Investigating pain empathy in athletes: a quantitative descriptive approach with ERPs

This study investigates pain empathy in athletes using Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to identify distinct neural signatures. Employing a quantitative descriptive research design, we compare pain empathy between 100 athletes and 100 non-athletes recruited from university sports teams and the general student population. The findings reveal that athletes exhibit heightened neural responsiveness to pain stimuli, as indicated by specific ERP components, suggesting an elevated level of pain empathy compared to non-athletes. Additionally, the study identifies gender differences in pain empathy among athletes, likely influenced by sociocultural factors affecting emotional processing in sports. The results also demonstrate that higher levels of competitive experience in athletes correlate with adaptive modulation of pain empathy, with individual differences in trait empathy mediating the relationship between pain empathy and athletic performance. This research contributes to the existing literature by providing a neurophysiological perspective on pain empathy in athletes, offering insights that could inform training and performance enhancement strategies.