Title
Neural responses to perceived pain in others predict real-life monetary donations in different socioeconomic contexts.
Abstract
Empathy has been proposed to be a proximate mechanism underlying altruistic behavior. However, both empathy and altruistic behavior differ between human individuals with low and high socioeconomic status. Here we investigated whether subjective socioeconomic status (SSS) modulates the relationship between neural activity to perceived pain in others and human altruistic behaviors in a real-life situation. After being scanned using functional MRI while observing videos of others in pain, participants were invited to make an anonymous monetary donation to a charitable organization. Painful stimuli increased activity in the inferior frontal, insula and somatosensory cortices compared to non-painful stimuli. A hierarchical regression analysis revealed that neural responses to perceived pain predicted the amount of monetary donations with different patterns in high and low SSS individuals. Stronger neural responses to perceived pain were associated with greater monetary donations in high SSS individuals, whereas a reverse pattern was observed in low SSS individuals. Our results suggest that SSS moderates the functional role of empathy-related neural activity in predicting altruistic behavior. Empathy may follow different mechanisms involved in altruistic behaviors (e.g., donation) depending on the social environment.
Year
DOI
Venue
2011
10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.05.003
NeuroImage
Keywords
Field
DocType
Altruism,Functional MRI,Empathy,Pain,Socioeconomic status
Social environment,Empathy,Donation,Insula,Social psychology,Developmental psychology,Altruism,Multilevel model,Psychology,SSS*,Socioeconomic status
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
57
3
1053-8119
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
3
0.47
6
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Yina Ma1133.20
Chenbo Wang240.83
Shihui Han313218.96