicht, 2011), and for those who report high levels of

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dispositional empathy (Larson, Fair, Good, & Baldwin, 2010; Santesso & Segalowitz,

2009). Because the amplitude of the ERN is associated with a susceptibility to negative

affect, distress, and anxiety (Hajcak & Foti, 2008; Hajcak, McDonald, & Simons, 2003;

2004), these data are consistent with the idea that this susceptibility is conducive to

increased empathic responding.

In addition to the predicted relationship between asymmetry and empathy at frontal

regions, I also found an unanticipated negative relationship between right-parietal

asymmetry (at sites P4P3) and empathy. Thus, for frontal regions relatively greater right-

than-left activity was associated with empathy, while in parietal regions this relationship

was reversed. Although I am cautious in interpreting these results given inconsistencies

in the literature regarding resting parietal EEG asymmetry (Henriques & Davidson, 1997;

Kentgen et al., 2000), research on depression provides some precedent for a dissociation

between frontal and parietal activation patterns. Whereas depression has frequently been

associated with hypoactivity in left-frontal regions (Henriques & Davidson, 1990; 1991;

Nusslock et al, 2011; Schaffer et al., 1983), several studies have found that depressed

participants show hypoactivity in right-posterior regions (Allen, Iacono, Depue, &

Abrisi, 1993; Henriques & Davidson, 1990; 1997). This pattern appears to best

characterize a subset of depressed patients who do not have comorbid anxiety disorders

(Bruder et al., 1997) or who show a pattern of underarousal (Stewart, Towers, Coan, &

Allen, 2011). This pattern of left-frontal hypoactivity and right-parietal hypoactivity in

depression also characterizes empathic responding in the current study, perhaps

suggesting that some of the same factors that underlie susceptibility to depression also

underlie a propensity to feel empathy. Further research that investigates EEG asymmetry,

depression, and empathy in a single study could shed light on this possibility. Currently,

however, this explanation remains speculative, and indeed research demonstrating the

involvement of the right-temporoparietal junction in empathy could lead to the opposing

prediction that hyper-activity in right-posterior regions should be positively associated

with empathy (Decety & Lamm, 2007).

Overall, these findings implicate right-frontal asymmetry in empathic responding.

Conversely, left-frontal asymmetry may dampen empathy (or even encourage aggression;

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Harmon-Jones & Sigelman, 2001; Peterson, Shackman, & Harmon-Jones, 2008), as

suggested by its association with decreased empathic reactivity towards others in need.

These findings suggest a link between empathy and withdrawal, and raise questions about

the precise nature of this relationship. First, is the dispositional experience of withdrawal-

related emotion associated with empathy, and if so, is this relationship stronger for some

emotions than for others? Second, is the link between withdrawal and empathy only true

when the target of empathy is experiencing withdrawal-related emotions?

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Chapter 3: Individual Differences in Withdrawal-Related Affect and Empathy

1 Introduction In Study 1, I showed that empathic concern is associated with right-frontal EEG

asymmetry, an established neural correlate of heightened withdrawal motivation (or,

conversely, dampened approach motivation). If my interpretation of this finding is

correct, measures of empathic concern should also be positively related to measures of

withdrawal-related affect, or negatively related to measures of approach-related affect, or

both. To specifically explore the link between empathy and affect I focused on two basic

emotions – fear and anger – that are reliably associated with withdrawal- and approach-

motivational tendencies, respectively.

1.1 Fear, Anger, Withdrawal, Approach

According to Lazarus (1991), fear and anger are competing reactions to threatening

stimuli; in a dangerous situation, a person can react with fear, and flee, or with anger, and

fight. Deciding between these two reactions is partly dependent on the affordances of the

physical environment. For instance, when participants faced a threatening outgroup

member in an enclosed room they were more likely to react with aggression, whereas if

they were in an open field they were more likely to distance themselves from the other

person (Cesario, Plaks, Hagiwara, Navarette, & Higgins, 2010). In addition, levels of

fear are lower in anger-causing situations than in other negative-affect situations,

suggesting that fear and anger are competing emotional reactions (Izard, 1972).

Behaviorally and physiologically, fear and anger can be differentiated in ways that

further corroborate their distinct motivational roles. Anger is associated with high levels

of directed activity, and increased energy and determination (Izard, 1972, 1992).

Compared to fear, anger is associated with greater increases in diastolic pressure and

heart rate, and slower recovery of systolic pressure (Schwartz, Weinberger, & Singer,

1981). Inductions of anger and fear have also been shown to lead to distinct

somatovisceral response patterns, with anger leading to relatively stronger noradrenergic

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responses, and fear leading to relatively stronger adrenergic responses (Stemmler et al.,

2007). These findings demonstrate that fear and anger are associated with different

behavioral and physiological changes consistent with their roles in withdrawal/flight and

approach/fight, respectively.

Researchers have noted that fear and anger are uniquely interesting from a theoretical

perspective because they allow researchers to tease apart motivational direction from

affective valence – both fear and anger are negative affective reactions, but fear is

associated with withdrawal while anger is associated with approach (Stemmler et al.,

2007; Wacker et al., 2003). Consistent with the motivational direction model of frontal

EEG asymmetry, fear and anger are correlated with relative right- and left-frontal

activity, respectively (Davidson, Marshall, Tomarken, & Henriques, 2000; Fox &

Davidson, 1988; Harmon-Jones & Sigelman, 2001; Harmon-Jones, Sigelman, Bohlig, &

Harmon-Jones, 2003; Wiedemann et al., 1999). Wacker and colleagues (2003)

demonstrated that inducing feelings of anger led to greater changes toward left-frontal

asymmetry compared to feelings of fear, a result that supports anger’s stronger

association with approach motivation and the BAS. Thus, dispositional susceptibilities to

fear and anger provide an emotional indicator of withdrawal- and approach-motivational

tendencies.

1.2 Objectives

Supporting Hypothesis 1, Study 1 showed that a neural correlate of dispositional

withdrawal motivation – right-frontal asymmetry – was a predictor of empathic concern.

In Study 2 I aimed to conceptually replicate this finding by examining the link between

dispositional susceptibility to withdrawal-related emotions and empathic reactions. I also

attempted to extend the findings from Study 1 by looking at empathic reactions to both

positive and negative events. This allowed me to examine whether withdrawal motivation

is associated with empathic reactions in general, or with empathic reactions to

withdrawal-related emotional states specifically. Because I posit that the processes

underlying emotional contagion and empathic concern reflect a basic drive to escape

threat, I predicted that empathy towards both positive and negative events would be

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associated with dispositional measures of fear, and negatively associated with

dispositional measures of anger.

These comparisons provide a way to specifically focus on the dimension of approach vs.

withdrawal while keeping valence constant, as fear and aggression are both negative

emotions, but fear is associated with withdrawal and anger is associated with approach.

By taking advantage of this comparison, I can address a possible alternative interpretation

of the findings from Study 1. According to emotional valence models of frontal EEG

asymmetry, the findings could reflect a link between empathy and negative affect, rather

than a link between empathy and withdrawal motivation. If this interpretation is correct,

fear and aggression should both be positively associated with empathy in Study 2. To

further investigate this alternative I included a measure of dispositional positive and

negative affect, reasoning that if findings from Study 1 reflect a link between empathy

and general negative affect, then dispositional measures of general negative affect should

effectively predict empathy reactions.

The study design employed here also has the potential to address the possibility that the

link between empathy and right-frontal asymmetry from Study 1 was due to dampened

anger, rather than increased withdrawal-related affect. If this alternative explanation is

accurate, there should be a negative relationship between anger and empathy, but no

positive relationship between fear and empathy. In other words, this design allows me to

assess approach and withdrawal independently, without pitting them against each other as

in Study 1.

