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Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access published online on March 15, 2007
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, doi:10.1093/scan/nsm005
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© The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Learning fears by observing others: the neural systems of social fear transmission

Andreas Olsson1, Katherine I. Nearing2 and Elizabeth A. Phelps3,4

1Department of Psychology, Columbia University, 2Epilepsy Center, NYU School of Medicine, New York University, 3Department of Psychology and 4Center for Neural Science, New York University, NY, USA

Classical fear conditioning has been used as a model paradigm to explain fear learning across species. In this paradigm, the amygdala is known to play a critical role. However, classical fear conditioning requires first-hand experience with an aversive event, which may not be how most fears are acquired in humans. It remains to be determined whether the conditioning model can be extended to indirect forms of learning more common in humans. Here we show that fear acquired indirectly through social observation, with no personal experience of the aversive event, engages similar neural mechanisms as fear conditioning. The amygdala was recruited both when subjects observed someone else being submitted to an aversive event, knowing that the same treatment awaited themselves, and when subjects were subsequently placed in an analogous situation. These findings confirm the central role of the amygdala in the acquisition and expression of observational fear learning, and validate the extension of cross-species models of fear conditioning to learning in a human sociocultural context. Our findings also provides new insights into the relationship between learning from, and empathizing with, fearful others. This study suggests that indirectly attained fears may be as powerful as fears originating from direct experiences.

Keywords: amygdala; social learning; fear conditioning; empathy; fMRI

Correspondence should be addressed to Elizabeth A. Phelps, Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washington Place – Meyer Hall, New York NY 10003, USA. E-mail: liz.phelps{at}nyu.edu

Received February 11, 2007. Accepted February 11, 2007.


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