Campus Location
Abilene Campus (Residential)
Date of Award
Winter 1-2018
ORCID
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3620-2264
Document Type
Thesis
Department
Psychology
Degree Name
Master of Science
Committee Chair or Primary Advisor
Richard Beck
Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor
John Casada
Third Committee Member or Committee Reader
Scott Perkins
Abstract
Empathy and its impact on pain perception has been studied narrowly with the focus being on participants receiving empathy during a pain procedure. This study reversed the focus and ran a standard cold pressor test (CPT) in the context of an empathy frame structured to elicit an empathic response for others from participants. It was hypothesized that the group receiving the empathic frame would have longer CPT times due to alterations in pain perception from empathy activation and these subjects’ self-reported state-trait empathy level would positively correlate with the increased times. 85 subjects participated with a control group of 43 and an experimental group of 42. State-trait empathy did not correlate with elongated CPT times, but between group CPT times were compared using an independent-samples t-test and it was found that the notably longer experimental group CPT times were statistically significant (P < .05).
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Daly, Amanda, "The Empathy Mitigation: Empathy and its Impact on Pain Perception and Altruistic Motivation" (2018). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 74.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd/74