2 Method

2.1 Participants

Participants (N = 90) were recruited online from the United States using Mechanical Turk

and received monetary compensation for their participation. I included an instructional

manipulation check to determine whether participants carefully read and followed

instructions (Oppenheimer, Meyvis, & Davidenko, 2009). For this manipulation check

participants were presented with a set of instructions followed by the question “Which of

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these activities do you engage in regularly?” and a list of sports activities. Near the end of

the instructions, participants are told to ignore the sports items, and instead to choose

“other” and to specify “psychology.” Twenty-one participants were excluded because

they failed to complete the experiment (N = 2) or because they didn’t follow the

instructions in the instructional manipulation check (N = 19). Thus, we analyzed data for

69 participants (51 female, Mage = 34.30, SDage = 11.47). Missing data were replaced with

the sample mean.

2.2 Procedure

Participants were told they would view eight images of children taken from a child

sponsorship website. Four of the images depicted children expressing happiness, and

participants were told that these photos were taken just after those children had learned

that they had been sponsored. The other four images depicted children expressing

sadness, and participants were told that the photos were taken after the children learned

that they had not been sponsored. Happy and sad targets were presented in counter-

balanced order across participants. Participants were told that these images were being

considered for a new fundraising campaign and that for this reason the charity was

interested in the emotional reactions the images elicit. For the sad targets, participants

used a 5-point scale (1 = Not at all, 5 = Extremely) to indicate the degree to which they

experienced empathic concern (warm, tender, soft-hearted, sympathetic, compassionate,

moved) and emotional contagion (sad, single item). Similarly, for the happy targets

participants indicated the degree to which they experienced empathic concern (excited,

pleased, glad, thrilled, delighted) and emotional contagion (happy, single item).

Subsequently, participants filled out demographic information and completed individual

difference measures assessing aggression, fear, and positive and negative affect.

2.3 Individual Difference Measures

To assess dispositional anger, participants completed the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ;

Buss & Perry, 1992) which assesses four dimensions of aggression: physical aggression

(e.g. Given enough provocation, I may hit another person) α = .89, verbal aggression

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(e.g. When people annoy me, I may tell them what I think of them) α = .71, anger (e.g. I

have trouble controlling my temper) α = .73, and hostility (e.g. I wonder why sometimes I

feel so bitter about things), α = .84. To assess dispositional fear, participants were asked

to complete the Fear Survey Schedule-II (FSS-II; Geer, 1965). This scale is comprised of

a list of stimuli (e.g. dead bodies, roller coasters, being alone), and participants rate the

degree to which each stimulus causes them to feel fear, α = .96. Finally, participants also

filled out the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, &

Tellegen, 1988). This scale assesses the degree to which participants generally experience

positive affect (e.g. strong, enthusiastic, inspired) α = .98, and negative affect (e.g.

nervous, irritable, distressed) α = .93.

3 Results First, I computed the bivariate correlations between the FSS-II, the AQ, empathic

concern, and emotional contagion (Table 4). To test the hypothesis that empathic concern

would be positively associated with fear and negatively associated with aggression,

irrespective of the valence of the target image, I conducted a multi-level model to predict

empathic concern as a function of physical aggression, fear, target valence, and all

interactions. I focused on the physical aggression subscale of the AQ because this

subscale is most clearly associated with approach-motivational tendencies. This, and all

subsequent models, was estimated with a random-intercept model for each participant.

The overall three-way interaction between aggression, fear, and valence was non-

significant b = .01, SE = .07, t(85) = .15, p = .88. The two-way interactions between

aggression and valence, and between fear and valence, were also non-significant, ts < .3.

We retained valence as a covariate in subsequent models, but this analysis demonstrates

that the relationships between aggression and empathic concern, and between fear and

empathic concern, are not moderated by the valence of the target image.

The next step was to test the meditational model in which physical aggression and fear

are predictors of empathic concern, as mediated by emotional contagion. To examine this

effect I first examined the total effect of physical aggression and fear on empathic

concern, controlling for target valence. As predicted, physical aggression was negatively

related to empathic concern, b = -.36, SE = .10, t(87) = -3.52, p < .01, and fear was

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positively related to empathic concern, b = .22, SE = .09, t(87) = 2.45, p = .02. Next, I

modeled the mediator, emotional contagion, as a function of physical aggression and fear,

controlling for target valence. Physical aggression was negatively related to emotional

contagion, b = -.25, SE = .11, t(87) = -2.26, p = .03, and fear was positively related to

emotional contagion, b = .38, SE = .10, t(87) = 3.75, p < .01. When empathic concern

was regressed simultaneously on physical aggression, fear, and emotional contagion,

emotional contagion significantly predicted empathic concern b = .70, SE = .04, t(87) =

15.99, p < .01. The inclusion of emotional contagion reduced the influence of physical

aggression on empathic concern, b = -.16, SE = .06, t(87) = -2.88, p = .01 (Sobel’s z =

2.24, p = .03). The inclusion of emotional contagion also reduced the influence of fear on

empathic concern such that the relationship became non-significant, b = -.05, SE = .05,

t(87) = -1.00, p = .32 (Sobel’s z = 3.65, p < .01). These results demonstrate that

regardless of target valence, fear positively predicts empathic concern and physical

aggression negatively predicts empathic concern, and these relationships are mediated by

emotional contagion.

To address the possibility that empathy might be related to negative affect in general, I

also examined the correlations between empathic concern, emotional contagion, and

positive and negative affect. Here, there were no significant relationships except for a

positive association between the positive affect subscale of the PANAS, and emotional

contagion towards happy targets, r = .25, p =.04. All other relationships between the

PANAS and the empathy measures were not significant, rs < .2, ps > .1. These results

suggest that general positive and negative affect were largely unrelated to measures of

empathic responding.

To examine the independent contributions of physical aggression, fear, and positive and

negative affect to both empathic concern and emotional contagion, I conducted two

multiple regression analyses. In the first, I regressed overall empathic concern on

physical aggression, fear, positive affect, and negative affect. For this analysis, the

multiple correlation coefficient was significant, R = .45, F(4, 64) = 4.07, p < .01, as was

the regression coefficient for aggression, b = -.40, t(64) = -3.41, p < .01. All other

coefficients were non-significant, bs < .15, ps > .2. I then conducted a regression

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predicting overall emotional contagion from aggression, fear, positive affect, and

negative affect. This analysis revealed a significant multiple correlation coefficient, R =

.42, F(4, 64) = 3.42, p = .01, a significant regression coefficient for fear, b = .30, t(64) =

2.24, p = .03, and a significant regression coefficient for physical aggression, b = -.26,

t(64) = -2.21, p = .03. Thus, physical aggression and fear predicted emotional contagion

and empathic concern above and beyond measures of positive and negative affect. 4 Discussion Overall, the pattern of correlations found in Study 2 is largely consistent with the

prediction that empathic concern and empathic contagion would be positively associated

with dispositional fear, and negatively associated with dispositional anger. Corroborating

the results of Study 1, these findings support Hypothesis 1, which states that empathy

should be associated with dispositional withdrawal motivation. The observation that

empathy shows opposite relationships with fear and anger provides strong support for the

idea that greater empathic responding is predicted by motivational direction specifically,

and not emotional valence. Both fear and anger reflect negative affective states, but they

differ in terms of their motivational direction, with anger motivating people to approach,

and fear motivating people to withdraw. Thus, our findings suggest that empathy is

associated with withdrawal motivation, rather than negative affect. This interpretation is

further supported by the lack of relationship between empathic responding and

dispositional positive affect and negative affect.

