The Characteristics and Development of Induced ERP of Pain Empathy: A Meta-analysis Review

doi:10.12139/j.1672-0628.2026.04.006

Abstract

Abstract:

Meta-analysis techniques were used to investigate the changes of early and late brain amplitude induced by pain empathy, and to explore the moderating effects of age and stimulus type. A meta-analysis of 246 effect sizes from 72 studies found significant pain empathy effects on the early components N1, N2, and the late components P3 and LPP. Cognitive empathy and emotional empathy continued to develop from preschool to middle childhood, and then cognitive empathy gradually dominated, reaching a peak in adolescence and then decreasing. The proportion of emotional empathy increased during the transition from adolescence to adulthood. The moderating effect of stimulus type was significant, with auditory stimulation showing anadvantage over facial and limb stimulation. The results of this study provide more quantitative evidence for the lifelong development of empathy.

Key words: pain empathy, event-related potential, meta-analysis, development

摘要：

采用元分析技术考察疼痛共情诱发早期和晚期脑电波幅的变化，并探讨年龄和刺激类型的调节作用。对72项研究中获得的246个效应量进行元分析发现，在早期成分N1、N2，晚期成分P3、LPP上存在显著的疼痛共情效应。年龄调节作用显著，认知共情和情绪共情在学前期至儿童中期不断发展，之后认知共情逐渐占据主导，青春期时达到顶峰后降低；青春期向成年期过渡时情绪共情比重增加。刺激类型调节作用显著，听觉刺激较面孔和肢体刺激更具优势。研究结果进一步发展了共情双过程模型，为共情的毕生发展提供了更量化的证据。

关键词: 疼痛共情, 事件相关电位, 元分析, 发展

CLC Number:

B842

Juan SONG, Yiyue CHEN, Tuo LIU, Yan CHEN, Qing LIU, Wanqing BU. The Characteristics and Development of Induced ERP of Pain Empathy: A Meta-analysis Review[J]. Studies of Psychology and Behavior, 2026, 24(4): 474-482.

宋娟, 陈祎玥, 刘拓, 陈衍, 刘晴, 卜婉晴. 疼痛共情诱发的ERP与年龄发展：一项元分析[J]. 心理与行为研究, 2026, 24(4): 474-482.

