Establishing a counter-empathy processing model: evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging

Counter-empathy significantly affects people’s social lives. Previous evidence indicates that the degree of counter-empathy can be either strong or weak. Strong counter-empathy easily occurs when empathizers are prejudiced against the targets of empathy (e.g. prejudice against outgroup members) and activates brain regions that are opposite to those activated by empathy. Weak counter-empathy may have different neural processing paths from strong ones, but its underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. In this work, we used an unfair distribution paradigm, which can reduce participants’ prejudice against persons empathized with, and functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the neural mechanisms underlying counter-empathy. Here, empathy and counter-empathy shared a common neural mechanism, induced by unfair distribution, in the right middle temporal gyrus. Counter-empathy activated distinct brain regions that differed from those of empathic responses in different situations. The functions of these brain regions, which included the middle frontal, middle temporal and left medial superior gyri, were similar and mostly related to emotional regulation and cognitive processing. Here, we propose a process model of counter-empathy, involving two processing paths according to whether or not prejudice exists. This study has theoretical significance and broadens our understanding of the cognitive neural mechanisms underlying empathy and counter-empathy.