Interestingly, the relationships between measures of dispositional affect and empathy

were very similar, regardless of the valence of the affect displayed by the target. In other

words, positive and negative empathy showed similar relationships with both anger and

fear, suggesting that empathic reactions reflect an empathic tendency, rather than positive

or negative emotional tendencies. This finding expands on the findings from Study 1 by

demonstrating that the link between withdrawal and empathy is not simply a matching

effect; withdrawal motivation is not just associated with empathy for withdrawal-related

emotions, but also with empathy for approach-related emotions. Thus, withdrawal

motivation appears to be associated with general processes of emotional contagion and

empathic concern.

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A potential alternative explanation for the discrepancy between fear and anger in

predicting empathy is that this distinction is attributable to the anti-social characteristics

of anger in comparison to fear. In other words, angry people may generally have more

negative or distrustful views of others. There are two reasons why this interpretation is

unlikely to account for our findings. First, anger is not always an anti-social emotion, and

can even encourage prosocial action. Particularly in instances where one person’s actions

cause harm to another person, anger can motivate observers to stand up for the

disadvantaged (Vitaglione & Barnett, 2003). Second, if the anti-social qualities of anger

account for the negative association with empathy, a similar type of relationship would be

expected with fear, which could also be seen as having anti-social elements. When people

feel fear in a social context, this typically means that they are in the presence of

threatening or dangerous individuals. Fear can be caused by interpersonal rejection or

outright physical danger, events that are clearly anti-social in their implications

(Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2004). For these reasons, motivational direction, rather than

degree of anti-sociality, provides a better explanation of the results.

In this study I also examined the same mechanistic pathway that I looked at in Study 1;

that is, I tested whether emotional contagion might mediate the relationships between

dispositional measures of affect and empathic concern. These results provided support for

the prediction that withdrawal-related affect should predict greater empathic concern via

increased emotional contagion, and approach-related affect should predict lesser

empathic concern via decreased emotional contagion. Specifically, fear positively

predicted empathic concern through increased emotional contagion, while physical

aggression negatively predicted empathic concern through decreased emotional

contagion. Overall, this analysis is consistent with the idea that negative withdrawal-

related affect is associated with enhanced emotional contagion, whether positive or

negative, whereas negative approach-related affect is associated with diminished

emotional contagion. Furthermore, emotional contagion was a significant predictor of

empathic concern reactions that are, theoretically, more phylogenetically advanced other-

centered reactions.

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Studies 1 and 2 provide converging evidence that dispositional withdrawal motivation –

measured using frontal EEG asymmetry and self-reported affective tendencies – is

predictive of empathic concern. Study 2 expanded on Study 1, showing that this

relationship is not reducible to a link between empathy and negative affect, and showing

that withdrawal predicts empathic reactions even when the target is displaying approach-

related emotions like happiness. Thus far, however, I have focused on withdrawal

motivation as a trait, and have not established that the occurrence of empathic concern is

characterized by a withdrawal-related motivational state. This is the question that I will

examine in Study 3.

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Chapter 4: Levator Labii and Corrugator Supercilii Activity and Empathy

1 Introduction So far, Studies 1 and 2 have demonstrated, as predicted, that dispositional correlates of

withdrawal motivation are predictive of empathic responses. If the experience of empathy

is characterized by a withdrawal motivational state, however, it is important to

demonstrate that empathic reactions co-occur with withdrawal-related reactions, and that

the degree of the former increases with the degree of the latter. For this reason I

conducted Study 3, focusing on state measures of both empathic concern and withdrawal-

related affect. In addition to measuring self-reported affective reactions, I also obtained

measures of disgust – a withdrawal emotion – and general negative affect using

electromyography (EMG). In this way, I was able to test whether subtle, and largely

automatic, facial expressions associated with withdrawal, but not general negative affect,

were associated with increased empathic concern (Dimberg, 1982; Ekman, 1992).

1.1 The Facial Expression of Withdrawal

Disgust evolved as a self-protective mechanism to avoid disease and contamination

(Oaten, Stevenson, & Case, 2009, Schaller & Duncan, 2007). Humans even display a

facial expression that is specific to the emotion of disgust – wrinkling the nose and

raising the upper lip using the levator labii muscle – that is thought to prevent us from

ingesting pathogens (Rozin, Lowery, & Ebert, 1994; Stark, Walter, Schienle, Vaitl, 2005;

Vrana, 1993). Because the physical suffering of others often implies a threat of

contamination to the self via signals of disease or infection, it is also expected to invoke

such a disgust reaction. Indeed, neuroimaging research has demonstrated that many of the

same neural regions are recruited when people watch disgusting videos as when they

watch videos of people in pain (Benuzzi, Lui, Duzzi, Nichelli, & Porro, 2008). Disgust

compels us to avoid the unsavory, and it is this function that links the emotion very

closely with withdrawal motivation (Rozin, Haidt, & McCauley, 2000; Woody & Tolin,

2002).

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Previous research has established that a different facial muscle region – the corrugator

supercilii – is associated with a more generalized negative affective response. Like the

facial expression of disgust, it has been proposed that corrugator supercilii activity may

be part of an adaptive reaction to environmental stimuli (Dimberg, 1997; Ekman, 1992).

Corrugator supercilii activity has been observed consistently during the expression of

sadness, disgust, fear, and anger (Brown & Schwartz, 1980; Dimberg & Thunberg, 1998;

Lang, Greenwald, Bradley, & Hamm, 1993; Larson, Norris, & Cacioppo, 2003; Yartz, &

Hawk, 2002). Thus, the corrugator supercilii region is often viewed as a reliable indicator

of negative affect, but a poor indicator of motivational direction, as it is linked with both

withdrawal- and approach-related varieties of negative affect.

1.2 Objectives

In Studies 1 and 2, I found that empathic responding was associated with dispositional

withdrawal. To extend these findings, in Study 3 I examined whether empathic

responding was associated with state withdrawal. Specifically, I wanted to see whether

empathic responding would be accompanied by withdrawal-related facial expressions, as

assessed using EMG. As stated in Hypothesis 2, I predicted that people who react to

images with stronger withdrawal-related facial expressions would also experience

stronger feelings of empathic concern. While participants viewed images of children

ostensibly associated with a charity I used EMG to assess activity in the levator labii and

corrugator supercilii muscle regions, which are associated with expressions of disgust and

general negative affect respectively. In addition, I assessed participants’ empathic

concern, sadness, and disgust towards these images using self-report. I predicted that

empathic concern would be related to activity in the levator labii region, but not activity

in the corrugator supercilli region, as the former is specifically associated with

withdrawal while the latter is not. Because I suspected that this process might be stronger

for images that elicit more pronounced facial expressions, I compared reactions to images

depicting suffering vs. non-suffering children.

2 Method

2.1 Participants

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Thirty-seven introductory psychology students (19 female, Mage = 18.73, SDage = .96)

participated for course credit and $5. One participant was excluded from all analyses

involving scenery images because of an error in EMG recording during this portion of the

experiment.

2.2 Procedure

To begin, the experimenter attached five electrodes to the participant’s face (two at the

levator labii, two at the corrugator supercilii, and one at the forehead as a ground).

Participants were then told they would view two sets of images of African children, each

from a different charity (these images were the same as those used in Study 1). Images

and charity descriptions were counterbalanced. The two sets of images differed with

respect to the depiction of physical suffering; one set of images portrayed clear physical

suffering (in the form of emaciation, visible lesions, etc.) while the other set did not

(Figure 4). Ten suffering images were matched to ten non-suffering images with respect

to gender, race, age, body position, and general context, and pilot testing revealed that the

two sets differed with respect to the physical suffering participants perceived, t(12) =

17.17, p < .001, d = 4.11. The sets were presented in counterbalanced order, and were

each interspersed with 10 scenery images. Images were presented in random order with

the restriction that scenery and charity images alternated. Each image was displayed for

8s, followed by a 8s inter-trial interval. Participants then viewed all 20 charity images for

a second time, presented in random order, and rated their feelings of empathy, sadness,

and disgust to each one.

