Neural Responses to Ingroup and Outgroup Members' Suffering Predict Individual Differences in Costly Helping

Little is known about the neurobiological mechanisms underlying prosocial decisions and how they are modulated by social factors such as perceived group membership. The present study investigates the neural processes preceding the willingness to engage in costly helping toward ingroup and outgroup m...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNeuron (Cambridge, Mass.) Vol. 68; no. 1; pp. 149 - 160
Main Authors Hein, Grit, Silani, Giorgia, Preuschoff, Kerstin, Batson, C. Daniel, Singer, Tania
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Elsevier Inc 06.10.2010
Elsevier Limited
Subjects
Adult
Behavior
Brain
Brain - blood supply
Brain - physiopathology
Brain Mapping
Brain research
Empathy
Empathy - physiology
Group Processes
Helping Behavior
Humans
Hypotheses
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Individuality
Interpersonal Relations
Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods
Male
Motivation
Oxygen - blood
Pain
Pain - psychology
Predictive Value of Tests
Science
Soccer
Social Identification
Social sciences
Stress, Psychological - pathology
Stress, Psychological - physiopathology
Stress, Psychological - psychology
Studies
Surveys and Questionnaires
Young Adult
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Summary:Little is known about the neurobiological mechanisms underlying prosocial decisions and how they are modulated by social factors such as perceived group membership. The present study investigates the neural processes preceding the willingness to engage in costly helping toward ingroup and outgroup members. Soccer fans witnessed a fan of their favorite team (ingroup member) or of a rival team (outgroup member) experience pain. They were subsequently able to choose to help the other by enduring physical pain themselves to reduce the other's pain. Helping the ingroup member was best predicted by anterior insula activation when seeing him suffer and by associated self-reports of empathic concern. In contrast, not helping the outgroup member was best predicted by nucleus accumbens activation and the degree of negative evaluation of the other. We conclude that empathy-related insula activation can motivate costly helping, whereas an antagonistic signal in nucleus accumbens reduces the propensity to help. ► Empathy-related brain responses in anterior insula predict costly helping ► Helping ingroup and outgroup members is predicted by distinct neural responses ► Brain responses predict behavior toward outgroup members better than self-reports
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ISSN:0896-6273
1097-4199
DOI:10.1016/j.neuron.2010.09.003