Individual differences in experiencing the pain of others across brain, behaviour, and culture

Vicarious experience has been studied by many studies, usually using the form of vicarious pain (empathy for pain) or vicarious touch (mirror touch synesthesia). However, most studies did not consider individual differences. In this thesis, we started with individual differences in vicarious experience, and we explored the influence of culture on vicarious experience. In addition, we also explore the neural mechanisms underlying pain empathy and the relationship between pain empathy, mental health, and emotional regulation. Paper 1 uses two different samples to test the cross-cultural difference of mirror touch synesthesia. Results demonstrate that Chinese sample report significantly more vicarious tactile sensations than UK sample, and participants reporting higher levels of mirror touch reported higher levels of anxiety. Additionally, we also explored the relationship between vicarious pain and mental health in Paper 2. Results show that people with high empathy had worse mental health levels, such as depression and anxiety, and they used more negative emotional regulation strategies, such as self-blame. Paper 3 and Paper 4 both aimed at exploring differences in the neural mechanisms of physical pain and vicarious pain using FMRI methods. We used a mixture of univariate and multivariate methods to determine which regions distinguish physical and vicarious pain, and how it differs across groups. In conclusion, this thesis represented a significant progress in exploring the psychological, behavioral and neurophysiological nature of empathy. In addition, this thesis also explored the possible negative effects of empathy on human beings. The DISCUSSION chapter provides an evaluation of this work, its consequences, and its contributions to the larger body of literature.