Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 16, 2026

Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome
Published on: July 31, 2016
Are there sex differences in ERPs related to processing empathy-evoking pictures?
1Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, Department of Clinical and Developmental Neuropsychology, University of Groningen, Grote Kruisstraat 2/1,9712 TS Groningen, The Netherlands. y.groen@rug.nl
Objective:
This study aimed to investigate sex differences in the temporal dynamics of experiencing empathy by using electrophysiological measurements.
Methods:
Twenty-five females and 27 males viewed 414 pictures of the International affective picture system varying in emotional valence (positive, negative and neutral) and presence of humans (human and scenes). EEG event related potentials (ERPs) were obtained and correlations were computed with self-reported empathy.
Results:
Compared to males, females showed increased anterior N2 and parietal LPP amplitudes to humans contrasted with scenes (independent of emotional valence) and to negative contrasted with neutral emotions (independent of human presence). Independent of sex the N1 and anterior N2 were specifically increased for positive human emotions and the parietal LPP for negative human emotions. Across sexes, the N2 and LPP human emotion effects and LPP human effects were associated with self-reported affective empathy, but not with cognitive empathy.
Conclusions:
This study provides electrophysiological evidence that women prioritize the processing of socially relevant and negative emotional information, but that women did not show enhanced brain potentials to pictures with positive or negative emotions in humans.
More Related Videos
05:36Central and Divided Visual Field Presentation of Emotional Images to Measure Hemispheric Differences in Motivated Attention
Published on: November 16, 2017
09:52How to Find Effects of Stimulus Processing on Event Related Brain Potentials of Close Others when Hyperscanning Partners
Published on: May 31, 2018
Related Concept Videos
Empathy
Criticisms of the Evolutionary Perspective
Evolutionary psychology provides one explanation for these findings, suggesting...
Emotional Expression
Universal Facial Expressions
Psychologist Paul Ekman identified seven basic...
Socioemotional Experience and Gender Development
Factors Affecting Perception
An illustrative example of a perceptual set is the scenario where an airline pilot told...