Social
fear learning seems like a fairly straightforward subject. A person observes
another reacting or expressing through either verbal or nonverbal cues that a
stimulus makes them fearful or afraid. Surprisingly though, little is known
about how individuals modulate their perception of the threat. Researchers
hypothesized that understanding and shared emotional experiences with others
(empathy) play key roles in this, but there are a few investigations that
support it. Thus Andreas Olsson, Kibby McMahon, Goran Papenberg, Jamil Zak,
Niall Bolger, & Kevin N. Ochsner sought to study the role that empathy
plays in social fear learning. The experiment was set up across two stages;
one that tested manipulating empathy appraisals and the other individual
variability of trait empathy. Researchers enlisted a final sample of 47 men
and 53 women who attended Columbia University. The first stage had
participants receiving standard instructions that enhanced or decreased
empathy and underwent a fear learning procedure; the second had individuals
undergoing two observational learning procedures seeing whether the
participants expected to undergo the same learning as a demonstrator. During
the test stage, conditioned fear response was assessed through skin
conductance response (SCR) which was recorded from a BIOPAC MP150 system with
an EDA100C amplifier that monitors SCL and SCR data—BioNomadix wireless EDA or
Data Logger with EDA transmitter are viable
setup alternatives. SCR waveforms were analyzed with
AcqKnowledge software for off-line
analysis. The study found that subjects enhancing their empathy had the
strongest vicarious fear learning over the other groups. The results showed
that—especially in the strongly empathetic groups—a demonstrator’s expression
during the experiment tasks could serve as social unconditioned stimuli for
individuals to vicariously learn fear. Social fear learning thus depends on
both a person’s empathetic appraisal and their stable traits. Thus an
individual’s ability to learn fear from a social situation comes from not only
their inherent emotional state but also from their appraisal of how others
around them are reacting to the social
stimuli.
