State anxiety down-regulates empathic responses: Electrophysiological evidence

Abstract

State anxiety is common in our life and has a significant impact on our emotion, cognition and behavior. Previous studies demonstrate that people in a negative mood are associated with low sympathy and high personal distress. However, it is unknown how state anxiety regulates empathic responses so far. Here, we recorded event-related brain potentials (ERP) from the experimental group who were in state anxiety and the control group when they were watching painful and neutral pictures. Participants in the experimental group and the control group were asked to do the same mental arithmetic problems. The only difference was that the experimental group had time restriction and was evaluated by the observer. The results showed that no significant N2 differentiation between painful and neutral stimuli was found in both groups. In contrast, LPP amplitudes induced by painful stimuli were significantly larger than that of neutral stimuli in the control group, but not in the experimental group. Our results indicate that state anxiety inhibit empathic responses from the early emotional sharing stage to the late cognitive evaluation stage. It provides neuroscientific evidence that one’s own emotional state will have an important impact on empathy.