Figures/Tables 6

References 0

	黄翯青, 苏彦捷. 共情中的认知调节和情绪分享过程及其关系. 西南大学学报(社会科学版), 2010, 36 (6): 13- 19.
	黄翯青, 苏彦捷. 共情的毕生发展: 一个双过程的视角. 心理发展与教育, 2012, 28 (4): 434- 441. DOI
	孟景, 陈有国, 黄希庭. 疼痛共情的影响因素及其认知机制. 心理科学进展, 2010, 18 (3): 432- 440.
	孙亚茹, 刘泽军, 段亚杰, 陈宁, 刘伟. 协作如何减少记忆错误: 一项元分析研究. 心理学报, 2023, 55 (11): 1780- 1792. DOI
	王启忱, 刘赞, 苏彦捷. 共情的毕生发展及其神经基础. 中国科学: 生命科学, 2021, 51 (6): 717- 729. DOI
	魏祺, 苏彦捷. 学龄前儿童中的共情及其不同成分. 心理技术与应用, 2019, 7 (9): 523- 535. DOI
	吴雨蓓, 刘欣禹. 小学生共情与亲社会行为的关系. 教育观察, 2020, 9 (3): 84- 85, 97.
	武侠, 包玉玲, 吕欢欢. 儿童共情能力及其发展: 回顾与前瞻. 绍兴文理学院学报, 2020, 40 (6): 1- 9.
	颜志强, 苏彦捷. 认知共情和情绪共情的发展差异: 元分析初探. 心理发展与教育, 2021, 37 (1): 1- 9. DOI
	袁晓劲, 刘昌, 柳林. 共情的心理加工过程机制. 心理技术与应用, 2019, 7 (11): 683- 692.
	Addabbo, M., Bolognini, N., & Turati, C. Neural time course of pain observation in infancy. Developmental Science, 2021, 24 (4): e13074. DOI
	Aziz-Zadeh, L., Sheng, T., & Gheytanchi, A. Common premotor regions for the perception and production of prosody and correlations with empathy and prosodic ability. PLoS One, 2010, 5 (1): e8759. DOI
	Barr, R. G., Hopkins, B., & Green, J. A. Crying as a sign, a symptom, and a signal: Clinical, emotional and developmental aspects of infant and toddler crying. JAMA, 2001, 286 (17): 2166- 2167.
	Blakemore, S. J. The social brain in adolescence. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2008, 9 (4): 267- 277. DOI
	Bradley, M. M., Greenwald, M. K., Petry, M. C., & Lang, P. J. (1992). Remembering pictures: Pleasure and arousal in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 18(2), 379–390.
	Brink, T. T., Urton, K., Held, D., Kirilina, E., Hofmann, M. J., Klann-Delius, G., … Kuchinke, L. The role of orbitofrontal cortex in processing empathy stories in 4- to 8-year-old children. Frontiers in Psychology, 2011, 2, 80. DOI
	Carrington, S. J., & Bailey, A. J. Are there theory of mind regions in the brain? A review of the neuroimaging literature. Human Brain Mapping, 2009, 30 (8): 2313- 2335. DOI
	Carstensen, L. L., Fung, H. H., & Charles, S. T. Socioemotional selectivity theory and the regulation of emotion in the second half of life. Motivation and Emotion, 2003, 27 (2): 103- 123. DOI
	Catmur, C., Walsh, V., & Heyes, C. Associative sequence learning: The role of experience in the development of imitation and the mirror system. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2009, 364 (1528): 2369- 2380. DOI
	Cheng, Y. W., Chen, C. Y., & Decety, J. An EEG/ERP investigation of the development of empathy in early and middle childhood. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 2014, 10, 160- 169. DOI
	Cheng, Y. W., Hung, A. Y., & Decety, J. Dissociation between affective sharing and emotion understanding in juvenile psychopaths. Development and Psychopathology, 2012, 24 (2): 623- 636. DOI
	Cohen, J. Statistical power analysis. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 1992, 1 (3): 98- 101. DOI
	Coll, M. P. Meta-analysis of ERP investigations of pain empathy underlines methodological issues in ERP research. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2018, 13 (10): 1003- 1017. DOI
	Decety, J. The neurodevelopment of empathy in humans. Developmental Neuroscience, 2010a, 32 (4): 257- 267. DOI
	Decety, J. To what extent is the experience of empathy mediated by shared neural circuits?. Emotion Review, 2010b, 2 (3): 204- 207. DOI
	Decety, J. Dissecting the neural mechanisms mediating empathy. Emotion Review, 2011, 3 (1): 92- 108. DOI
	Decety, J. The neural pathways, development and functions of empathy. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 2015, 3, 1- 6.
	Decety, J., & Michalska, K. J. Neurodevelopmental changes in the circuits underlying empathy and sympathy from childhood to adulthood. Developmental Science, 2010, 13 (6): 886- 899. DOI
	Decety, J., Yang, C. Y., & Cheng, Y. W. Physicians down-regulate their pain empathy response: An event-related brain potential study. Neuroimage, 2010, 50 (4): 1676- 1682. DOI
	Delplanque, S., Silvert, L., Hot, P., & Sequeira, H. Event-related P3a and P3b in response to unpredictable emotional stimuli. Biological Psychology, 2005, 68 (2): 107- 120. DOI
	Fabes, R. A., Carlo, G., Kupanoff, K., & Laible, D. Early adolescence and prosocial/moral behavior I: The role of individual processes. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 1999, 19 (1): 5- 16. DOI
	Fan, Y., & Han, S. H. Temporal dynamic of neural mechanisms involved in empathy for pain: An event-related brain potential study. Neuropsychologia, 2008, 46 (1): 160- 173. DOI
	Fan, Y. T., Chen, C. Y., Chen, S. C., Decety, J., & Cheng, Y. W. Empathic arousal and social understanding in individuals with autism: Evidence from fMRI and ERP measurements. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2014, 9 (8): 1203- 1213. DOI
	Frith, C. D., & Singer, T. The role of social cognition in decision making. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2008, 363 (1511): 3875- 3886. DOI
	Gladstein, G. A. Understanding empathy: Integrating counseling, developmental, and social psychology perspectives. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 1983, 30 (4): 467- 482. DOI
	Grissom, R. J., & Kim, J. J. (2005). Effect sizes for research: A broad practical approach. New York: Routledge.
	Grynberg, D., & Maurage, P. Pain and empathy: The effect of self-oriented feelings on the detection of painful facial expressions. PLoS One, 2014, 9 (7): e100434. DOI
	Hajcak, G., MacNamara, A., & Olvet, D. M. Event-related potentials, emotion, and emotion regulation: An integrative review. Developmental Neuropsychology, 2010, 35 (2): 129- 155. DOI
