Topic: affect sharing

The aim of this fMRI study was to assess the role of affect sharing (AS), an important aspect of empathy, in observational fear learning. N=37 students completed an observational Pavlovian fear conditioning paradigm, in which they learned to fear a cue (assessed in a subsequent test stage) by watching videos of a demonstrator receiving shocks with that cue (learning stage). Participants watched the videos in a state of high or low AS, respectively, induced by hypnotic suggestions, using a within-subjects design. Unconditioned responses (UR) to the demonstrator’s pain during learning and condit