Empathy does not amplify vicarious threat learning

Abstract

Clinically significant fears and phobias can be acquired vicariously. Witnessing another person's defensive reactions to potentially dangerous objects and situations can instill conditioned threat responses in the observer. The present study investigated individual differences in this social learning process. Specifically, we hypothesized that dispositional empathy modulates vicarious threat conditioning. We examined university students' (N = 150) conditioned threat responding after they observed strangers undergo Pavlovian threat conditioning. There was evidence of a substantial conditioned defensive response (Cohen's d = 0.66), as indexed by elevated electrodermal activity during participants' direct exposure to the vicariously conditioned stimuli. Contrary to expectations, indices of dispositional empathy were weakly related to the size of conditioned responses (median r = .04). Our results confirm that vicarious threat learning can be evaluated experimentally, but they do not support the hypothesis that empathy amplifies this process. The preregistration, stimulus materials, data, and analysis code for this study are available at https://osf.io/h6hm2.

Keywords: Classical conditioning; Empathy; Fear; Skin conductance response; Threat; Vicarious conditioning.