Title: Out of sight out of mind: Perceived physical distance between the observer and someone in pain shapes observer's neural empathic reactions,
Abstract: Social and affective relations may shape empathy to others' affective states.
Previous studies also revealed that people tend to form very different mental
representations of stimuli on the basis of their physical distance. In this
regard, embodied cognition proposes that different physical distances between
individuals activate different interpersonal processing modes, such that close
physical distance tends to activate the interpersonal processing mode typical
of socially and affectively close relationships. In Experiment 1, two groups of
participants were administered a pain decision task involving upright and
inverted face stimuli painfully or neutrally stimulated, and we monitored their
neural empathic reactions by means of event-related potentials (ERPs)
technique. Crucially, participants were presented with face stimuli of one of
two possible sizes in order to manipulate retinal size and perceived physical
distance, roughly corresponding to the close and far portions of social
distance. ERPs modulations compatible with an empathic reaction were observed
only for the group exposed to face stimuli appearing to be at a close social
distance from the participants. This reaction was absent in the group exposed
to smaller stimuli corresponding to face stimuli observed from a far social
distance. In Experiment 2, one different group of participants was engaged in a
match-to-sample task involving the two-size upright face stimuli of Experiment
1 to test whether the modulation of neural empathic reaction observed in
Experiment 1 could be ascribable to differences in the ability to identify
faces of the two different sizes. Results suggested that face stimuli of the
two sizes could be equally identifiable. In line with the Construal Level and
Embodied Simulation theoretical frameworks, we conclude that perceived physical
distance may shape empathy as well as social and affective distance.