Giorgia Silani

• Doctor of Psychology
• Professor (Associate) at University of Vienna

Protecting others from harm is critical for societal well-being but is often effortful. How individuals weigh the costs of exerting effort against the benefits of avoiding harm to others is currently unknown. To fill this knowledge gap, we investigated how individuals (N = 50) decide to exert physical effort to reduce the number of painful shocks d...

Attention to social stimuli is a key component of social behavior and facilitates the development of fundamental social skills. Studies investigating social attention in neurotypical or neurodiverse populations have often relied on screen-based experiments using static images or videos, which lack the sensory richness and reciprocity present in rea...

Social rewards are strong drivers of behavior and fundamental to well-being, yet there is a lack of consensus regarding what actually defines a reward as “social.” Because a systematic overview of existing social reward operationalizations is currently absent, a review of the literature seems necessary to advance toward a unified framework and to b...

Our affective states can influence whether we help others and after helping we often experience improved affect. One important factor determining whether we help, is the amount of effort involved. Using an ecological momentary assessment approach across two measurement bursts (N = 803; N = 303), we investigated the affective antecedents and consequ...

Traditionally, social perception has been studied by presenting brief actions or emotions of others in randomized order, thereby preventing participants from anticipating the actions and emotions of others. Here we review efforts inspired by the notion that the brain functions as a hierarchical Bayesian predictive coding system that suggest that wh...

Objective The present study investigates what may influence individuals to experience their religiosity/spirituality as either subjectively positive [religious or spiritual (r/s) wellbeing] or as negative (r/s struggles). Drawing on existing literature attachment insecurity and the seven primary emotions as outlined by Jaak Panksepp in Affective Ne...

Attention to social stimuli is a key component of social behavior and facilitates the development of fundamental social skills. Studies investigating social attention in neurotypical or neurodiverse populations have often relied on screen-based experiments using static images or videos, which lack the sensory richness and reciprocity present in rea...

The terminology used in discussions on mental state attribution is extensive and lacks consistency. In the current paper, experts from various disciplines collaborate to introduce a shared set of concepts and make recommendations regarding future use.

Rewards are a broad category of stimuli inducing approach behavior to aid survival. Extensive evidence from animal research has shown that wanting (the motivation to pursue a reward) and liking (the pleasure associated with its consumption) are mostly regulated by dopaminergic and opioidergic activity in dedicated brain areas. However, less is know...

The notion of a connection between autism and music is as old as the first reported cases of autism, and music has been used as a therapeutic tool for many decades. Music therapy holds promise as an intervention for individuals with autism, harnessing their strengths in music processing to enhance communication and expression. While previous random...

Understanding the neurobiology of social reward processing is fundamental, holding promises for reducing maladaptive/dysfunctional social behaviors and boosting the benefits associated with a healthy social life. Current research shows that processing of social (vs. non-social) rewards may be driven by oxytocinergic signaling. However, studies in h...

Rationale According to theories of embodied cognition, facial mimicry — the spontaneous, low-intensity imitation of a perceived emotional facial expression — is first an automatic motor response, whose accompanying proprioceptive feedback contributes to emotion recognition. Alternative theoretical accounts, however, view facial mimicry as an emotio...

Rewards are a broad category of stimuli inducing approach behavior to aid survival. Extensive evidence from animal research has shown that wanting (the motivation to pursue a reward) and liking (the pleasure associated with its consumption) are mostly regulated by dopaminergic and opioidergic activity in dedicated brain areas. However, less is know...

Humans tend to automatically imitate others and their actions whilst also being able to control such imitative tendencies. Interference control, necessary to suppress own imitative tendencies, develops rapidly in childhood and adolescence, plateaus in adulthood, and slowly declines with advancing age. It remains to be shown though, which neural pro...

Religiosity/spirituality (R/S) has been associated with personality functioning and mental health in a variety of ways, with R/S regarded as both a facilitating and a detrimental factor. The fuzziness of this relationship calls for a multidimensional breakdown of the concept of R/S. To meet this demand, the Multidimensional Inventory of Religious/S...

