Scarcity mindset facilitates empathy for social pain and prosocial intention: behavioral and neural evidences

Empathy for social pain encompasses both affective and cognitive responses to others' emotional reactions following negative social encounters, facilitating an understanding of their suffering and promoting prosocial behaviors. This study examined how a scarcity mindset affects empathy for social pain and prosocial intentions at behavioral and neural levels. Sixty participants were randomly assigned to either the scarcity or abundance mindset group. They viewed images of social exclusion or neutral scenarios and subsequently rated the perceived unpleasantness of the target person and their willingness to provide comfort during a stage-game paradigm. The results showed that participants in the scarcity mindset group demonstrated greater differentiation in their ratings of unpleasantness and willingness to comfort when exposed to social exclusion images compared to neutral ones, relative to the abundance mindset group. Electrophysiological data revealed that social exclusion images elicited larger late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes in the scarcity mindset group, but not in the abundance mindset group. Additionally, within the scarcity mindset group, affective empathy trait scores moderated the relationship between LPP amplitudes and willingness to comfort ratings. These findings highlight the amplifying effects of a scarcity mindset on empathy for social pain and prosocial intentions, and emphasize the role of affective empathy traits in this dynamic process.