	Hajcak, G., & Olvet, D. M. The persistence of attention to emotion: Brain potentials during and after picture presentation. Emotion, 2008, 8 (2): 250- 255. DOI
	Higgins, J. P. T., Thompson, S. G., Deeks, J. J., & Altman, D. G. Measuring inconsistency in meta-analyses. BMJ, 2003, 327 (7414): 557- 560. DOI
	Jia, L., Zheng, Z., Sung, B., Compton, B. J., & Wang, J. Resisting repeated exposure: Characteristics of pain empathy for experienced physicians. Behavioural Brain Research, 2023, 436, 114099. DOI
	Kujawa, A., Hajcak, G., Torpey, D., Kim, J., & Klein, D. N. (2012). Electrocortical reactivity to emotional faces in young children and associations with maternal and paternal depression. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines, 53(2), 207–215.
	Lamm, C., Batson, C. D., & Decety, J. The neural substrate of human empathy: Effects of perspective-taking and cognitive appraisal. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2007, 19 (1): 42- 58. DOI
	Lamm, C., Decety, J., & Singer, T. Meta-analytic evidence for common and distinct neural networks associated with directly experienced pain and empathy for pain. NeuroImage, 2011, 54 (3): 2492- 2502. DOI
	Lang, P. J., & Bradley, M. M. Emotion and the motivational brain. Biological Psychology, 2010, 84 (3): 437- 450. DOI
	Lang, P. J., Greenwald, M. K., Bradley, M. M., & Hamm, A. O. Looking at pictures: Affective, facial, visceral, and behavioral reactions. Psychophysiology, 1993, 30 (3): 261- 273. DOI
	Lang, S., Yu, T., Markl, A., Müller, F., & Kotchoubey, B. (2011). Hearing others’ pain: Neural activity related to empathy. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 11(3), 386–395.
	Ledoux, J. E. Emotion: Clues from the brain. Annual Review of Psychology, 1995, 46, 209- 235. DOI
	Leppänen, J. M., & Nelson, C. A. Tuning the developing brain to social signals of emotions. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2009, 10 (1): 37- 47. DOI
	Luna, B., & Sweeney, J. A. The emergence of collaborative brain function: FMRI studies of the development of response inhibition. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2004, 1021 (1): 296- 309. DOI
	Magai, C. (2008). Long-lived emotions. In Handbook of Emotions(pp. 376–394), New York: Guilford Press.
	Mella, N., Studer, J., Gilet, A. L., & Labouvie-Vief, G. Empathy for pain from adolescence through adulthood: An event-related brain potential study. Frontiers in Psychology, 2012, 3, 501. DOI
	Meltzoff, A. N., & Decety, J. What imitation tells us about social cognition: A rapprochement between developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2003, 358 (1431): 491- 500. DOI
	Meng, J., Hu, L., Shen, L., Yang, Z., Chen, H., Huang, X. T., & Jackson, T. Emotional primes modulate the responses to others’ pain: An ERP study. Experimental Brain Research, 2012, 220 (3–4): 277- 286. DOI
	Meng, J., Li, Z. S., & Shen, L. Responses to others’ pain in adults with autistic traits: The influence of gender and stimuli modality. PLoS One, 2017, 12 (3): e0174109. DOI
	Moher, D., Liberati, A., Tetzlaff, J., Altman, D. G., & The PRISMA Group. Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: The PRISMA statement. PLoS Medicine, 2009, 6 (7): e1000097. DOI
	Moore, R. C., Dev, S. I., Jeste, D. V., Dziobek, I., & Eyler, L. T. Distinct neural correlates of emotional and cognitive empathy in older adults. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 2015, 232 (1): 42- 50. DOI
	Morris, J. S., Öhman, A., & Dolan, R. J. Conscious and unconscious emotional learning in the human amygdala. Nature, 1998, 393 (6684): 467- 470. DOI
	Morrison, I., Lloyd, D., Di Pellegrino, G., & Roberts, N. (2004). Vicarious responses to pain in anterior cingulate cortex: Is empathy a multisensory issue? Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 4(2), 270−278.
	Regenbogen, C., Schneider, D. A., Finkelmeyer, A., Kohn, N., Derntl, B., Kellermann, T., … Habel, U. The differential contribution of facial expressions, prosody, and speech content to empathy. Cognition & Emotion, 2012, 26 (6): 995- 1014. DOI
	Singer, T., & Lamm, C. The social neuroscience of empathy. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2009, 1156 (1): 81- 96. DOI
	Singer, T., Seymour, B., O’Doherty, J., Kaube, H., Dolan, R. J., & Frith, C. D. Empathy for pain involves the affective but not sensory components of pain. Science, 2004, 303 (5661): 1157- 1162. DOI
	Song, J., Wei, Y. Q., & Ke, H. The effect of emotional information from eyes on empathy for pain: A subliminal ERP study. PLoS One, 2019, 14 (12): e0226211. DOI
	Steinberg, L. A social neuroscience perspective on adolescent risk-taking. Developmental Review, 2008, 28 (1): 78- 106. DOI
	Sun, Y. B., Lin, X. X., Ye, W., Wang, N., Wang, J. Y., & Luo, F. A screening mechanism differentiating true from false pain during empathy. Scientific Reports, 2017, 7 (1): 11492. DOI
	Timmers, I., Park, A. L., Fischer, M. D., Kronman, C. A., Heathcote, L. C., Hernandez, J. M., & Simons, L. E. Is empathy for pain unique in its neural correlates? A meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies of empathy. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 2018, 12, 289. DOI
	van Overwalle, F., & Baetens, K. Understanding others’ actions and goals by mirror and mentalizing systems: A meta-analysis. NeuroImage, 2009, 48 (3): 564- 584. DOI
	Vogel, E. K., & Luck, S. J. The visual N1 component as an index of a discrimination process. Psychophysiology, 2000, 37 (2): 190- 203. DOI
	Wang, H., Ao, L. H., Gao, Y., Liu, Y. J., & Zhang, X. J. Empathy for pain in individuals influenced by moral identity: Evidence from an ERP study. Physiology & Behavior, 2023, 266, 114202. DOI

