Effect of empathy trait on attention to faces

To extend knowledge of relationship between empathy trait and attention to face, the present study aimed at investigating relationship between self-reported empathy trait and N170 elicited by five facial expressions (happy, angry, surprised, afraid, and sad). Twenty-two participants (12 males and 10 females) discriminated those five facial expressions from emotionally neutral faces under an oddball paradigm while event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded. The empathy trait of participants was measured using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI, Davis, 1980). The results revealed that participants with high IRI score showed more negative amplitude of N170 (140 to 200 ms after stimulus onset) than those with low IRI score at posterior temporal area in response to happy, angry, surprised, and afraid faces. The present study thus suggests that people with high empathy trait pay attention to faces more than those with low empathy, in very early stage of processing of face with happy, angry, surprised, and afraid expressions. Furthermore, this also indicates that empathy trait is related with attention processing of not only negative expressions (angry and afraid) but also positive (happy) and ambiguous expression (surprised).