Gratitude and pride in intergroup cooperation: Differentiated neural patterns revealed by fNIRS hyperscanning

Intergroup cooperation helps reduce intergroup prejudice and improve intergroup relations. Positive emotions with important social functions may contribute to intergroup cooperation. Gratitude and pride are two such emotions that differ in their appraisal priorities: gratitude places relatively greater emphasis on external support and interpersonal relationships, whereas pride is more closely associated with personal achievement and competence. Across two studies involving female Chinese university students, we combined behavioral measures with fNIRS hyperscanning to examine gratitude and pride in intergroup cooperation. Trait gratitude and pride showed small-to-moderate positive associations with cooperation, but only gratitude retained a significant unique association when both traits were considered simultaneously. Experimentally induced gratitude and pride increased cooperation relative to neutral, with no significant difference between the two emotions. Brain activation showed a significant Emotion × ROI interaction and a significant direct gratitude-pride interaction contrast, both surviving FDR correction, supporting different relative activation patterns across the TPJ and dlPFC. Functional-connectivity interactions did not survive FDR correction, and inter-brain synchrony interactions were nonsignificant. ROI-level neural measures were not significantly associated with cooperation. These findings suggest that gratitude and pride may facilitate intergroup cooperation and are accompanied by partially differentiated regional activation patterns.