Vicarious Fear Learning Depends on Empathic Appraisals and Trait Empathy.

ABSTRACT: Empathy and vicarious learning of fear are increasingly understood as separate phenomena, but the interaction between the two remains poorly understood. We investigated how social (vicarious) fear learning is affected by empathic appraisals by asking participants to either enhance or decrease their empathic responses to another individual (the demonstrator), who received electric shocks paired with a predictive conditioned stimulus. A third group of participants received no appraisal instructions and responded naturally to the demonstrator. During a later test, participants who had enhanced their empathy evinced the strongest vicarious fear learning as measured by skin conductance responses to the conditioned stimulus in the absence of the demonstrator. Moreover, this effect was augmented

SUBMITTER: Olsson A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6053030 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature