Big Five personality traits contribute to prosocial responses to others’ pain

Objectives: Two studies examined whether observers’ personality traits contribute to prosocial responses to others’ facial expression of pain. Experiment 1 examined the personality traits that could account for observers’ variability in estimating others’ pain intensity. Experiment 2 questioned to what extent the contribution of personality traits on inclination to help people in pain depend on observers’ beliefs about pain’ characteristics. Method: 59 (experiment 1) and 76 (experiment 2) participants observed to 3-D realistic synthetic face movements mobilizing action units of pain, in order to estimate others’ pain. In experiment 2, painful localizations (e.g., chest, hand) were also manipulated. In each experiment, Big Five personality traits were assessed. Results: Experiment 1 revealed that agreeableness and conscientiousness contributed to observers’ pain estimates across the increase of facial expression intensity. Experiment 2 showed that conscientiousness contributed to observers’ judgments whatever pain’ characteristics. Neuroticism was only salient for pain referring to life-threatening pain. Conclusion: Prosocial response to others’ pain depends on agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. However, these links are modulated by the pain behavior elicited and observers’ belief about the characteristic of pain. 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.