The Blame Game: The Effect of Responsibility and Social Stigma on Empathy for Pain

■ This investigation combined behavioral and functional neuroimaging measures to explore whether perception of pain is modulated by the targetʼs stigmatized status and whether the target bore responsibility for that stigma. During fMRI scanning, participants were exposed to a series of short video clips featuring age-matched individuals experiencing pain who were (a) similar to the participant (healthy), (b) stigmatized but not responsible for their stigmatized condition (infected with AIDS as a result of an infected blood transfusion), or (c) stigmatized and responsible for their stigmatized condition (infected with AIDS as a result of intravenous drug use). Explicit pain and empathy ratings for the targets were obtained outside of the MRI environment, along with a variety of implicit and explicit measures of AIDS bias. Results showed that participants were significantly more sensitive to the pain of AIDS transfusion targets as compared with healthy and AIDS drug targets, as evide...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: JOCN
• Authors: Jean Decety, Stephanie Echols, Joshua Correll
• Keywords: AIDS, AIDS Drug, JOCN 2010, Pain