Inducing empathy affects cardiovascular reactivity reflected in changes in high-frequency heart rate variability

Empathy represents an emotional trigger of prosocial emotions and social engagement behaviour as previous research demonstrates. Departing from literature indicating that parasympathetic mechanisms are associated with the preparation of social engagement behaviour, the present research investigates how feeling with another person affects empathising individuals’ cardiovascular reactivity reflecting influences of parasympathetic mechanisms. Specifically, individuals’ high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) while being instructed to feel with a target person in need reacting with a specific emotional response to a need-causing event (with anger or sadness) was investigated. Results of one experiment (N = 124) revealed that inducing empathy with needy target persons results in increases of HF-HRV – irrespective of their emotional reaction. No relation between cardiovascular indices and self-reported prosocial behaviour was found. Accordingly, these findings indicate that inducing empathy affects phasic vagal activity implied by parasympathetic mechanisms whereas the association of cardiovascular reactivity and social engagement behaviour needs further investigation.