Recent evidence suggests that social contact is a basic need governed by a social homeostatic system. Little is known, however, about how conditions of altered social homeostasis affect human psychology and physiology. Here, we investigated the effects of 8 hr of social isolation on psychological and physiological variables and compared this with 8...

Facial electromyography (EMG) allows to detect and quantify overt as well as subtle covert contractions of striatal facial muscles. Subjective and partly implicit affective experiences, such as the hedonic pleasure felt when consuming an exquisite meal, can thus be revealed and objectively quantified. Further, facial EMG is a convenient tool for tr...

The transition from primary to secondary school comes with major changes in the lives of children. There is a shortage of in-depth analyses of young people’s perspectives concerning their fears and strategies to address these. This qualitative study aims to gain first-hand understanding of children’s fears and the intended coping strategies used du...

Many autistic children suffer from social communication problems, reduced participation, and mental health issues. Music therapy has beneficial but heterogeneous effects; its mechanisms are incompletely understood. The Music for Autism (M4A) trial aims to replicate and expand a previous trial examining brain mechanisms and clinical outcomes of musi...

Importance: Music listening is a universal human experience. People of all ages and cultures often use music to reduce stress and improve mood, particularly in times of crisis. However, ecologically valid research examining the real-time association of music listening with stress and mood during the COVID-19 pandemic is scarce. Objective: To exp...

Human behaviour requires flexible arbitration between actions we do out of habit and actions that are directed towards a specific goal. Drugs that target opioid and dopamine receptors are notorious for inducing maladaptive habitual drug consumption; yet, how the opioidergic and dopaminergic neurotransmitter systems contribute to the arbitration bet...

Background In the field of mental health, religiosity and spirituality have gained particular attention in recent decades. However, only a few studies to date have investigated the effects of different types of religiosity and spirituality. In association with the recent introduction of a Swedish version of the multidimensional inventory of religio...

Our affective states influence whether we help others and after helping we often experience improved affect or reduced stress. One important factor that determines whether we help, and the potential affective consequences of helping, is the amount of effort involved. People are usually less willing to help others if it involves significant effort....

Objective: Social interactions are vital for our well-being, particularly during times of stress. However, previous studies linking social interactions to psychological outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic have largely been retrospective and/or cross-sectional. Thus, we tested four preregistered hypotheses (H1-H4) concerning the real-time effect...

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in severe disruption to people's lives as governments imposed national ‘lockdowns’. Several large surveys have underlined the detrimental short- and long-term mental health consequences resulting from this disruption, but survey findings are only informative of individuals' retrospectively reported psychological state...

Facial mimicry and emotion recognition are two socio-cognitive abilities involved in adaptive socio-emotional behavior, promoting affiliation and the establishment of social bonds. The mu-opioid receptor (MOR) system plays a key role in affiliation and social bonding. However, it remains unclear whether MORs are involved in the categorization and s...

It has been theorised that social contact is a basic need governed by a dedicated ‘social homeostatic’ system. In contrast to other homeostatic systems, such as food intake regulation, little is known about human psychology and physiology under conditions of altered social homeostasis. Here, we investigated the effects of eight hours of social isol...

Our daily behaviour requires a flexible arbitration between actions we do out of habit and actions that are directed towards a specific goal. Drugs that target opioid and dopamine receptors are notorious for inducing maladaptive habitual drug consumption, yet how the opioidergic and dopaminergic neurotransmitter systems contribute to the arbitratio...

Introduction: Music is a human universal that is frequently used as a means of stress reduction and mood improvement by individuals of all ages and cultures, particularly in times of crisis. However, ecologically valid research on stress- and mood-regulatory effects of music listening during the COVID-19 pandemic is lacking. Objective: We investiga...

