The detection and interpretation of others mental and physical state is critical to our appreciation of the social environment and to our own survival. By applying concepts such as the perception-action model, neuroscientists have begun to investigate the neural correlates of empathy for fundamental experiences like pain.

Studies revealed a common substrate of pain in the self and pain in others in affective and sensorimotor brain regions of the pain matrix. This coupling mechanism, often labeled with the term “pain empathy”, has been thought to be automatic and involuntary. Recently, studies have shown that ‘mirroring’ and the pain-empathic response are not triggered automatically when pain-related information constitutes a potential threat and might rather depend on situational, individual and social variables. Moreover, cultural up-bringing influences the way we understand others' (emotional) states. These findings demonstrate that neuroscience is just beginning to understand the concept of pain empathy.

Based on recent findings from social psychology the proposed project will focus on the social dimension of pain empathy and aims at delineating motivational and interpersonal determinants on empathic responses to facial expressions of pain (Montréal Pain and Affective Face Clips, MPAFC, Simon et al., 2008). Two behavioral experiments are carried out to examine the psychological consequences of motivational and interpersonal factors, namely money and power, on human empathic behavior. The proposed studies will be the starting point for fMRI-experiments to better understand the neuronal bases of pain empathy from the perspective of the social neuroscience.