Sympathy Crying: Insights from Infrared Thermal Imaging on a Female Sample.

ABSTRACT: Sympathy crying is an odd and complex mixture of physiological and emotional phenomena. Standard psychophysiological theories of emotion cannot attribute crying to a single subdivision of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and disagreement exists regarding the emotional origin of sympathy crying. The current experiment examines sympathy crying using functional thermal infrared imaging (FTII), a novel contactless measure of ANS activity. To induce crying female participants were given the choice to decide which film they wanted to cry to. Compared to baseline, temperature started increasing on the forehead, the peri-orbital region, the cheeks and the chin before crying and reached even higher temperatures during crying. The maxillary area showed the opposite pattern and a gradual temperatur

SUBMITTER: Ioannou S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5055358 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature