Empathic responses are reduced to competitive but not non-competitive outgroups

Area of Science:

• Social Neuroscience
• Psychology

Background:

• Empathy is often biased towards ingroup members over outgroup members.
• Perceptions of intergroup relations, such as rivalry, can modulate empathy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how group-based evaluations influence self-reported empathy and neural responses.
• To examine the role of perceived outgroup competitiveness in empathy biases.

Main Methods:

• Participants rated perceived pain in ingroup and outgroup targets during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
• BOLD responses were recorded while participants observed painful and innocuous events involving different outgroups (rival vs. less competitive).

Main Results:

• Self-reported empathy showed bias favoring the ingroup.
• Neural responses to pain were heightened for ingroup and less competitive outgroup members.
• Empathy and neural responses were significantly reduced for the more competitive outgroup.

Conclusions:

• Empathy is not solely based on ingroup/outgroup status but is sensitive to the perceived nature of intergroup relationships.
• Group evaluations and perceived threat influence empathic responses and their neural underpinnings.