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Social and affective relations may shape empathy to others' affective states.Previous studies also revealed that people tend to form very different mentalrepresentations of stimuli on the basis of their physical distance. In thisregard, embodied cognition proposes that different physical distances betweenindividuals activate different interpersonal processing modes, such that closephysical distance tends to activate the interpersonal processing mode typicalof socially and affectively close relationships. In Experiment 1, two groups ofparticipants were administered a pain decision task involving upright andinverted face stimuli painfully or neutrally stimulated, and we monitored theirneural empathic reactions by means of event-related potentials (ERPs)technique. Crucially, participants were presented with face stimuli of one oftwo possible sizes in order to manipulate retinal size and perceived physicaldistance, roughly corresponding to the close and far portions of socialdistance. ERPs modulations compatible with an empathic reaction were observedonly for the group exposed to face stimuli appearing to be at a close socialdistance from the participants. This reaction was absent in the group exposedto smaller stimuli corresponding to face stimuli observed from a far socialdistance. In Experiment 2, one different group of participants was engaged in amatch-to-sample task involving the two-size upright face stimuli of Experiment1 to test whether the modulation of neural empathic reaction observed inExperiment 1 could be ascribable to differences in the ability to identifyfaces of the two different sizes. Results suggested that face stimuli of thetwo sizes could be equally identifiable. In line with the Construal Level andEmbodied Simulation theoretical frameworks, we conclude that perceived physicaldistance may shape empathy as well as social and affective distance.

Out of sight out of mind: Perceived physical distance between the observer and someone in pain shapes observer's neural empathic reactions