成分类型	Q检验			I²检验(%)
成分类型	Q	df	p	I²检验(%)
N1	223.63	36	<0.001	86.93
N2	936.52	78	<0.001	93.54
P3	824.66	86	<0.001	90.78
LPP	501.87	42	<0.001	92.98

成分类型	Q检验			I²检验(%)
成分类型	Q	df	p	I²检验(%)
N1	223.63	36	<0.001	86.93
N2	936.52	78	<0.001	93.54
P3	824.66	86	<0.001	90.78
LPP	501.87	42	<0.001	92.98

成分类型	k	效应值及95%置信区间			双尾检验
成分类型	k	Hedges’ g	下限	上限	Z	p
N1	37	0.26	0.01	0.50	2.01	0.039
N2	79	0.75	0.52	0.98	6.27	<0.001
P3	87	1.23	1.02	1.43	11.77	<0.001
LPP	43	1.41	1.09	1.73	8.58	<0.001

成分类型	k	效应值及95%置信区间			双尾检验
成分类型	k	Hedges’ g	下限	上限	Z	p
N1	37	0.26	0.01	0.50	2.01	0.039
N2	79	0.75	0.52	0.98	6.27	<0.001
P3	87	1.23	1.02	1.43	11.77	<0.001
LPP	43	1.41	1.09	1.73	8.58	<0.001

调节变量	成分类型	异质性检验			类别	k	效应值及95%置信区间
调节变量	成分类型	Q_B	df	p	类别	k	Hedges’ g	下限	上限
年龄	N1	6.68	1	0.035	青春期	8	−0.19	−0.65	0.28
	N1	6.68	1	0.035	成年早期	29	0.31	0.06	0.56
	N2	47.52	3	<0.001	学前期	3	0.13	−1.02	1.28
					儿童中期	2	0.73	−0.67	2.11
					青春期	9	0.02	−0.65	0.69
					成年早期	65	0.89	0.63	1.14
	P3	126.50	1	<0.001	青春期	15	1.55	1.03	2.07
	P3	126.50	1	<0.001	成年早期	72	1.17	0.93	1.41
	LPP	80.97	3	<0.001	学前期	3	0.26	−0.90	1.41
					儿童中期	2	1.08	−0.33	2.48
					青春期	6	1.70	0.85	2.55
					成年早期	32	1.50	1.13	1.86
刺激类型	N1	7.14	2	0.068	面孔	5	0.82	0.02	1.44
					肢体	29	0.15	−0.14	0.31
					声音	3	0.38	−0.39	1.15
	N2	66.11	2	<0.001	面孔	30	1.29	0.94	1.63
					肢体	47	0.37	0.10	0.64
					声音	2	1.74	0.43	3.05
	P3	137.82	2	<0.001	面孔	27	1.14	0.76	1.52
					肢体	59	1.24	0.98	1.49
					声音	1	3.87	1.87	5.88
	LPP	75.06	2	<0.001	面孔	8	1.55	0.75	3.77
					肢体	33	1.33	0.96	1.69
					声音	2	2.30	0.84	3.77