Understanding the neural basis of reward processing is a major concern, as it holds the key to alleviating symptoms of addiction and poor mental health. However, this goal seems difficult to attain as long as research on reward processing cannot easily be compared across species and reward types, due to methodological differences and the presence o...

Self-other distinction is a crucial aspect of social cognition, as it allows us to differentiate our own mental and emotional states from those of others. Research suggests that this ability might be impaired in individuals on the autism spectrum, but convincing evidence of self-other distinction difficulties in the emotional domain is lacking. Her...

Animal research suggests a central role of the μ-opioid receptor (MOR) system in regulating affiliative behaviors and in mediating the stress-buffering function of social contact. However, the neurochemistry of stress-related social contact seeking in humans is still poorly understood. In a randomized, double-blind, between-subjects design, healthy...

Emotional egocentric bias (EEB) occurs when, due to a partial failure in self-other distinction, empathy for another's emotion is influenced by our own emotional state. Recent studies have revealed a higher EEB in children, adolescents and older adults compared to young adults, but the neural correlates of this finding are largely unknown. We asked...

BACKGROUND: Social interactions are vital for our wellbeing, particularly during times of stress. PURPOSE: We investigated the real-time effect of social interactions on changes in stress and mood using an ecological momentary assessment approach in 732 participants during COVID-19 lockdown in spring 2020 and in a subsample of these participants (n...

Self-other distinction is a crucial aspect of social cognition, as it allows us to differentiate our own mental and emotional states from those of others. Research suggests that this ability might be impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but convincing evidence of self-other distinction deficits in the emotional domain is lac...

Background: Studies investigating the relationship between religiosity/spirituality and mental health have suggested both positive and negative associations, highlighting the importance of multifaceted assessment of these rather broad constructs. The present study aims at contributing to this field of research by providing a validated Swedish versi...

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in severe disruption to people’s lives as governments imposed national ‘lockdowns’. Using ecological momentary assessment for seven days in 731 participants, we investigated how individual’s stress and mood fluctuated diurnally during lockdown in spring 2020. We found that age, gender, financial security, depressive s...

In a cross-cultural study, we investigated the link between explicit attitudes towards the hijab, and implicit measures of cultural and religious bias during the recognition of emotions. Participants tested in Austria (N = 71), and in Turkey (N = 70) reported their attitude towards the hijab, and categorised in a mousetracker task happy and sad fac...

Animal research suggests a central role of the μ-opioid receptor (MOR) system in mediating contact seeking and the stress-buffering function of social touch. However, the human neurochemistry of social motivation in aversive situations is still poorly understood. In a randomized, double-blind, between-subject design, healthy female volunteers (N =...

Training to inhibit imitative tendencies has been shown to reduce self-other interferences in both automatic imitation and perspective taking, suggesting that an enhancement of self-other distinction is transferrable from the motor to the cognitive domain. This study examined whether socio-cognitive training specifically enhances self-other distinc...

Previous research indicates that the size of interpersonal space at which the other is perceived as intrusive (permeability) and the ability to adapt interpersonal distance based on contextual factors (flexibility) are altered in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, the neurophysiological basis of these alterations remains poorly understood. To...

It is not known how specific the neural mechanisms underpinning empathy for different domains are. In the present study, we set out to test whether shared neural representations between first-hand pain and empathy for pain are pain-specific or extend to empathy for unpleasant affective touch as well. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and...

In order to manipulate the type of social interaction experienced with the two confederates, a modified version of the Repeated Trust Game was used. In particular, the back-transfer behavior of the two trustees (confederates) was computer-controlled in the same way as in Rosenberger et al. 2020, so that participants always played with a cooperative...

Previous research indicates that the size of interpersonal space at which the other is perceived as intrusive (permeability) and the ability to adapt interpersonal distance based on contextual factors (flexibility) are altered in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, the neurophysiological basis of these alterations remains poorly understood. To...

