Empathy is the understanding and resonance of others’ emotions and feelings. Research on empathy has significant value in promoting national mental health, maintaining social stability, and enhancing social morality. Traditional views often suggest that the female population has higher empathy than males, but many recent studies have drawn conflicting conclusions, and the multifaceted nature of empathy may be the reason for this discrepancy.
To explore the gender differences in empathy traits, the research teams of Hu Li from the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Kong Yazhuo collaborated on a study, recruiting 206 females and 302 males to complete the self-reported IRI-C empathy scale, collecting high-resolution structural images and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data.
The research findings indicate that, females significantly score higher than males on the personal distress dimension of empathy (Personal Distress, PD), while there are no significant differences in other dimensions (Figure 1). Brain imaging results reveal the neural mechanisms behind this phenomenon. The results of voxel-based morphometric analysis show that the gray matter volume (GMV) of the left anterior insula (AI) in females is significantly negatively correlated with PD, and is also significantly larger in males compared to females. Furthermore, resting-state functional imaging data show that the functional connectivity between the left AI and the left temporoparietal junction as well as the right inferior frontal gyrus is also significantly negatively correlated with PD, and is significantly larger in males than in females. Structural equation modeling results indicate that the gray matter volume of the left AI and its functional connectivity with other brain regions fully mediate the relationship between gender and PD scores (Figure 2).
The reasons for these results may trace back to the origins of empathy—parenting behavior. As the primary caregivers of children in social groups, natural selection necessitates that females are more sensitive to the states of their offspring, better managing their hunger, pain, or fear. Caregivers witnessing their children’s pain trigger their own psychological distress, further affecting their pain ratings of the child’s suffering, thus increasing their attention and care towards the child’s suffering. However, this outcome of natural selection leads females to experience greater self-distress when faced with the suffering of other humans who are not their offspring; for instance, females may show empathic responses when witnessing their rivals or morally questionable individuals in distress, while most males may not.
In summary, this study discovered gender differences in the personal distress dimension of trait empathy and revealed the neural mechanisms behind this difference, aiding researchers in deeply understanding the essence of empathy and developing effective interventions to contribute to a “Healthy China”.
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This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation (32071061, 32171077) and the Beijing Outstanding Young Scholars Fund (JQ22018). The article has been published online in Cerebral Cortex. PhD student Wu Xiao is the first author, and researchers Hu Li and Kong Yazhuo are co-corresponding authors.
Paper Information: Xiao Wu, Xuejing Lu, Huijuan Zhang, Yanzhi Bi, Ruolei Gu, Yazhuo Kong, Li Hu, Sex difference in trait empathy is encoded in the human anterior insula, Cerebral Cortex, 2022, bhac398, https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhac398
Source: Hu Li Research Group, Kong Yazhuo Research Group
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