Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others Tania Singer, Ben Seymour, John P. O’Doherty, Klaas E. Stephan, Raymond J. Dolan and Chris D. Frith Presenter: Cindy Mei

Introduction  Empathy allows us to share in the emotions, pain and sensations of others  But is this mental or physiological?  If you hurt, I hurt too… Perceived pain in others activates the same brain regions that detect pain in yourself!  anterior insula/fronto-insular cortex (AI/FI)  anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)  But do social relations matter? Does fairness = more empathy? Unfairness = desire for punishment?

Hypothesis  Pain-related empathic responses in AI/FI and ACC will be observed when watching a fair person in pain, but be reduced/absent when watching an unfair person in pain  Also, seeing an unfair person in pain will activate the reward pathways in the brain (punishment / revenge)

Method  16 men and 16 women  4 confederates (professional actors, 2 male and 2 female)  Prisoner’s Dilemma game  Used to create “fair” or “unfair” responses by the confederates  fMRI scans to determine activation of:  Empathic systems (AI/FI and ACC)  Reward Pathway—”revenge” (nucleus accumbens (NA))

Experimental Task No Pain or Painful shocks   Applied randomly to all 3 participants   Scan to see activation of AI/FI/ACC and NA Afterwards: questionnaires on Standard Empathy Scale, how much they liked the confederates and how much they wanted revenge

Results - Empathy  Men & Women – increased empathy for pain in fair players  Men – decreased empathy for pain in unfair players ACC FI

Results - Punishment  Men only – increased desire for revenge = increased activation of NA

Discussion  Provides neurobiological evidence on how fairness affects social interactions between people  Cooperation = increased empathy  Selfishness = decreases empathy and increases desire for punishment (in males)  Like working with fair opponents  Want to punish unfair opponents  Could indicate that men have a larger role in the desire to maintain justice and punishment in society

Strengths and Limitations  Strengths  Used male and female subjects  Tested for both empathy and no-empathy (and punishment)  Limitations  Tested only empathy for pain, what about for emotions like happiness or sadness?  Further research?  Investigate more in the gender specificity of the “punishment” pathway  Psychological or financial punishment more appealing to women?  Empathy for known players who are fair or unfair?

Questions?