Social Emotions

Mindfulness meditation regulates anterior insula activity during empathy for social pain

2016, Social Emotions / Sören Krach

Abstract Mindfulness has been shown to reduce stress, promote health, and well-being, as well as to increase compassionate behavior toward others. It reduces distress to one’s own painful experiences, going along with altered neural responses, by enhancing self-regulatory processes and decreasing emotional reactivity. In order to investigate if mindfulness similarly reduces distress and neural activations […]

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Neural pathways of embarrassment and their modulation by social anxiety

2015, Clinical, Social Emotions / Sören Krach

Abstract While being in the center of attention and exposed to other’s evaluations humans are prone to experience embarrassment. To characterize the neural underpinnings of such aversive moments, we induced genuine experiences of embarrassment during person-group interactions in a functional neuroimaging study. Using a mock-up scenario with three confederates, we examined how the presence of

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Neuronal pathways of embarrassment

2015, Social Emotions / Sören Krach

Abstract Who has not already experienced the unpleasant feeling, when, for example, you were called to the board in school and could not answer the teacher’s question? You don’t know what to say anymore, but nevertheless cannot escape the eyes of the others. The pulse rises, blood flows into your face, you feel blushing and

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Mentalizing and the role of the posterior superior temporal sulcus in sharing others’ embarrassment

2015, Social Emotions / Sören Krach

Abstract The experience of embarrassment provides a highly salient cue for the human moral apparatus. Interestingly, people also experience embarrassment on behalf of others’ inappropriate conditions. The perceiver’s embarrassment often lacks an equivalent expression of embarrassment in the social counterpart. The present study examines this phenomenon and distinguishes neural circuits involved in embarrassment with and

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Demands in reflecting about another’s motives and intentions modulate vicarious embarrassment in autism spectrum disorders

2013, Clinical, Social Emotions / Sören Krach

Abstract The affective responses to another person’s condition depend on the ability to reflect about another’s thoughts and intentions. This is relevant also for high-functioning individuals with ASD who have considerable difficulties in reading the intentions of others. With the present study we introduce a novel paradigm to induce vicarious embarrassment as a form of

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On the distinction of empathic and vicarious emotions

2013, Social Emotions / Sören Krach

Abstract In the introduction to the special issue “The Neural Underpinnings of Vicarious Experience” the editors state that one “may feel embarrassed when witnessing another making a social faux pas”. In our commentary we address this statement and ask whether this example introduces a vicarious or an empathic form of embarrassment. We elaborate commonalities and

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Advancing the neuroscience of social emotions with social immersion

2013, Social Emotions / Sören Krach

Abstract Second-person neuroscience offers a framework for the study of social emotions, such as embarrassment and pride. However, we propose that an enduring mental representation of oneself in relation to others without a continuous direct social interaction is possible. We call this state “social immersion” and will explain its impact on the neuroscience of social

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Increased autonomic activation in vicarious embarrassment

2012, Social Emotions / Sören Krach

Abstract We studied the somatovisceral response pattern of vicarious embarrassment for someone else’s inappropriate condition. Participants (N=54) were confronted with hand-drawn sketches depicting public situations and were instructed to rate the intensity of their vicarious embarrassment. The inappropriate condition varied according to the attribution of intentionality (absent/present) and awareness (absent/present). Irrespective of these attributions, participants

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Your flaws are my pain: linking empathy to vicarious embarrassment

2011, Social Emotions / Sören Krach

Abstract People vicariously experience embarrassment when observing others’ public pratfalls or etiquette violations. In two consecutive studies we investigated the subjective experience and the neural correlates of vicarious embarrassment for others in a broad range of situations. We demonstrated, first, that vicarious embarrassment was experienced regardless of whether the observed protagonist acted accidentally or intentionally

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