Lu Siyan of Sun Yat-sen University’s Department of Psychology and Zhang Xiao (name transliterated by sound) of the Institute for Economic and Social Research at Jinan University recently published a study in the journal Neuropsychologia. The study found that female M participants in BDSM relationships showed less empathy for other people’s pain, and that their neural responses when witnessing someone else’s suffering also differed from those of the control group.
The researchers first posted a questionnaire on a BDSM forum and collected data through an online survey. The results showed that female M participants—that is, women in the masochistic role—reacted less to other people’s pain and also scored lower on the empathy questionnaire. Female S, male S, and male M participants, however, showed no significant difference from the control group in their responses to pain.
Next, the researchers recruited 32 female M participants and 32 control participants for an EEG experiment. While the participants viewed photographs of painful or neutral facial expressions, the researchers recorded changes in their brains’ event-related potentials (ERPs).
The EEG results basically confirmed the online survey findings. Female M participants did not react as strongly to painful facial expressions as the control group, and they did not feel as uncomfortable either. Their various EEG measures also showed the typical empathic pattern less often. What’s more, when the photographs of painful facial expressions were presented in a BDSM context, the activation pattern of female M participants’ event-related potentials suggested that their feelings were more like being drawn to the pain than feeling distressed.
Of course, the problem with this study is that it is, at heart, a correlational study. So we don’t know whether a person’s empathy or empathic response changes because they take part in BDSM activities (although there is related evidence that doctors who are frequently exposed to suffering suppress their own empathic responses to pain), or whether people with unusual empathic responses are more likely to be drawn to BDSM activities. Both possibilities seem to exist.
References:
Luo, S., & Zhang, X. (2018). Empathy in female submissive BDSM practitioners. Neuropsychologia, 116, 44-51.
Alex Fradera. Women who practice submissive BDSM displayed reduced empathy and an atypical neural response to other people’s pain.
Note
- These articles in the “Psychology News Bites” series were short popular-science pieces and informal essays written at the time to accompany the related content of Zhichao Wei: Psychology News Bites. They were published on the now-shut-down platform Fantuan, and the original link no longer exists.
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