Finally, 16 control images – 8 disgust controls and 8 sadness controls – were presented in

the same manner as the charity images. These controls were taken from the International

Affective Picture System (IAPS; Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2008) and allowed me to

validate our EMG measures by providing a basis of comparison for the charity images.

During pilot testing, participants rated the disgust controls (M = 4.20, SD = .67) as

significantly more disgusting than sad controls (M = 1.34, SD = .34), t(22) = 18.83, p <

.001, d = 5.38, and rated the sadness controls (M = 3.21, SD = .69) as significantly sadder

than disgust controls (M = 1.54, SD = .35), t(22) = 13.13, p < .001, d = 3.05.

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2.3 Self-Report Measures

In response to each charity image, participants used a 5-point scale (1 = strongly

disagree, 5 = strongly agree) to indicate the extent to which they felt empathic concern

(moved, sympathetic, compassionate), sadness (sad, single item) and disgust (disgusted,

single item). Sadness and empathic concern were analyzed independently, as

recommended by Fultz, Schaller, and Cialdini (1988). Ratings were averaged across the

set of suffering images and the set of non-suffering images separately (αs > .90).

2.4 EMG Recording and Processing

EMG data were acquired using a MindWare BioLab (Version 2.1) system (MindWare

Technologies LTD, Gahanna, OH). At acquisition, data were amplified (×1000) and

filtered with a bandpass of .05 to 100 Hz. Electrodes were placed over the levator labii

and corrugator supercilii muscle regions on the left side of the face, using the placements

suggested by Tassinary, Cacioppo, and Vanman (2007). EMG data were analyzed using

the MindWare Technologies Ltd. EMG Module (Version 2.6). The signal was rectified

with an absolute value function and smoothed by applying a low-pass filter at 100Hz. We

then applied a 30Hz high-pass filter to eliminate potential ocular artifacts (Tassinary et

al., 2007). The period of interest in each trial was the 8s image presentation period, which

we subdivided into two 4s epochs. Activity from 1s of fixation preceding each image was

used as a baseline and was subtracted from activity obtained during image viewing. A

contour following integrator was then applied to compute a running average of EMG

activity.

3 Results First, in order to determine which epoch was associated with stronger EMG responses, I

conducted a 2 (epoch: 0-4s vs. 4-8s), by 2 (image type: sad control vs. disgust control) by

2 (muscle: corrugators supercilii vs. levator labii) within-subjects ANOVA. This analysis

revealed a significant main effect of image type, such that EMG responses were stronger

for the disgust control images (M = 1.54µV, SE = .45µV), than for the sad control images

(M = .22µV, SE = .13µV), F(1, 36) = 8.85, p = .005. There was also a significant

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interaction between muscle and epoch, such that corrugator supercilii was stronger during

the 0-4s epoch (M = .84µV, SE = .26µV) than during the 4-8s epoch (M = .62µV, SE =

.21) while this difference was less pronounced for the levator labii muscle (M0-4s =

1.02µV, SE0-4s = .34µV, M4-8s = 1.06µV, SE4-8s = .38µV). Because EMG responses were

stronger in the 0-4s epoch, at least for corrugator supercilii sites, I conducted all

subsequent analyses using this epoch.

If levator labii activity is a valid measure of disgust as expected (Vrana, 1993), I should

find that it correlates with self-report measures of disgust, and that it is higher for

disgusting images compared to non-disgusting images. Consistent with these criteria,

levator labii activity was correlated with self-reported disgust to the suffering images r =

.43, p = .008, and was higher for disgust control images (M = 1.89µV, SD, = 3.71µV)

than for scenery (M = .25µV, SD = 1.21µV), t(35) = 3.22, p = .003, or sad control images

(M = .14µV, SD = 1.45µV), t(36) = 2.73, p = .01. Similarly, if corrugators supercilii

activity is associated with negative affect in general, I should find that it correlates with

self-report measures of disgust and sadness, and that it is higher for disgust and sad

control images than for scenery images. As predicted, for suffering images corrugator

supercilii activity was significantly correlated with self-reported sadness, r = .36, p = .03,

and marginally correlated with self-reported disgust, r = .29, p = .08. Corrugator

supercilii activity was also lower for scenery images (M = -.05µV, SD = .45µV), than for

disgust controls (M = 1.26µV, SD = 2.68µV), t(35) = 2.86, p = .007, or sad controls (M =

.31µV, SD = .69µV), t(35) = 2.80, p = .008.

To explore the effects of physical suffering on self-reported empathic concern, sadness,

and disgust, I compared responses to the two charities. When viewing the suffering

images, participants reported feeling more empathic concern, sadness, and disgust

relative to the non-suffering images, all ts(36) > 9.0, all ps < .001. Levator labii activity

was higher for suffering images (M = .38µV, SD = 1.28µV) than for non-suffering images

(M = .07µV, SD = .80µV), but this difference did not reach significance, t(36) = 1.33, p =

.19 (Table 5). Corrugator supercilii activity was higher for suffering images (M = .96µV,

SD = 2.72µV) than for non-suffering images, (M = .03µV, SD = .70µV) t(36) = 2.50, p =

.017. As predicted, corrugator supercilii activity was not correlated with empathic

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concern for either type of image (rs < .25, ps > .1) suggesting that empathic reactions

were not associated with generalized negative affect.

In this study, I was also interested in examining whether levator labii was a predictor of

empathic concern, and whether emotional contagion mediated this effect (see Tables 6

and 7 for bivariate correlations). I expected this relationship to emerge for suffering

images but not for neutral images. Thus, I hypothesized that the effect of levator labii

activity on empathic concern would be moderated by image type, and that this effect

would be explained by emotional contagion. This hypothesis can be analyzed using

mediated moderation analysis (Muller, Judd, & Yzerbyt, 2005). First, I regressed

empathic concern on image type, levator labii activity, and their interaction. Consistent

with moderated mediation, there was an overall effect of image type, b = .56, SE = .05,

t(34) = 10.40, p < .01, and an interaction between image type and levator labii activity, b

= .15, SE = .07, t(34) = 2.15, p = .04. This demonstrated that suffering images evoked

more empathic concern than non-suffering images, and that this was especially true for

participants who showed higher levels of levator labii activity.

Next, I modeled the mediator, emotional contagion, as a function of image type, levator

labii activity, and their interaction. Similar to the findings for empathic concern, image

type was related to emotional contagion b =.71, SE = .06, t(34) = 12.53, p < .01. There

was also an interaction between image type and levator labii activity in predicting

contagion, b = .21, SE = .07, t(34) = 3.00, p = .01. This showed that people expressed

more emotional contagion towards suffering compared to non-suffering images, and that

this difference was larger for people who showed high levels of levator labii activity.

Finally, I modeled empathic concern as a function of image type, levator labii activity,

emotional contagion, and the interactions between image type and levator labii activity,

and between image type and emotional contagion. The interaction between image type

and levator labii activity no longer predicted empathic concern, b = .01, SE = .05, t(32) =

.25, p = .81. The main effect of emotional contagion on empathic concern was

significant, b = .71, SE = .07, t(32) = 10.66, p < .01. These results show that emotional

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contagion emerged as a significant mediator in the model. The full effects of all models

are reported in Table 8. 4 Discussion In line with Hypothesis 2, I predicted that state withdrawal reactions – as assessed using

facial EMG measures of levator labii muscle movements – would be associated with

greater empathic concern. These predictions were supported by the findings, as I found

that levator labii activity and image type interacted to predict empathic concern. This

interaction demonstrated that participants felt greater empathic concern towards suffering

compared to neutral images, and that this effect was stronger for people who showed

greater levator labii activity. This suggests that people who experience a stronger

withdrawal reaction to the suffering of others are also more likely to show greater

empathic concern for suffering, compared to non-suffering targets.

