Supremacy of Auditory Versus Visual Input in Empathic Arousal

Empathy is important in human social interactions, facilitating altruism and survival, and the lack of empathy has been implicated in mental disorders such as psychopathy, autism, and personality disorders. Experiencing... [ view full abstract ]

Empathy is important in human social interactions, facilitating altruism and survival, and the lack of empathy has been implicated in mental disorders such as psychopathy, autism, and personality disorders. Experiencing empathy is connected to activity in many different areas of the brain and with the activation of mirror neurons, sometimes leading to virtual pain sensations in those exposed to an individual in pain. Neurocognitive and psychological evidence supports the role of both auditory and visual stimuli in the evocation of empathy, but no research to date has explored the relative effectiveness of each. The present study compared auditory and visual presentation in the evocation of empathy, with the expectation that auditory information would evoke higher empathy compared to visual information. College students (N = 125) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, a 40-second audio-only, video-only, or audio-video file, presenting an elderly man suffering from a painful kidney stone. Afterwards, participants completed a questionnaire, indicating his perceived pain, the level of danger he was in and whether they experienced any physical sensations during the presentation. Consistent with hypothesis, the results demonstrated that participants who were presented with an auditory stimulus (audio-only and audio-video conditions) estimated a higher pain level for the patient compared to those in the visual-only group. The results were similar for the estimates of patient danger, although not significantly so.  Finally, those in the audio-only and audio-video groups experienced more sympathetic pain sensations compared to those in the visual-only group. In conclusion, the results of this novel study demonstrate the differential impact of auditory and visual stimulation in the evocation of empathy and suggest that future research is warranted.

Keywords— auditory input, empathy, pain perception, visual input.