Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Oxytocin is a prosocial hormone that also has an important influence on human beings’ empathic responses. It can promote emotion recognition, enhance the empathic concern regarding others’ unfortunate experiences, and weaken the level of personal distress. With reference to the mechanisms, oxytocin may influence an individual's empathic response by promoting his/her embodied-simulation ability, weakening the tendency of self-centeredness, and regulating the emotional representation mechanism. Future studies could focus on the effects of oxytocin on the different types of empathic responses, the effects of oxytocin on gender differences in empathic responses, and actively using oxytocin in clinical interventions for empathy deficits.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： It seems a unique psychological and behavioral pattern of human beings to give up realistic interests or even risk death for a belief about values, which reflects the transcendence of the human spirit. In psychological research, the discussion of the above phenomenon is often carried out in the context of “protected values”, that is, values that an individual refuses to trade for any other values, especially for economic value. In recent years, with the rise of cognitive neuroscience and the development of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology, the research on the cognitive neural mechanism for protected values has provided evidence at the neurophysiological level for the psychological processing process behind “sacrifice life for righteousness”. According to the existing research results from cognitive neuroscience, the reason why people can fight against material temptation or even sacrifice life for a particular belief lies in the fact that protected values are characterized and constructed according to absolute rules of deontology. This largely ensures that protected values can bypass the process of weighing the advantages and disadvantages when facing material temptation. It is the first choice for people to observe and judge the rules directly from their semantic memory network, even when facing the possibility of sacrificing for faith, without weighing the advantages and disadvantages. On the other hand, because the protected values are closely related to the process of self and moral identification, they are significantly increased in value importance and can mobilize emotional resources to resist the impact of external information. Therefore, when an individual is required to make a choice between value belief and monetary benefits, he may regard it as a threat to self and moral identity, stimulating negative emotional reactions such as anger and disgust to resist, and then consolidating his original beliefs. That is to say, the balance between the advantages and disadvantages of protected values may be the result of an interaction between the “cold” cognitive rule system and the “hot” subjective assignment and emotional stimulation system: the former provides the most direct value choice for individuals, while the latter helps individuals ignore the considerations of real interests through self-identity and moral feelings. The current investigation of the cognitive neural mechanism of protected values is still in its infancy, and empirical research in this field is particularly lacking in China. The following aspects may need to be further explored in the future. First, we can learn from the research paradigm and ideas of protected values to carry out empirical research on the core values of Chinese individuals. Second, we should be fully aware of cultural differences when we learn from research on protected values conducted on foreign subjects. Finally, we need to carry out scientific research on the intervention and correct guidance of protected values or core values of Chinese people.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Previous studies have indicated that the alternative evaluation responses to watching the gambling results of one's friends can be affected by self-interest concerns. However, until now, no systematic discussion is available addressing whether one's own different gains and losses will have different effects on the evaluation mode on a friends' gambling results; moreover, it remains unclear how this effect mode is modulated by the mode of an individual's self-construction. Research in this domain is conducive to identifying the dynamic changes of self-other sharing representations in the context of complex interpersonal interactions. Furthermore, this research provides empirical evidence toward understanding people's mentality of social interaction in the context of different cultures. This study presents a step by step discussion of the above problems via classic monetary gambling tasks in three separate experiments using the FRN and P300 as electrophysiological response indexes. In summary, this study shows that: (1) the evaluation model for one's friends' gains and losses differs depending on the own experienced gains and losses. Under favorable conditions, an individual is more inclined to show indifference to his friends' gains and losses, which may be because the individual employs stronger egocentric tendency in such a case. (2) The independent self-construction initiation group shows more indifference and competition when observing the gains and losses of a friend than in case of the interdependent self-construction initiation group. This pilot study mainly investigated the evaluation model for a friends' gambling results without involving one's own gains and losses. This aimed to verify previous research results and provided a baseline level for investigating the responses to the evaluation of a friends' gambling results. A total of 17 subjects and their same-sex friends participated in this pilot study. When an individual only observed but did not participate in gambling in person, such observing of a friends' gambling results can generate an electrophysiological response mode similar to own gains and losses. Many researchers suggested that such “mirror image” processing represented evidence for sharing presentations between an individual and his friends, i.e., the part that involves friends in people's self-concept. Experiment 1 explored the neural electrophysiological responses that occur in the two parties when one observes the gains and losses of a friend after he himself has had the experience of losing and winning money in gambling. A total of 38 subjects and their same-sex friends were recruited to participate in a number of monetary gambling tasks. The results showed that the model for one's evaluation of the gains and losses of a friend could indeed be influenced by his own gains and losses. When one benefitted from gambling, the FRN and P300 discrepancies resulting from seeing the gains and losses of a friends were no longer significant. However, when one suffered monetary losses from gambling, although the discrepancy in FRN regarding seeing friends' gains and losses remained significant, friends' gains no longer elicited a higher amplitude of P300 than their losses. Experiment 2 further addressed the previous situational self-reconstruction initiation pattern and investigated whether the neural response modes for the influence of one's own gains and losses on the evaluation of friends' gains and losses would differ under different modes of self-construction. The results indicated that in the interdependent self-construction initiation group, the electrophysiological response mode that results from watching friends' gambling was consistent with the result obtained in Experiment 1. However, after initiation of the independent self-construction of the subjects, the evaluation mode of the gambling results of a friend differed from that of the interdependent self-construction initiation group. In terms of the FRN index, regardless of one's own gains and losses, the differences in FRN for friends' gains and losses were no longer significant. In terms of the P300 index, the P300 discrepancy resulting from watching the gains and losses of a friend after suffering own losses was not significant. However, after having gained benefits, a higher P300 amplitude was induced by watching friends losing money in gambling than when watching them gain money.
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