The observation of animal orofacial and behavioral reactions has played a fundamental role in research on reward but is seldom assessed in humans. Healthy volunteers (N = 131) received 400 mg of the dopaminergic antagonist amisulpride, 50 mg of the opioidergic antagonist naltrexone, or placebo. Subjective ratings, physical effort, and facial reacti...

The observation of animal orofacial and behavioral reactions has played a fundamental role in research on reward but is seldom assessed in humans. Healthy volunteers (N = 131) received 400 mg of the dopaminergic antagonist amisulpride, 50 mg of the opioidergic antagonist naltrexone, or placebo. Subjective ratings, physical effort, and facial reacti...

The observation of animal orofacial and behavioral reactions has played a fundamental role in research on reward but is seldom assessed in humans. Healthy volunteers (N = 131) received 400 mg of the dopaminergic antagonist amisulpride, 50 mg of the opioidergic antagonist naltrexone, or placebo. Subjective ratings, physical effort, and facial reacti...

Extensive experimental research has been conducted to investigate how individuals empathise with others depending on contextual and motivational factors. However, the effect of sexual objectification (i.e. focus on the individual’s physical appearance over his/her mental state) on empathy is scarce at best thus far. The aim of this work is to shed...

Social rewards represent a strong driving force behind decisions and behaviors. Previous research suggests that the processing of a reward depends on the initial state of the individual. However, empirical research in humans on the influence of motivational states on reward processing is scant, especially for rewards of social nature. In the presen...

The results from this 7-day long EMA study conducted during the acute phase of the COVID-19-crisis with 492 participants living in Austria provided evidence for the beneficial effects of music listening on mood in daily life. The happier the music that individuals listened to in their daily lives, the lower was perceived stress and the higher were...

The neural mechanisms underpinning empathy for pain are still a matter of debate. One of the major questions is whether empathy-related pain responses indicate domain-general vs. pain-specific affective responses. Using fMRI and psychopharmacological experiments, we investigated if placebo analgesia reduces first-hand and empathic experiences of af...

Empathic abilities are increasingly shown to be modulated by interpersonal and contextual factors. However, causal evidence regarding self-other distinction abilities in empathy, as measured by egocentric and altercentric biases, is virtually non-existent. This study aimed to demonstrate how malleable such biases are by investigating the impact of...

•Effect of a socio-cognitive training on self-other distinction and self-salience was tested•Ss trained to imitate, inhibit imitation, or inhibit control stimuli in 2 experiments•Unlike the original study, training did not influence self-other distinction•Imitation-inhibition training increased self-salience in empathy and shape matching

Sacrificial moral dilemmas elicit a strong conflict between the motive to not personally harm someone and the competing motive to achieving the greater good, which is often described as the "utilitarian" response. Some prior research suggests that reasoning abilities and deliberative cognitive style are associated with endorsement of utilitarian so...

Self-other distinction is crucial for empathy, since it prevents the confusion of self-experienced emotions with those of others. We aimed to extend our understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms of self-other distinction. Thirty-one female participants underwent continuous theta burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (cTBS) targeting the supr...

Self-other distinction is crucial for empathy, since it prevents the confusion of self-experienced emotions with those of others. We aimed to extend our understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms of self-other distinction. Thirty-one female participants underwent continuous theta burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (cTBS) targeting the supr...

The observation of animal hedonic orofacial and behavioral reactions has played a fundamental role for the identification of a dopaminergic motivational, and an opioidergic hedonic component of reward. Translation to humans remains difficult, however, as human research has struggled to adopt a similar operationalization of reward. Here, we investig...

Emotional egocentric bias (EEB) occurs when, due to a partial failure in self-other distinction, empathy for another’s emotions is influenced by our own emotional state. Recent studies have demonstrated that this bias is higher in children, adolescents and older adults than in young adults. In the latter, overcoming emotional egocentrism has been a...

Whether cognitive, motivational and hedonic aspects of reward anticipation and consumption can be reliably assessed with explicit and implicit measures, and if different motivational (decision utility) and hedonic (experienced utility) processes get recruited by distinct reward types, remain partly unsolved questions that are relevant for theories...

