Empathy Manipulation Impacts Music-Induced Emotions: A Psychophysiological Study on Opera

This study investigated the effects of voluntarily empathizing with a musical performer (i.e., cognitive empathy) on music-induced emotions and their underlying physiological activity. N = 56 participants watched video-clips of two operatic compositions performed in concerts, with low or high empathy instructions. Heart rate and heart rate variability, skin conductance level (SCL), and respiration rate (RR) were measured during music listening, and music-induced emotions were quantified using the Geneva Emotional Music Scale immediately after music listening. Listening to the aria with sad content in a high empathy condition facilitated the emotion of nostalgia and decreased SCL, in comparison to the low empathy condition. Listening to the song with happy content in a high empathy condition also facilitated the emotion of power and increased RR, in comparison to the low empathy condition. To our knowledge, this study offers the first experimental evidence that cognitive empathy influences emotion psychophysiology during music listening

The use of an unpleasant sound unconditional stimulus in an aversive conditioning procedure with 8- to 11-year-old children

The study of aversive Pavlovian conditioning in children can contribute to our understanding of how fears are acquired and extinguished during development. However, methodological issues hamper further research because of ethical and procedural concerns regarding the use of traditional aversive unconditional stimuli (USs) and no established method to measure trial-by-trial changes in the child's expectancy of the US. The present experiment used geometric shape conditional stimuli (CSs) and an unpleasant sound US with 8- to 11-year-old children. Reliable acquisition and extinction were observed with first, second, and third interval skin conductance responses, on-line expectancy judgments, and post-conditioning subjective ratings of pleasantness and arousal. The experiment confirms the novel use of an unpleasant sound of metal scraping on slate as a US in aversive conditioning with children. The methods have the potential to facilitate the ethical conduct of aversive conditioning research in children using psychophysiological, affective, and self-report expectancy measures

Publisher Correction: Whole-genome sequencing of a sporadic primary immunodeficiency cohort (Nature, (2020), 583, 7814, (90-95), 10.1038/s41586-020-2265-1)

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper