中国科学院行为科学重点实验室知识库

This study describes two experiments conducted to investigate the modifying effect of trait empathy on attentional processing of emotionally laden (i.e., aggression-related) words in frustrating situations. A dot-probe task was used in the first experiment. The results showed that low-empathy individuals exhibited attentional bias toward aggressive words under both frustrating and nonfrustrating conditions. Highempathy individuals demonstrated attentional bias only under frustrating conditions. In the second experiment, the effect of frustration on highempathy individuals' aggression was reflected by N200, P300, and late positive potential amplitudes. It was discussed that these amplitudes might indicate that frustrating situations caused high-empathy individuals to show attentional bias toward aggressive words. Our findings suggested that high-empathy individuals were sensitive to emotionally laden (i.e., aggression-related) stimuli under frustrating conditions.