string: Further, as the target person is usually a friend or romantic partner of the observer, cue-based paradigms may arguably generate, in agreement with related observations (Cheng et al., 2010; Cikara and Fiske, 2011; Hein and Singer, 2008; Lamm et al., 2011; Singer et al., 2006; Wang et al., 2016; Xu et al., 2009), stronger empathic responses, reduce automatic aversive reactions elicited by ‘painful’ images (Preston and de Waal, 2002; Singer and Lamm, 2009), and increase ecological validity (Lamm et al.