Empathic Neural Responses Predict Group Allegiance

Abstract

Watching another person in pain activates brain areas involved in the sensation of our own pain. Importantly, this neural mirroring is not constant; rather, it is modulated by our beliefs about their intentions, circumstances, and group allegiances. We investigated if the neural empathic response is modulated by minimally-differentiating information (e.g., a simple text label indicating another's religious belief), and if neural activity changes predict ingroups and outgroups across independent paradigms. We found that the empathic response was larger when participants viewed a painful event occurring to a hand labeled with their own religion (ingroup) than to a hand labeled with a different religion (outgroup). Counterintuitively, the magnitude of this bias correlated positively with the magnitude of participants' self-reported empathy. A multivariate classifier, using mean activity in empathy-related brain regions as features, discriminated ingroup from outgroup with 72% accuracy; the classifier's confidence correlated with belief certainty. This classifier generalized successfully to validation experiments in which the ingroup condition was based on an arbitrary group assignment. Empathy networks thus allow for the classification of long-held, newly-modified and arbitrarily-formed ingroups and outgroups. This is the first report of a single machine learning model on neural activation that generalizes to multiple representations of ingroup and outgroup. The current findings may prove useful as an objective diagnostic tool to measure the magnitude of one's group affiliations, and the effectiveness of interventions to reduce ingroup biases.

In what sense should we talk about the perception of other minds?

“…A series of experiments have shown that both nausea and aversion activate similar areas of the insula, and the intensity of both activities is positively correlated with the activation of the insula. This is supported by experiments conducted by Vaughn et al (2018) on pain: there is a common mechanism for feeling an emotion and perceiving the same emotion in others. Watching another person in pain activates areas of the brain involved in the sensation of our own pain.…”

Why Empathy Is Not a Reliable Source of Information in Moral Decision Making

“…Specifically, 200 ms after stimulus onset, the difference between ERP amplitudes in response to pain expressions versus neutral expressions was greater when the observer and target shared religious beliefs than when they did not. Another study showed that a single-word label presented on a hand being stabbed and indicating the person's religious affiliation (Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Scientologist, or atheist) was enough to strongly modify the neural activity in the observer, and the direction of the effect, relative to baseline activity, was predicted by the observer's own religion (Vaughn et al, 2018). Neuro-hemodynamic responses were significantly larger when participants viewed a hand labeled with their own religion than when they viewed a hand labeled with a different religion, and the size of this bias correlated positively with the magnitude of participants' self-reported dispositional empathy.…”

Empathy enhancing antidotes for interpersonally toxic leaders.

“…Of the three types of empathy, empathetic concern appears to be most strongly associated with observable prosocial and compassionate behavior toward others (Singer et al, 2008). Empathetic distress, or lack of it, appears to be the main component of what is popularly referred to as “unconscious bias.” That is, people tend to feel less distress or empathy-as-pain for those who they consider as being in their “out-groups” than for those who they view as being in their “in-groups” —based on any categorization of differences with others such as gender, race, age, language, socioeconomic status, or culture, to name a few (Vaughn, Savjani, Cohen, & Eagleman, 2018).…”

“…Some evidence suggests that collaboration with others is dependent on whether a person shares “in-group” identities. For example, the neural correlates of these responses were established in related research (Vaughn et al, 2018). Participants had their brains scanned by fMRI while they watched a needle stab hands that were labeled with different religious affiliations.…”