From Oxytocin to Compassion: The Saliency of Distress

Compassion is a warm response of care and concern for those who are suffering, which drives individuals to devote their resources for the sake of others. A prominent neuroevolutionary framework grounds compassion in the neurobiology of the mammalian caregiving system. Accordingly, it has been suggested that the oxytocinergic system, which plays a central role in parental caregiving and bonding, provides the neurobiological foundation for compassion towards strangers. Yet, the specific role of oxytocin in compassion is far from clear. The current paper aims to target this gap and offer a theoretical framework that integrates the state-of-the-art literature on oxytocin with research on compassion. We suggest that oxytocin mediates compassion by enhancing the saliency of cues of pain and distress and discuss the plausible underlying neurobiological substrates. We further demonstrate how the proposed framework can account for individual differences in compassion, focusing on the effects of attachment on caregiving and support. The proposed framework integrates the current scientific understanding of oxytocin function with compassion-related processes. It thus highlights the largely ignored attentional processes in compassion and taps into the vast variability of responses in social contexts involving pain and suffering

The Mere Co-Presence: Synchronization of Autonomic Signals and Emotional Responses across Co-Present Individuals Not Engaged in Direct Interaction

<div><p>Existing evidence suggests that in social contexts individuals become coupled in their emotions and behaviors. Furthermore, recent biological studies demonstrate that the physiological signals of interacting individuals become coupled as well, exhibiting temporally synchronized response patterns. However, it is yet unknown whether people can shape each other's responses without the direct, face-to-face interaction. Here we investigated whether the convergence of physiological and emotional states can occur among “merely co-present” individuals, without direct interactional exchanges. To this end, we measured continuous autonomic signals and collected emotional responses of participants who watched emotional movies together, seated side-by-side. We found that the autonomic signals of co-present participants were idiosyncratically synchronized and that the degree of this synchronization was correlated with the convergence of their emotional responses. These findings suggest that moment-to-moment emotional transmissions, resulting in shared emotional experiences, can occur in the absence of direct communication and are mediated by autonomic synchronization.</p></div

Experimental and control time-shifts.

<p>Descriptive statistics of the control sampling distribution (means and standard deviations) and the experimental sample (means and standard error), as well as the p values for the H₁ hypothesis, computed for both autonomic measures (lag_EDA, lag_HR) and for both emotional movies (positive movie, negative movie).</p><p>Experimental and control time-shifts.</p

Association of autonomic synchronization and emotional convergence.

<p>Correlation between the extent of autonomic synchronization, as indexed by ISC_composite scores, and the degree of emotional convergence (small delta scores signify higher convergence). Results are shown separately for positive and negative emotional movies.</p

Experimental and control ISCs.

<p>Descriptive statistics of the control sampling distribution (means and standard deviations) and the experimental sample (means and 95% CIs), as well as the p values for H₁ hypothesis, computed for both autonomic measures (ISCeda, ISChr) and for both emotional movies (positive movie, negative movie).</p><p>Experimental and control ISCs.</p

The effect of co-presence on autonomic ISC.

<p><b>A.</b> Control (H₀) distributions (not co-present) and the experimental means (co-present, dashed lines), for both autonomic measures (ISC_EDA, ISC_HR) and for both emotional movies. H₀ distributions represent movie-driven ISC of ANS signals. As can be seen in the figure, the experimental group-wise ISCs fall in the right tail of the control distributions, indicating the positive effect of co-presence on synchronization of participants’ autonomic activity. <b>B.</b> Time shifts in ANS synchronization: we assessed whether the ANS signals of co-present individuals were more tightly linked in time. Figure presents the control (H₀) distributions and the experimental means (dashed lines) of the time lags in which two ANS signals exhibited maximal ISC. As can be seen in the figure, the time shifts in ANS synchronization of the co-present participants were significantly smaller in three out of four ANS measures. Lag_EDA in the positive movie showed a trend towards significance.</p

Average autonomic response time-courses elicited by positive and negative movies.

<p>Figure presents normalized EDA (blue) and HR (red) response time-courses (2HZ), averaged across participants. Shaded areas represent standard errors.</p