If you’ve ever felt a pang of discomfort when witnessing someone else in pain, even when seeing it through a video rather than in person, that’s a completely normal reaction of the body that everyone experiences. This phenomenon is known as pain empathy.
There are many scholarly medical articles online discussing this phenomenon; you can read them here and here. This article summarizes the main points from Wikipedia, along with additional sources, for easier reading and understanding. Let’s take a look.
Resonance of Pain
When we feel the pain of another person, this phenomenon in our brain is called resonance. It prompts us to feel “pain” when we see someone else in distress.
There are two areas in our brain responsible for this pain resonance: the inferior frontal gyrus and the inferior parietal lobule.
From Personal Experience
Each of us has gone through various types of pain, whether it’s a cut on the hand or the sting from a scrape after falling. These experiences form our personal understanding of pain, and when we see someone else in pain, our brain recalls our own pain experiences, making us feel discomfort.
Our empathy and resonance when witnessing another’s pain become even more genuine when we have endured similar pain ourselves. For example, if you have fallen off a bike, you understand the pain of that experience differently than the pain of a toothache. Thus, when you see someone else fall from a bike, you may feel discomfort in similar areas rather than in your teeth or stomach.
The brain components responsible for this include the inferior cortex, posterior cortex, anterior cortex, temporal lobe, and temporal sulcus.
The brain components responsible for this are the inferior cortex. (Illustrative image).
Through the Facial Expressions of the Pain Victim
The painful reactions displayed on the face of someone in pain also stimulate our own sensation of pain. It’s similar to how, if you’ve ever yawned upon seeing someone else yawn, pain can also “spread” when we observe the expressions of pain on their faces.
A study measured brain activity and facial muscle contractions of volunteers while they watched clips of others in pain, as well as clips showing happiness, laughter, and fear. The results indicated that when a person in pain displayed that pain on their face, observers also felt pain, with this response increasing over time, from 600ms to 1s.
Functional MRI scan.
The Pain Matrix
One study utilized functional MRI (fMRI) on 16 couples to measure their brain activities. Each member of a couple experienced electrical pain stimulation on their hands while the other observed. The fMRI results showed that both individuals exhibited similar brain activity when the one experiencing pain was observed.
Another study using electroencephalography (EEG) recorded brain activity when participants watched videos of hands being pricked with needles. The EEG indicated increased stimulation in frontal, temporal, and parietal regions when they saw others being pricked.
The gamma band oscillation during this time ranged from 50 to 70Hz, compared to a normal range of 40Hz. Researchers concluded that this increased gamma oscillation indicates empathy towards the pain of others upon witnessing their suffering.
Why Is There Pain Empathy?
Some argue that empathy for the pain of others is an evolutionary trait. For instance, if you see someone climbing a tree and falling from a height, you instinctively feel discomfort and pain, signaling your brain that such actions are dangerous and could harm you, advising you to avoid similar behavior.
Discrimination among humans witnessing others in pain is also influenced by race.
Resonance and Empathy Also Exhibit Discrimination
Scientists have studied human discrimination when witnessing others in pain, particularly across racial and cultural lines.
For example, a group of white participants was shown videos of black individuals experiencing painful needle pricks. Fortunately, brain reactions indicated they still empathized with individuals of a different skin color, without any sentiment of “you deserve it for being black.”
Conversely, empathy for pain differs when cultural factors are considered. Experiments showed that European participants reported feeling more pain when witnessing others being pricked with needles compared to Asian participants.
This could be due to cultural differences, as Asians may have more experience with needles from sewing or have encountered more sharp objects, leading to a lesser reaction to pain associated with sharp items compared to Europeans.
Placebo Effect
A large-scale fMRI trial involving 150 participants (conventional fMRI studies usually involve only 20-30 participants) was divided into several groups:
Group One: Participants were given a pain relief pill, advertised as an expensive, highly effective medication approved by medical professionals. The aim was to lead them to believe in its effectiveness. However, they were actually given a placebo with no pain-relieving effects.
Group Two: Similarly, this group received a placebo pill, advertised as an expensive pain reliever. However, 15 minutes later, they were given a second pill, which the doctor claimed would greatly enhance the pain-relieving effects of the first pill, implying they would become “invulnerable” to pain. In reality, the second pill negated the effects of the first pill, even though the first was a placebo.
After allowing time for the medication to take effect, the two groups were mixed and divided into two new groups, both participating in an electric pain stimulation test on the back of their hands.
One group received electric shocks while viewing images of someone they had previously met experiencing electric shocks (staged). The other group only experienced simulated pain on their hands. Participants were asked to rate their perceived pain and provide a pain score.
The results showed that 53 participants reported feeling genuine pain, while 49 others felt discomfort when witnessing another in pain. Those who received the placebo pain reliever reported feeling less pain after taking the drug, indicating a psychological effect of the placebo.
In the second experiment, a group of 25 participants received the first placebo pain reliever, followed by a second pill that actually negated the pain-relieving effects of the first. The results indicated that the second pill effectively counteracted the pain-relief of the first (placebo).
Apathy
In contrast to empathy is apathy. A person who does not feel pain or discomfort when witnessing others in pain may be experiencing apathy, which means they do not empathize with the suffering of humanity.
When we understand another’s pain, whether through images or videos, most of us do not have the inclination to harm others. Conversely, apathetic individuals lack this feeling, making them more likely to inflict pain on others; serial killers are one such example.
Individuals with autism, schizophrenia, or dissociative identity disorder typically have lower empathy for the pain of others compared to the general population.
