EAPSI: Investigating How Stoicism Influences Empathy for Pain: A Cross-Cultural Neuroimaging Study

脑成像研究表明，共情是一种自适应的、经常是自动的过程，当我们看到别人的痛苦时，可能会受到社会和文化因素的影响。斯多葛主义，或者说对不适的忍耐而不向外表达，是与疼痛感知相关的一个因素，已知东亚人和西方人之间存在差异。这个项目将使用神经成像来测试中国和美国个体样本中关于斯多葛主义的文化差异信念是否会影响对疼痛的同情。该项目的数据将有助于理解社会和文化因素如何影响同理心。研究将与北京大学文化与社会认知神经科学实验室的韩世辉博士合作进行。韩博士是共情的社会和文化神经科学方面的专家。该奖项支持在中国和美国进行的一项跨文化神经影像学研究，旨在调查斯多葛主义信念对共情的影响，并确定假设效果的神经生物学机制。该实验将使用功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）来测量大脑在情绪调节任务中对负面和中性图像的反应。实验还将测量对他人疼痛的神经移情反应。实验者将测试：（1）斯多葛主义信念的差异是否预示着表达抑制的情绪调节策略的差异;（2）抑制过程中神经活动的差异是否解释了对疼痛的神经移情反应的变化。从中国参与者收集的数据将与美国参与者的结果进行比较。通过比较情绪调节任务中的脑功能活动与跨文化样本中对疼痛的神经移情反应，这项研究将有助于我们理解不同文化对疼痛的信念如何影响移情反应。该项目由美国国家科学基金会和中国科技部共同资助，支持美国研究生的暑期研究。

Brain imaging studies have demonstrated that empathy, an adaptive and often automatic process occurring when we view pain in others, may be influenced by social and cultural factors. Stoicism, or the endurance of discomfort without outward expression, is a factor relevant to pain perception that is known to differ between East Asian and Western individuals. This project will use neuroimaging to test whether culturally variable beliefs about stoicism influence empathy for pain in a sample of Chinese and American individuals. The data from this project will prove useful in understanding how social and cultural factors influence empathy. Research will be performed in collaboration with Dr. Shihui Han in the Culture and Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at Peking University. Dr. Han is an expert in the social and cultural neuroscience of empathy.This award supports a cross-cultural neuroimaging study in China and the United States to investigate the effect of stoicism beliefs on empathy and to identify neurobiological mechanisms of the hypothesized effect. The experiment will use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity during an emotion regulation task in response to negative and neutral images. The experiment will also measure the neural empathic response to pain in others. The experimenter will test 1) if differences in stoicism beliefs predict differences in the emotion regulation strategy of expressive suppression, and 2) if differences in neural activity during suppression explain variation in the neural empathic response to pain. The data collected from participants in China will be compared to results from participants in the United States. By comparing functional brain activity during an emotion regulation task with the neural empathic response to pain in a cross-cultural sample, this research will contribute to our understanding of how culturally variable beliefs about pain influence empathic responding.This award, under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program, supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and China's Ministry of Science and Technology.