Consistent with the hypothesis that empathic concern would be uniquely associated with

withdrawal-related affect, and not with general negative affect, the corrugator supercilii

muscle region was not significantly correlated with empathic concern. Corroborating the

findings regarding dispositional affect from Study 2, these results suggest that empathic

concern doesn’t stem from general negative affect, but specifically from withdrawal-

related affect. Again, these findings support a conceptualization of empathic concern as

arising from escape motivational systems.

These findings demonstrate an interesting juxtaposition of responses that occurs when

people are exposed to the physical suffering of others. Relative to non-suffering images,

participants were more disgusted by the suffering images, but they also reported feeling

more empathic concern and sadness. This co-occurrence of seemingly opposing reactions

was clarified by our mediated moderation analysis; stronger facial expressions of disgust

were associated with stronger emotional contagion to suffering compared to non-

suffering images, and this emotional contagion was a predictor of empathic concern.

These results mirror the meditational pathways that were observed in Studies 1 and 2,

with a measure of withdrawal motivation predicting empathic concern via stronger

emotional contagion reactions. Again, the picture that emerges is one in which empathic

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concern is associated with withdrawal motivation, a link that is mediated by

phylogenetically older emotional contagion processes (de Waal, 2002).

The three studies described thus far have provided correlational evidence that empathic

concern is associated with both trait and state measures of withdrawal motivation. This

evidence, however, cannot address the causal direction of these relationships. At this

point, the question still remains: Can withdrawal motivation cause greater empathic

concern?

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Chapter 5: Approach and Withdrawal Facial Expressions and Empathy

1 Introduction Up to this point, I have demonstrated a link between empathy and withdrawal by

conducting correlational studies examining how empathic concern relates to various

measures of withdrawal motivation. These studies provide converging evidence for this

link, but do not rule out the possibility that a third variable is accounting for this

relationship, or that withdrawal motivation might be caused by an empathic disposition.

In Study 4 I will use facial muscle configurations to experimentally manipulate approach-

and withdrawal-related affect, again focusing on anger and fear, and will then examine

whether this manipulation has a causal influence on empathic responding.

1.1 The Facial Feedback Hypothesis

According to the facial feedback hypothesis, people’s facial muscle movements shape

their affective experience (see McIntosh, 1996). Intriguing evidence for this idea comes

from a study demonstrating that holding a pencil between one’s teeth results in more

positive affect than does holding between one’s lips (Strack, Martin, & Stepper, 1988).

The authors reasoned that this occurs because, in the lips condition, the zygomaticus

major muscle – associated with smiling – was inhibited, while in the teeth condition it

was activated. Thus, muscle feedback from the face was found to influence people’s self-

reported emotional state. Further evidence of the role of facial feedback in the experience

of emotions comes from studies that find impaired emotional processing following the

use of Botulinum Toxin-A (popularly known as Botox), a substance that impairs facial

muscle activity (Havas, Glenberg, Gutowski, Lucarelli, & Davidson, 2010).

If facial muscle movements can cause changes in emotional experience, this could

provide a useful way to manipulate approach- and withdrawal-related affect. Indeed,

previous research has shown that facial muscle configurations can influence self-reported

emotional states, as well as physiological changes (Duclos et al.,1989; Levenson, Ekman,

& Freisen, 1990). Importantly, these studies have demonstrated that facial muscle

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movements associated with fear and anger have diverging effects, suggesting that these

two configurations produce different affective experiences in the person generating the

movements. Although facial patterns may not generate emotion-specific experience for

all emotion categories (Duclos et al., 1989; Zajonc & McIntosh, 1992), the

distinguishability of fear and anger suggests that it is possible to use muscle movements

to manipulate these emotional experiences.

1.2 Objectives

In Studies 1 through 3 I found correlational evidence showing that empathic responding

is associated with both state and trait withdrawal motivation. In Study 4, I hope to

experimentally manipulate motivational direction and to examine the impact on empathic

responding. Participants were instructed to make facial expressions associated with

approach- and withdrawal-related emotions. According to the facial feedback hypothesis,

making these faces should cause the participant to feel the associated emotion (see

McIntosh, 1996). As in Study 2, I was particularly interested in the distinction between

fear and anger expressions, as these provide a way to manipulate approach- vs.

withdrawal-related affect without simultaneously manipulating affective valence

(Stemmler et al., 2007; Wacker et al., 2003). Based on Hypothesis 3, I predicted that

participants who were instructed to make fear facial expressions would show more

empathic concern than participants instructed to make anger faces.

2 Method

2.1 Participants

Participants (N = 305) were recruited online from the United States using Mechanical

Turk and received monetary compensation for their participation (179 female, Mage =

34.46, SDage = 12.42). Twenty-eight participants were excluded because they failed to

complete the experiment (N = 3) or because they reported that they were unable to hold

the facial expression for more than 40% percent of the time (N = 25).

2.2 Procedure

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Participants were randomly assigned to one of seven groups. For six of these groups,

participants were instructed to make and hold a specific facial muscle configuration at

various points during the experiment, while in the seventh group participants were not

required to do this (no movement control group, N = 48). The facial muscle

configurations corresponded to one of five emotions (sadness, N = 40; happiness, N = 39;

fear, N = 31; disgust, N = 44; anger, N = 37) or to no specific emotion (movement control

group, N = 38; see Appendix A for movement instructions). No mention of particular

emotions or emotion related words (i.e. smile) was made to the participants.

First, participants were given a chance to practice the facial muscle configuration. Then,

they were told that they would view four images of African children taken from a child

sponsorship website. Before each image, participants were presented with the movement

instructions and were asked to make the facial muscle configuration and hold it while

they responded to the following items. They then used a 5-point scale (1 = strongly

disagree, 5 = strongly agree) to indicate the degree to which they felt empathic concern

towards the child in the image (moved, sympathetic, compassionate, warm, tender, soft-

hearted). Combining these items across the four images yielded a reliable composite

index of empathic concern, α = .98. After each set of ratings participants were told to take

a moment to relax their facial muscles.

To test if the movement instructions were causing participants to experience the

associated emotions, participants were asked to make and hold the facial muscle

configuration one more time, during which they used a 5-point scale to rate the extent to

which they felt happy, surprised, disgusted, sad, fearful, and angry. Subsequently,

participants entered demographic information and indicated the percentage of time they

felt that they were able to hold the facial expression during the experiment (1 = 0-20%, 2

= 20-40%, 3 = 40-60%, 4 = 60-80%, 5 = 80-100%).

3 Results First, I conducted a one-way ANOVA to explore the effects of the facial movement

manipulation on empathic concern towards the images. For this analysis, the overall

ANOVA was not significant, F(6, 270) = 1.53, p = .168 (Figure 5). Based on the a priori

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prediction that withdrawal-related facial expressions would be associated with greater

empathic concern than approach-related facial expressions, I conducted two linear

contrasts. In the first I compared sadness, fear, and disgust to happiness and anger. This

contrast was not significant, t(1, 270) = 1.47, p = .142. In the second I ran a contrast

comparing just fear and anger as this pair of emotions provides an effective way of

comparing approach and withdrawal emotional states without confounding motivational

direction and emotional valence (Wacker et al., 2003). This analysis revealed a

significant difference between fear (M = 3.67, SD = .92) and anger (M = 3.08, SD =

1.24), t(270) = 2.47, p = .014. Linear contrasts comparing fear to movement control and

anger to movement control revealed no significant differences ts < 1.6, ps > .1.

To see if the fear and anger facial movement instructions caused participants to actually

experience the associated emotions I conducted two contrasts comparing the degree to

which these facial muscle configurations evoked fear and anger when participants were

not viewing images. This analysis showed that the fear configuration (M = 1.87, SD =

1.26) evoked more fear than the anger configuration (M = 1.49, SD = .77), but this

difference did not reach significance t(270) = 1.65, p = .101. Unexpectedly, the fear

condition (M = 2.55, SD = 1.43) also evoked marginally more anger than the anger

condition (M = 2.03, SD = 1.12), t(270) = 1.78, p = .076.

