Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 16, 2025

Multi-Modal Signals for Analyzing Pain Responses to Thermal and Electrical Stimuli
Published on: April 5, 2019
Subliminal perception of others' physical pain induces personal distress rather than empathic concern
Juan Song1, Zijing Zhao1, Zhibin Jiao1
1Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China.
Background:
What is our immediate reaction when we witness someone experiencing pain? The empathy-altruism hypothesis predicts that observers would display empathy and a tendency to approach the person in pain. Alternatively, the threat value of pain hypothesis (TVPH) argues that others' pain serves as a signal of threat and should induce observers' avoidance response.
Methods:
To examine these two hypotheses, three experiments were conducted. The experiments aimed to investigate the impact of subliminal exposure to others' physical pain on participants' emotional and behavioural responses.
Results:
The results revealed that subliminal pain priming resulted in faster response and attentional bias to fearful faces compared to sad faces (Experiment 1), faster reaction times in recognizing fear-related words compared to anger-related words during a lexical decision task (Experiment 2), and faster avoidance responses towards anger-related words, as opposed to approaching responses towards positive words (Experiment 3).
Conclusions:
The consistent findings across all experiments revealed that subliminal perception of pain scenes elicited fear emotion and immediate avoidance responses. Therefore, the outcomes of our study provide supportive evidence for the TVPH.
Related Concept Videos
Subliminal Perception
Factors Affecting Perception
An illustrative example of a perceptual set is the scenario where an airline pilot told...
Empathy
Pain
Nociception
Thermosensation

