Is violence associated with reduced autonomic responses to socio-affective stimuli?

暴力伤害他人可能反映出同情他人痛苦的能力或动机减弱。根据综合情绪系统模型，攻击性是在违规行为后的厌恶反馈的结果下被学习为“糟糕的”，这种厌恶反馈通常包括受害者表现出的痛苦或悲伤。因此，表现出同情受害者痛苦的能力或动机减弱的人，可能无法将攻击性行为视为“坏”行为，从而增加了未来以类似方式行事的可能性。人们普遍认为，移情包括两个主要的交互成分：情感成分和认知成分。虽然研究表明，有暴力行为的人在共情反应的各个方面都会出现问题，但这些独特的共鸣系统的功能还没有在法医样本中得到系统的检验。同理心的一个重要组成部分是，同理心在多大程度上是故意的而不是自发的。例如，移情反应可能是自发产生的，或者当一个人被故意指示这样做时，可能会产生有意的移情反应。提供移情指令可以导致产生移情反应，即使在其他情况下缺乏自发移情的人也是如此。澄清有暴力定罪的人缺乏同理心的性质对罪犯行为方案具有重要影响，有暴力定罪的人如果受到适当的激励，可能会有同情心。暴力罪犯的共情反应可能在那些精神变态倾向升高的人中尤其受损，这指的是一系列情感、人际关系和冲动反社会的人格特征。这些特征与一系列反社会行为有关，从轻微犯罪到潜在的致命暴力。这些特征的存在与与另一个人感觉能力的特定缺陷有关。目的：本项目旨在确定人际暴力和自主神经移情反应之间的关系，使用心理生理学技术来检测有暴力信念和匹配控制的个体的移情能力和动机。这项拟议的工作将使用社会认知和情感神经科学的新范式，以及描述他人痛苦的刺激，并结合最先进的设备来测量基于瞳孔扩大反应的自主神经唤醒。我的目标是a)通过系统的回顾和元分析，确定暴力和自主神经共情反应之间的已知联系，b)检查与暴力冒犯相关的情绪显著刺激的自主反应的差异，以及c)检查共情反应中的任何问题是否反映了共情能力的降低或同理心的降低。这一方法将使我们能够准确地识别有暴力定罪的人、有非暴力犯罪定罪的人和非罪犯的同理心反应中的缺陷。

Violently harming another person may reflect a reduced capacity or motivation to empathise with another's pain. According to the Integrated Emotion Systems model, aggression is learned as 'bad' as a result of aversive feedback following transgressions, with this aversive feedback often including the victim's displays of pain or sadness. People who show a reduced capacity or motivation to empathise with the victim's pain, may therefore fail to perceive aggressive acts as 'bad', increasing the likelihood of acting in similar ways in the future. it is broadly accepted that empathy comprises two major interacting components: an affective and cognitive component. Whilst research suggests that people with violent convictions show problems in various aspects of empathic responding, the functioning of these distinct empathic 'systems' is yet to be systematically examined in forensic samples. One of the crucial components of empathy, which refers to the tendency to experience what another person is feeling, or to 'feel with' another person, is the extent to which empathy is deliberate versus spontaneous. For example, an empathic response may be generated spontaneously, or a deliberate empathic response can be generated when a person is deliberately instructed to do so. Providing an instruction to empathise can lead to the generation of an empathic response even in people who otherwise show a lack of spontaneous empathy. Clarifying the nature of empathic deficits in individuals with violent convictions has important implications for offender behaviour programmes, with the possibility that people with violent convictions may be capable of empathy if appropriately motivated. Empathic responding among violent offenders may be particularly impaired among those with elevated psychopathic tendencies, referring to a constellation of affective, interpersonal, and impulsive-antisocial personality traits. These traits are associated with a range of antisocial behaviours, from petty crime to potentially fatal violence. The presence of these traits is associated with a specific deficit in the ability to feel with another person. Aims: This project aims to identify the relationship between interpersonal violence and autonomic empathic responding, using psychophysiological techniques to examine the capacity and motivation to empathise in individuals with violent convictions and matched controls. The proposed work will employ novel paradigms from social-cognitive and affective neuroscience and stimuli depicting others in pain, in combination with state-of-the-art equipment for measuring autonomic arousal based on the pupil dilation response. My objectives are to a) identify known associations between violence and autonomic empathic responses using a systematic review and meta-analysis, b) examine differences in autonomic responding to emotionally salient stimuli associated with violent offending, and c) examine whether any problems in empathic responding reflect either a reduced capacity or a reduced motivation to empathise. This approach will allow us to precisely identify deficits in the empathic responses of people with convictions for violence, people with convictions for non-violent offences, and non-offenders.