Comportamento prosociale, mimica facciale ed atteggiamento empatico in differenti contesti emotivi

[Autom. eng. transl.] The present research aims to investigate prosocial behavior by investigating how this is linked to specific psychophysiological (autonomic) indices, to certain personality traits (high vs. low empathetic predisposition) and finally how it can be influenced by the different emotional contexts in which the individuals interact. The subject's behavior was considered in different emotional contexts (positive vs negative vs. neutral) which required a possible implementation of prosocial choices. Specifically, the 30 experimental subjects (16 females and 14 males) were asked to observe and empathize with 120 different interactions while they were registered with the facial autonomic activity of the zygomatic muscle and the corrugator muscle. At the end of the experimental session the BEES (Balance Emotional Empathic Scale) was administered in order to measure the empathic disposition of the subject. The different analyzes carried out led to three main results: 1) a systematic modulation of the autonomic indices in conjunction with the decision to act in a prosocial manner; 2) an increase in the corrugator muscle for negative emotional contexts, where a greater number of prosocial interventions was also found, and vice versa an increase in the activity of the zygomatic muscle for positive contexts; 3) a positive correlation between the scores obtained at the BEES and the autonomic modulation on the one hand and the number of interventions on the other. The results obtained show that the autonomic indexes provide an objective measure of the behavior of the subject since they are able to predict the attitude of individuals in different emotional contexts as well as to discriminate between subjects with low or high empathic disposition.