Article in “Psychology Today”: The Surprising Benefit of Helping Someone in Distress

Have you ever watched a horror-movie alone? Surely most people would rather watch such a movie with their partner or a good friend. Of course, it’s reassuring to have a companion, who can calm you down in stressful situations. But the effect might also work the other way around: Comforting another person can help reducing your own distress.

In an exciting fMRI experiment, Simón Guendelmann investigated the benefits of regulating a partner’s emotions and how regulating others’ emotions differs from regulating one’s own emotions in the brain. An article on the “Psychology Today” website features this research and gives a great overview of the study.

You can find the “Psychology Today” article here and the original research paper in “NeuroImage” here.