Impact of attention cues on empathy for pain in college students with implicit weight stigma

While studies about attention cues influencing empathy for pain have been reported, it is still unclear what pain reactivity in individuals with implicit weight stigma, whether and how the attention cues have an influence on empathy for pain in individuals with implicit weight stigma as well as its potential contributions to understanding empathy processes and developing interventions for weight stigma. Here, using the Single Category Implicit Association Test (SC-IAT), twenty-five participants were randomly selected to provide different stimulus conditions (e.g. the painful pictures). The event-related potential (ERP) and behavioral data were recorded when they were required to judge whether stimuli would be painful/ attractive or not to explore the impact of attention cues on empathy for pain in individuals with implicit weight stigma. Behavioral results showed participants responded slower to the thin body picture than the fat body picture. Moreover, top–down attention influences the late cognitive processing stage component P3 and LPC. Specifically, relative to pain judgment task, the fat body picture elicited larger P3 amplitudes than the thin body picture. In addition, relative to pain judgment task, the fat body picture elicited larger LPC amplitudes than the thin body picture; relative to the attractiveness judgment task, the thin body picture elicited larger LPC amplitudes than the fat body picture. These findings revealed that empathy for pain among college students with weight implicit stigma was influenced by top-down attention to attention cues, and presented evidence for the empathy deficits of individuals with implicit weight stigma who might avoid negative emotion when viewing other people’s bodies.