Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 24, 2026

Urinary Bladder Distention Evoked Visceromotor Responses as a Model for Bladder Pain in Mice
Published on: April 27, 2014
Please empathize! Instructions to empathise strengthen response facilitation after pain observation
Carl Michael Galang1, Sukhvinder S Obhi1
1Social Brain, Body and Action Lab, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada.
Abstract:
Recent research has shown that observing others in pain leads to a general facilitation of reaction times. The current study sheds further light on the relationship between pain observation and reaction time by exploring how bottom-up processes, in the form of perceived pain intensity, and top-down processes, in the form of explicit instructions to empathise, influence response facilitation after pain observation. Participants watched videos of a hand getting pierced by a needle or touched by a Q-tip. To manipulate bottom-up information, participants saw videos depicting either deep or shallow insertion of the needle. To investigate potential top-down modulation, half the participants were explicitly requested to empathise with the person in the video, while the other half were told to simply watch and attend to the video. Results from two experiments corroborate previous results showing response facilitation after pain observation. Critically, experiment 2 provides robust evidence that explicit instructions to empathise with a person in pain strengthen response facilitation. We discuss these results considering social cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology studies of empathy and pain observation.
Related Concept Videos
Social Facilitation
Facilitated Transport
Facilitated Transport
Facilitated Diffusion
In this process, substrates such as organic compounds and ions interact with a transporter on one side, triggering conformational changes in proteins that enable...
Milgram's Obedience to Authority
Naturalistic Observations