I then attempted to determine if the relationship between fear and anger still held when I

only included participants for whom the manipulation worked as intended. As such, I did

a second analysis including only participants who showed equal or greater fear than anger

for the fear condition, and equal or greater anger than fear for the anger condition. I also

excluded participants in the neutral movement condition if they reported ratings of 4 or

higher on any of the five emotions. This resulted in the exclusion of an additional 15

participants from the fear group, 2 participants from the anger group, and 14 participants

from the neutral movement group. I then conducted a one-way ANOVA on this subset of

participants. For this analysis, the overall ANOVA was not significant, F(6, 239) = 1.57,

p = .167. The linear contrast comparing fear and anger revealed a significant difference

between fear (M = 3.65, SD = 1.05) and anger (M = 3.05, SD = 1.27), t(239) = 1.99, p =

.048. Linear contrasts comparing fear to movement control and anger to movement

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control revealed a marginal difference between fear (M = 3.65, SD = 1.05) and movement

control (M = 3.09, SD = .85), t(239) = 1.72, p = .087, but no significant difference

between anger and movement control, t = .17, p = .87.

4 Discussion In line with my predictions, I found that when participants made fearful facial

expressions they reported stronger empathic reactions to the images than when

participants made angry facial expressions. These results offer the first evidence that

manipulating approach- and withdrawal-related affect can influence empathic

responding. While these results provide initial support for a causal connection between

withdrawal motivation and empathic concern, some inconsistencies in these results

warrant attention. The manipulation check showed that fear expressions generated more

fear than anger expressions, but also more anger than anger expressions. The fact that I

obtained the predicted effects for empathic concern despite these patterns of self-reported

affect suggests that the influence of facial expressions on empathy may not be mediated

by self-reported affect, and may be influenced by more automatic affective processes.

This explanation is consistent with the fact that the relationship between the fear and

anger conditions showed very little change upon removing participants who didn’t report

the expected emotional response to the fear and anger facial expressions.

As with Study 2, an alternative way to interpret these results is to suggest that anger is

associated with dampened empathy compared to fear because of its inherent anti-social

nature. Again, however, this explanation is unlikely given the potential for anger to take

on prosocial characteristics in the context of injustice, and given the anti-social nature of

fear (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2004; Vitaglione & Barnett, 2003). A second alternative

interpretation for these findings, and those in Study 2, is that empathic concern is

dampened by approach motivation, rather than encouraged by withdrawal motivation.

The secondary analysis of the subset of participants who responded in the predicted

manner to the manipulation showed that fear marginally heightened empathy relative to a

movement control group, while anger had no significant dampening effect. Still, the

possibility that approach may dampen empathic reactions remains plausible, and will be

addressed in more detail in the general discussion.

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Despite some discrepancies, the results from this final, experimental study suggest that

withdrawal motivation may have a causal influence on empathic concern. This

corroborates findings from the first three studies, which provide convergent evidence that

empathic concern is related to both state and trait measures of withdrawal motivation.

Taken together, these four studies provide consistent support for the overarching

hypothesis that empathic concern stems from withdrawal-motivated escape tendencies.

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Chapter 6: General Discussion

1 Summary At the outset of these investigations I proposed that empathic reactions have adaptive

value above and beyond their impact on helping behavior and resultant indirect fitness

benefits. Based on the idea that emotional reactions to the environment facilitate adaptive

behaviors – fear and disgust, for instance, facilitate escape and withdrawal – I suggested

that catching these emotional reactions from a person who shares one’s environment

should also facilitate one’s own adaptive behaviors. In other words, other people who are

present within the same environmental context can provide second-hand information

about how to behave adaptively, and empathic reactions constitute a process by which

that information can be utilized.

Based on research on the negativity bias (Rozin & Royzman, 2001), which posits that

evolutionary pressure to avoid threat is stronger than pressure to obtain reward, I

suggested threat-avoidance should be the primary driver of empathic responding. Thus, I

hypothesized that emotional contagion, as well as downstream reactions of empathic

concern, should be related to processes of threat-avoidance and withdrawal. Results of

four studies showed that this is, in fact, the case. In Studies 1 and 2, I examined

dispositional indicators of approach and withdrawal motivation, and determined the

relationship between these variables and empathic responding. In Study 1, I found that a

neural correlate of withdrawal motivation – right-frontal EEG asymmetry – was

predictive of people’s empathic responses to charity photos. Furthermore, this

relationship was mediated by sadness, a reaction that is representative of a basic

emotional contagion reaction. Thus, these findings suggest that dispositional withdrawal

motivation makes people more susceptible to emotional contagion, at least in response to

targets experiencing withdrawal-related emotions like sadness (c.f. Harmon-Jones &

Allen, 1998) and distress. This initial contagion reaction is then predictive of the

empathic concern response, which involves the additional step of making a distinction

between the self and the target (de Waal, 2008).

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In Study 2, I conducted a conceptual replication of Study 1, this time using measures of

dispositional emotional reactivity as indicators of approach and withdrawal motivational

tendencies. Here, I attempted to expand on my initial findings by addressing two

unanswered questions. First, did I find a relationship between right-frontal asymmetry

and empathy because empathy is related to negative affect, as the emotional valence

model of frontal EEG asymmetry would predict, or did I find this relationship because

empathy is related to withdrawal affect, as the motivational direction model of frontal

EEG asymmetry would predict? Second, does withdrawal motivation predict empathic

concern only in contexts in which the target is also experiencing withdrawal-related

emotions, or does it predict empathic concern in positive contexts as well?

Here, I focused specifically on the emotions of fear and anger as these emotions share the

same negative valence, but differ in terms of their motivational direction, with fear

reflecting withdrawal motivation, and anger reflecting approach motivation. I found that

fear predicted emotional contagion – both positive and negative – and that this contagion

reaction mediated the indirect relationship between fear and empathic concern.

Furthermore, I found that physical aggression, but not other subscales of the AQ, was a

negative predictor of empathic concern towards both positive and negative targets, again

mediated through emotional contagion. These relationships suggest that withdrawal-

related emotional tendencies are predictive of greater emotional contagion, which is in

turn predictive of empathic concern, whereas approach-related emotional tendencies have

the opposite relationship with empathic reactions. Consistent with a motivational-

direction interpretation of Study 1, these findings held when controlling for positive and

negative affect, suggesting that empathy is related to withdrawal motivation specifically,

and not negative affect generally.

In Study 3, I moved away from dispositional measures of withdrawal motivation and

explored state facial reactions towards targets using facial EMG. Here I found that

suffering images, as compared to non-suffering images, elicited a greater empathic

response and also stronger activity in the levator labii and corrugator supercilli facial

muscle regions – regions associated with disgust and general negative affect,

respectively. I found that greater levator labii activity was predictive of greater empathic

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responding to suffering compared to non-suffering images, a relationship that was

mediated by feelings of sadness. Mirroring the results I obtained at a dispositional level

of analyses, these results suggest the following process: a strong withdrawal reaction,

reflected by the disgust facial reaction, predicts greater emotional contagion, and then

greater empathic concern.

Finally, in Study 4 I attempted to experimentally manipulate state levels of approach- and

withdrawal-related emotions in order to investigate whether these variables can have a

casual influence on empathic responding. Focusing again on fear and anger, I found that

people who made facial muscle configurations consistent with fear showed greater

empathic concern than those who made configurations consistent with anger. These

results further corroborated findings from the first three studies, and provided evidence

that manipulating motivational direction via emotional facial expression can influence the

degree of empathic concern a person feels. Specifically, withdrawal emotions like fear

encourage empathic concern relative to approach emotions like anger.

