Learning empathy by observing empathic reactions in ingroup and outgroup individuals

同理心，被定义为分享他人的情感状态，已经被证明可以增加牺牲自己的代价来帮助他人的意愿。有充分的证据表明，人类通过观察他人的反应来学习，这被称为观察学习。观察性学习与恐惧的社会传播，以及选择行为和风险偏好的变化有关。然而，从观察移情或冷酷的个体中学习是否以及如何改变人类大脑中移情的处理，以及这些影响是否受到重要的社会变量（如群体成员）的影响，目前尚不清楚。为了填补这一重要空白，本研究系统地调查了来自不同社会群体的高共情个体和低共情个体观察学习的行为和神经效应。为了实现这一目标，该项目将一个成熟的对疼痛的共情模式与一个观察学习任务结合起来，并应用计算建模和功能磁共振成像（fMRI）来揭示潜在的学习机制。更详细地说，在接受功能磁共振成像（fMRI）时，参与者观察到来自自己社会群体（内群体示范者）或不同社会群体（外群体示范者）的个体的同理心评分高或低，然后自己提供同理心评分。基于以往的研究，笔者假设观察内群体和外群体的共情反应可能会产生不同的学习信号，影响观察者的主观和神经共情反应。对这些假设的检验澄清了来自内群体和外群体个体的观察学习对共情行为和神经相关的影响，并有助于明确个体通过观察他人来学习和放弃共情的条件。

Empathy, defined as sharing the others’ affective states, has been shown to increase the willingness to make sacrifices at own costs to help others. There is ample evidence that humans learn from observing others’ reactions, known as observational learning. Observational learning has been linked to the social transmission of fear, as well as changes in choice behaviors and risk preferences. However, it remains unknown whether and how learning from observing empathic or callous individuals alters the processing of empathy in the human brain, and whether these effects are influenced by important social variables such as group membership. To fill this crucial gap, the proposed research systematically investigates the behavioral and neural effects of observational learning from high and low empathic individuals that belong to different social groups. To achieve this goal, the project combines a well-established empathy-for-pain paradigm with an observational learning task and applies computational modelling and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to uncover the underlying learning mechanisms. In more detail, while undergoing fMRI, participants observe high or low empathy ratings in an individual from their own social group (ingroup demonstrator) or a different social group (outgroup demonstrator), and, later, provide empathy ratings themselves. Based on previous research, I hypothesize that observing empathic reactions in ingroup and outgroup demonstrators may generate learning signals that differentially affect the subjective and neural empathic responses of the observer. Testing these assumptions clarifies the effect of observational learning from ingroup and outgroup individuals on behavioral and neural correlates of empathy, and can help to specify the conditions under which individuals learn and unlearn empathy by observing others.