Shared beliefs enhance shared feelings: Religious/irreligious identifications modulate empathic neural responses

Abstract

Recent neuroimaging research has revealed stronger empathic neural responses to same-race compared to other-race individuals. Is the in-group favouritism in empathic neural responses specific to race identification or a more general effect of social identification—including those based on religious/irreligious beliefs? The present study investigated whether and how intergroup relationships based on religious/irreligious identifications modulate empathic neural responses to others’ pain expressions. We recorded event-related brain potentials from Chinese Christian and atheist participants while they perceived pain or neutral expressions of Chinese faces that were marked as being Christians or atheists. We found that both Christian and atheist participants showed stronger neural activity to pain (versus neutral) expressions at 132–168 ms and 200–320 ms over the frontal region to those with the same (versus different) religious/irreligious beliefs. The in-group favouritism in empathic neural responses was also evident in a later time window (412–612 ms) over the central/parietal regions in Christian but not in atheist participants. Our results indicate that the intergroup relationship based on shared beliefs, either religious or irreligious, can lead to in-group favouritism in empathy for others’ suffering.