Minimal humanity cues induce neural empathic reactions towards non-human entities

The present study tested whether the attribution of humanness by means of a minimal humanity cue is sufficient for the occurrence of empathic neural reactions towards non-human entities that are painfully stimulated. Vegetables have been used as a control condition to explore empathy towards humans' pain before. In the context of the present study, they were given a minimal humanity cue (i.e., a human name) or not (i.e., an adjective). Human associations with these different types of vegetables were measured and where either represented: pricked by a needle (painful condition) or touched by a Q-tip (touch condition) while recording electroencephalographic activity from a sample of 18 healthy students. Event-related potentials (ERP) indicated that those participants classified as high humanizers, showed an increased neural reaction when vegetables with a name were painfully rather than neutrally stimulated compared to vegetables without a name. These reactions occurred both in an early (P2: 130-180 ms) and a later (P3: 360-540 ms) ERP time-window. Moreover, this differential reaction on the P3 significantly correlated with participants' explicit empathic tendencies. Overall, these findings suggest that empathy can be triggered for non-human entities as long as they are seen as minimally human.