title: Mortality salience enhances racial in-group bias in empathic neural responses to others' suffering.
abstract: Behavioral research suggests that mortality salience (MS) leads to increased in-group identification and in-group favoritism in prosocial behavior. What remains unknown is whether and how MS influences brain activity that mediates emotional resonance with in-group and out-group members and is associated with in-group favoritism in helping behavior. The current work investigated MS effects on empathic neural responses to racial in-group and out-group members' suffering. Experiments 1 and 2 respectively recorded event related potentials (ERPs) and blood oxygen level dependent signals to pain/neutral expressions of Asian and Caucasian faces from Chinese adults who had been primed with MS or negative affect (NA). Experiment 1 found that an early frontal/central activity (P2) was more strongly modulated by pain vs. neutral expressions of Asian than Caucasian faces, but this effect was not affected by MS vs. NA priming. However, MS relative to NA priming enhanced racial in-group bias in long-latency neural response to pain expressions over the central/parietal regions (P3). Experiment 2 found that MS vs. NA priming increased racial in-group bias in empathic neural responses to pain expression in the anterior and mid-cingulate cortex. Our findings indicate that reminding mortality enhances brain activity that differentiates between racial in-group and out-group members' emotional states and suggest a neural basis of in-group favoritism under mortality threat.
authors.affiliation: Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University; PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing, China; Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University.
authors.forename: Xiaoyang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing, China; PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing, China; Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing, China; PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing, China; Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University.
authors.forename: Siyang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Beijing Military General Hospital, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Bing
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Beijing Military General Hospital, Beijing, China. Electronic address: bei925@sina.com.
authors.forename: Xinhuai
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing, China; PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing, China; Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University. Electronic address: shan@pku.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Shihui
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Han
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D044466:Asian People; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D003643:Death; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004645:Empathy / Q000502:physiology*; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D012933:Social Identification; D044465:White People; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: ERP; Empathy; In-group bias; Mortality salience; Race; fMRI