Ostracism threatens the human need for social interactions, with negative consequences on cognition, affect and behavior. Understanding the mechanisms that can alleviate these consequences has therefore become an important research agenda. In this study, we used behavioral and fMRI measures to advance our understanding how social support can buffer...

Our study focused on the general population and explored the relationships between autistic traits and alexithymia, on the one hand, and traits related to depression, anxiety, and stress, on the other, using a multivariate statistical approach. In previous research, autistic traits and alexithymia have been linked to these traits both in clinical p...

A controversial hypothesis, named the Sexualized Body Inversion Hypothesis (SBIH), claims similar visual processing of sexually objectified women (i.e., with a focus on the sexual body parts) and inanimate objects as indicated by an absence of the inversion effect for both type of stimuli. The current study aims at shedding light into the mechanism...

Although research in moral psychology in the last decade has relied heavily on hypothetical moral dilemmas and has been effective in understanding moral judgment, how these judgments translate into behaviors remains a largely unexplored issue due to the harmful nature of the acts involved. To study this link, we follow a new approach based on a des...

Empathy is essential for successful social interactions and relationships. The neural underpinnings of empathy have predominantly been studied in the young adult population, while little is known about how they evolve across the life-span. In the present study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate age-related differen...

Previous research shows that when people judge moral acceptability of others’ harmful behavior, they not only take into account information about the consequences of the act but also an actor’s beliefs while carrying out the act. A two-process model has been proposed to account for this pattern of moral judgments and posits: (a) a causal process th...

Recent research with moral dilemmas supports dual-process model of moral decision making. This model posits two different paths via which people can endorse utilitarian solution that requires personally harming someone in order to achieve the greater good (e.g., killing one to save five people): (i) weakened emotional aversion to the prospect of ha...

This study investigated hypothetical moral choices in adults with high-functioning autism and the role of empathy and alexithymia in such choices. We used a highly emotionally salient moral dilemma task to investigate autistics’ hypothetical moral evaluations about personally carrying out harmful utilitarian behaviours aimed at maximizing welfare....

Mature moral judgments rely both on a perpetrator’s intent to cause harm, and also on the actual harm caused—even when unintended. Much prior research asks how intent information is represented neurally, but little asks how even unintended harms influence judgment. We interrogate the psychological and neural basis of this process, focusing especial...

Mature moral judgments rely on the consideration of the perpetrator’s mental state as well as the harmfulness of the outcomes produced. Prior work has focused primarily on the functional correlates of how intent information is neurally represented for moral judgments, but few studies have investigated whether individual differences in neuroanatomy...

Sexual objectification is a widespread phenomenon characterized by a focus on the individual's physical appearance over his/her mental state. This has been associated with negative social consequences, as objectified individuals are judged to be less human, competent, and moral. Moreover, behavioral responses toward the person change as a function...

Costly altruism entails helping others at a cost to the self and prior work shows that empathic concern (EC) for the well-being of distressed and vulnerable individuals is one of the primary motivators of such behavior. However, extant work has investigated costly altruism with paradigms that did not feature self-relevant and severe costs for the a...

Empathy-currently defined as the sharing of another's affective state-has been the focus of much psychological and neuroscientific research in the last decade, much of which has been focused on ascertaining the empathic ability of individuals with various clinical conditions. However, most of this work tends to overlook the fact that empathy is the...

Aims: Empathy, the ability to feel with another person, has already been widely studied in both neurotypical as well as clinical populations, being fundamental for everyday social interactions. However, such a social skill is not free from error. Since humans primarily use their own emotions and perceptions in guiding their thoughts about conspecif...

Mature moral judgments rely both on a perpetrator’s intent to cause harm, and also on the actual harm caused—even when unintended. Much prior research asks how intent information is represented neurally, but little asks how even unintended harms influence judgment. We interrogate the psychological and neural basis of this process, focusing especial...