Integrating the findings from these four studies, I find evidence for the relationship

between empathy and withdrawal motivation across two levels of analysis (state and

trait), across two types of study design (correlational and experimental), and across

multiple methodological approaches (self-report, psychophysiological, and

neuroscientific). Thus, there is substantial convergence indicating that empathic concern

stems from a basic motivational system governing withdrawal and escape. Considered in

a broader theoretical context, these findings suggest directions for future research that

have the potential to further expand our understanding of the driving forces behind

empathic concern.

2 Limitations The studies described herein have provided converging evidence that empathy reflects

withdrawal motivation, but they also have limitations that raise further questions and

suggest avenues for future research. First, in all four studies emotional contagion and

empathic concern were measured using self-report responses to images. Although this

scenario may give us insight into the way that people respond in analogous situations

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outside the laboratory – for instance, when reacting to charity advertisements – it is still

unclear how these findings would translate to contexts in which the target is present and

involved in the interaction. I suspect that in a real-world interaction scenario, the effects

we have documented here would be stronger, given that emotional reactions would likely

be enhanced, and the potential for the partner to provide information about the current

environment would be heightened. Nevertheless, this possibility remains to be

experimentally tested.

The experimental context used in these studies may also limit the external validity of our

results in that participants don’t have a clear option to avoid the empathy-inducing

situation, as they often would in real-life interactions (Cesario et al., 2010). It is possible

that people high on withdrawal-motivation are responding with emotional contagion and

empathic concern in our studies because they don’t have other emotion-regulation

strategies – such as escape – available to them (unless they choose not to complete the

experiment). This raises interesting questions about whether people who exhibit high

levels of withdrawal motivation actually display more empathy in real-world contexts, or

whether they regulate this affect in other ways, thereby avoiding the need to feel empathy

(Cameron & Payne, 2011).

One further limitation of this series of studies is that approach motivation was only

independently assessed using the emotion of anger. Anger is theoretically interesting in

the context of the questions addressed here, given that it is a negative emotion that is also

associated with approach-motivation (Stemmler et al., 2007; Wacker et al., 2003).

Nevertheless, anger may not be representative of all approach-motivational emotions

when it comes to its relationship with empathy. The approach-motivational aspects of

anger are reflected in efforts to harm the target (Harmon-Jones & Sigelman, 2001),

raising the possibility that its negative relationship with empathy may be descriptive of

aggressive, but not appetitive forms of approach-motivational affect. In fact, based on my

theoretical account, which posits that others’ emotions can provide second-hand

information about the environment, it seems plausible that it would be adaptive to show

emotional contagion for appetitive emotions that imply the presence of reward. For

instance, if one person observes someone else eagerly approaching an ambiguous

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stimulus, it could be adaptive to adopt this approach-motivational affect. Assessing other

forms of approach-motivational affect, particularly those implicated in pursuing reward,

could clarify this possibility.

3 Future Directions

3.1 Threat vs. Challenge

Overall, the results of the studies discussed herein have supported the view that empathic

concern reflects withdrawal motivation. Nevertheless, there may be some instances where

the behavioral outcomes of empathic concern exhibit approach-motivational tendencies,

as when a person rushes over to help their friend who has been injured, or when a parent

reaches out to their crying child. Viewed through the lens of the stress and coping

literature, a scenario in which one is faced with the suffering or distress of another person

could be characterized as a stressor – a situation in which one’s evaluation of the ratio of

resources to demands would determine the resultant behavioral and physiological

reaction (Tomaka, Blascovich, Kelsey, & Leitten, 1993; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).

When a person perceives their resources to be adequate (or more than adequate) in

addressing the present demands, they are making a challenge appraisal, but when they

perceive their resources to be inadequate relative to the demands, they are making a

threat appraisal. Challenge and threat appraisal are associated with different physiological

and performance outcomes, with challenge predicting efficient cardiovascular

functioning and strong performance, and threat predicting inefficient cardiovascular

functioning and weak performance (Tomaka et al., 1993). Thus, the type of appraisal that

one makes in response to another person in need may have important consequences for

the type of action that they take.

An intriguing possibility is that when one is faced with the suffering of another person,

the type of appraisal one makes will determine whether one helps or flees the situation.

Past research provides some support for this hypothesis. For instance, a person’s feelings

of self-efficacy – essentially reflective of one’s evaluation of resources – are an important

determinant of whether or not they agree to help someone in need (Caprara & Steca,

2005; 2007). Furthermore, threat responses tend to result in disengagement and

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avoidance, which would be consistent with a fleeing response (Lazarus & Folkman,

1984; Folkman, Lazarus, Dunkel-Schetter, DeLongis, & Gruen, 1986). Thus, threat and

challenge appraisals may encourage helping and fleeing responses, respectively.

Along these lines, it is also possible that the behavioral options available to an individual

will determine how empathy will manifest itself in action (or inaction). For instance,

people who are high on dispositional withdrawal might escape empathy-inducing

situations if the environment afforded that option (Batson, 1987; Cesario et al., 2010;

Cialdini et al., 1987). In all of the studies discussed herein, participants did not have clear

options for escaping the situation, aside from discontinuing the experiment. It is possible

that if this option were more available, participants would have chosen this as a way to

avoid feeling empathic emotion (Cialdini et al., 1987; Cameron & Payne, 2011). Future

research exploring this possibility has the potential to provide important insights into the

circumstances and dispositional characteristics that lead people to help or ignore people

in need.

3.2 Approach Motivation and the Inhibition of Empathy

Although I have interpreted these results as suggestive of a positive link between

withdrawal motivation and empathy, I have also accumulated evidence of a negative link

between approach motivation and empathy. Relative to withdrawal motivation, indicators

of approach motivation were consistently related to a dampened empathic response, and

this was true even when approach was assessed without reference to withdrawal, as with

self-reported physical aggression in Study 2.

Precedent for this possibility is offered by research on the link between power motivation

and empathy. Power, although not synonymous with approach, has been linked with

approach motivational systems, and can be seen as a characteristic manifestation of BAS.

Based on their analysis of how power influences behavior, Keltner, Gruenfeld and

Anderson (2003) claim that high power is associated greater approach and dampened

inhibition, constructs associated with BAS and BIS activity, respectively. High power has

also been found to decrease perspective taking and empathic responding (Galinsky,

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Magee, Inesi, & Gruenfeld, 2006), suggesting that approach motivation may discourage

empathic responsivity towards others.

3.3 Self-Regulation of Empathy

Consistent with the idea of empathy-inducing situations as stressors, these findings

strongly suggest that empathy – at least in response to others’ suffering – is an aversive

emotional experience. This suggests the possibility that people use emotion regulation

strategies to reduce empathic reactions in much the same way they do for other types of

negative affect (Gross, 1998; Cameron & Payne, 2011). If this is the case, it suggests that

helping may, in a sense, be an emotion regulation strategy, aimed at reducing ones’ own

personal distress. Indeed, this is the account proposed by advocates of distress-reduction

models of helping (Cialdini et al., 1973; Piliavin et al., 1981). Furthermore, it is

consistent with findings showing that people will engage in emotion regulation strategies

to prevent themselves from feeling overwhelming distress in the face of large numbers of

suffering individuals (Cameron & Payne, 2011).

Conceptualizing empathy in this way also suggests that things that diminish emotion

regulation capacity, such as ego-depletion and cognitive load – should impair people’s

ability to regulate empathy, and thus lead to greater expressions of empathic concern.

Potentially, if ego-depletion and cognitive load also dampen behavioral efforts at emotion

regulation, these phenomena should result in decreased helping responses as well.

Empirical tests of these possibilities could lead to an understanding of how ego-depleting

environments – like those in which one is consistently the target of stigma – could

effectively act like a double-edged sword, augmenting distressing empathic reactions, and

diminishing helping behaviors (Inzlicht, Tullett, Legault, & Kang, 2011).

4 Conclusion In four studies, I have provided evidence that empathic concern reflects withdrawal

motivation – the motivation to evade punishment and avoid threat. In light of theoretical

accounts of the adaptive value of emotional contagion, these findings are consistent with

the possibility that humans have motivational systems for detecting threat, and that the

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emotions of others can provide an important indication of potential danger. Here, I

propose that empathic concern stems from these motivational systems, and provide

evidence that people with greater reactivity in those systems show stronger empathic

reactions towards others.

My conceptualization of empathic concern as a withdrawal-motivated reaction is a

significant departure from theories detailing the adaptive value of empathy, which largely

focus on empathy’s ability to encourage prosociality, and thereby generate indirect fitness

benefits. In addition to providing a novel theoretical perspective that could deepen our

understanding of the empathic process, the findings reported herein also suggest

interesting and valuable avenues for future research – avenues that could lead to a more

thorough understanding of when empathy leads to productive, prosocial behaviors.

Although, in a way, the proposed theoretical account characterizes empathy as a “selfish”

process, it may contribute to a truer understanding of human empathy, and thereby

suggest ways in which those “selfish” processes can be harnessed for selfless ends.

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Appendix A

Condition Facial Movement Instructions

Sadness Raise the inner corners of your eyebrows and pull them up and together in the center of your forehead. Pull the corners of your lips down. Raise your cheeks and pull your lip corners down against the upward pull. Glance down.

Happiness Raise your cheeks. If it is hard to do try squinting a little. Part your lips and let your lip corners come up.

Fear Raise your eyebrows as high as you can and pull the inner corners of your brows together. Raise your upper eyelids and tighten your lower eyelids. Let your mouth drop open and stretch your lips horizontally. It may help to use a muscle in your neck to pull your lip corners horizontally.

Disgust Wrinkle your nose, let your lips part. Pull your lower lip down. Let your tongue move forward in your mouth but you don’t need to stick it out.

Anger Pull your eyebrows down and together. Raise your upper eyelids. Now tighten your lower eyelids. Narrow, tighten, and press your lips together, pushing your lower lip up a little.

Movement Control Raise your eyebrows and pull them up and together in the center of your forehead. Part your lips and let your lip corners come up.

No Movement Control N/A

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Copyright Acknowledgments

The content of Chapter 2 is currently in press at Psychophysiology:

Tullett, A. M., Harmon-Jones, E., & Inzlicht, M. (in press). Right-frontal cortical

asymmetry predicts empathic reactions: Support for a link between withdrawal

motivation and empathy. Psychophysiology.

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Notes

1. These two sets of images were matched on the basis of gender, race, age, body

position, and general context, but were selected so that they differed in the degree of

physical suffering depicted. In Study 1, self-reported reactions were collapsed across the

images because of high reliabilities across the two sets (αs > .75), and because the

relationships between frontal EEG asymmetry and self-report variables did not differ

across the two sets. In Study 3, the two sets are analyzed separately because the

relationship between EMG activity and self-report variables differed substantially across

the two sets.

2. Frontal asymmetry scores are also commonly analyzed at electrodes F7/F8. In our

sample, however, the F7 electrode site was excluded for 13 participants because of

excessive noise identified prior to data analysis. Due to the substantially reduced sample

size of participants with F7/F8 data, I have not included analyses of these electrode sites.

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Tables

Table 1. Means and standard deviations for emotion intensity ratings of the images

Images Ratings

Joy Anger Disgust Sadness Surprise Fear Suffering

M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD

Set A 1.59 .55 1.43 .35 1.34 .42 2.05 .37 1.40 .39 1.57 .45 1.84 .43 Set B 1.12 .17 3.10 .59 1.94 .77 3.45 .55 1.77 .82 2.35 .67 4.10 .58 Overall 1.36 .34 1.57 .43 1.64 .53 2.75 .34 1.57 .43 1.96 .47 2.97 .45

Note. Missing items were replaced with the series mean. Table 2. Reliabilities and descriptive statistics for key variables

α M SD

1. Empathic Concern .86 2.81 .63 2. Sadness .89 2.68 .85 3. Personal Distress .93 2.80 .87 4. F4F3 - .12 .33 5. FC4FC3 - .04 .12 6. CP4CP3 - .01 .22 7. P4P3 - .06 .21

Table 3. Bivariate correlations between key variables

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1. Empathic Concern .78** .67** -.41* -.05 .33† .62** 2. Sadness .90** -.52** -.12 .16 .37* 3. Personal Distress -.60** -.22 .15 .22 4. F4F3 .57** -.17 -.10 5. FC4FC3 .40* .06 6. CP4CP3 .59 7. P4P3

Note. Ns vary between 27 and 30 due to excluded electrode sites. Negative correlations indicate a positive relationship between right-frontal asymmetry and the variable of interest. **p < .01, *p < .05, †p < .1.

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Table 4. Predicting empathic concern and empathic contagion from emotional disposition

Emotional Disposition

P Agg. V Agg. Anger Hostility Fear PA NA

Empathic Concern – Overall

-.38** -.25* -.08 -.14 .14 .18 .08

Empathic Concern – Sad Targets

-.34** -.25* -.10 -.21† .03 .06 .04

Empathic Concern – Happy Targets

-.26* -.15 -.03 .00 .21† .25* .10

Emotional Contagion – Overall

-.23† -.16 .03 .08 .31** .11 .16

Emotional Contagion – Sad Targets

-.18 -.14 .07 .06 .26* .00 .16

Emotional Contagion – Happy Targets

-.20† -.14 -.03 .09 .28* .19 .12

Note. P Agg. = Physical Aggression; V Agg = Verbal Aggression; PA = Positive Affect; NA = Negative Affect. **p < .01, *p < .05, † p < .1. Table 5. Means and SDs for levator labii and corrugator supercilli EMG in response to

images

Image Type

Suffering Charity

Non-suffering Charity

Disgust Control Sad Control Scenery

Muscle M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD

Levator Labii

.33 1.27 .08 .80 1.86* 3.76 .14 1.47 .25 1.20

Corrugator Supercilli

.93 2.76 .01* .71 1.26 2.68 .31 .69 -.05* .45

Note. * p < .05 for pairwise comparisons with suffering charity within each electrode site.

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Table 6. Bivariate correlations between key variables for suffering charity images

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

1. Levator Labii 2. Corrugator .80** 3. Empathic Concern .30† .24 4. Disgust .43** .24† .33* 5. Sadness .40* .36* .74** .32†

Note. **p < .01, *p < .05, †p < .1.

Table 7. Bivariate correlations between key variables for non-suffering charity images

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

1. Levator Labii 2. Corrugator .33* 3. Empathic Concern -.28† .02 4. Disgust -.36* -.14 .54* 5. Sadness -.21 .16 .90** .59*

Note. **p < .01, *p < .05, † p < .1.

Table 8. Results of mediated moderation analysis

Original Model (DV = Empathic

Concern)

Mediator Model (DV = EMO-CONT)

Mediated Moderation Model (DV = Empathic

Concern)

Predictors b t b t b t

IT .56 10.40** .71 12.53** .06 1.03 LL .00 .01 .01 .17 .01 .12 IT*LL .15 2.15* .21 3.00* .01 .25 EMO-CONT .71 10.66** IT*EMO-CONT -.13 -2.60*

Note. DV = dependent variable; IT = image type; LL = levator labii activity; EMO-CONT = emotional contagion. Image type was coded where suffering = 1 and non-suffering = -1. **p < .01, *p < .05, † p < .1.

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a)

 b)

 c)

 

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