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When judging the morality of an action, individuals may exhibit a bias stemming from group favoritism. It leads to the expression of different moral evaluations of the same behaviors performed by different social groups. The current study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the influence of in-group favoritism (in-group vs. homogeneous out-group) and out-group favoritism (in-group vs. high-quality out-group) on moral judgments. Two experiments were conducted, showing a higher moral score of the in-group compared to the homogeneous out-group by participants. ERP data indicated that in-group stimulation triggered larger P2 amplitudes than homogeneous out-group. Additionally, a larger N400-like amplitude, localized to the right hemisphere, was observed during the evaluation of the homogeneous out-group. Significantly, when comparing the in-group to the high-quality out-group, there was no discernible difference in moral scores or ERP amplitudes. Overall, the results indicate that in-group favoritism can affect moral judgments, especially when assessing homogeneous out-groups, but it can be reduced by the characteristics of groups., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

The ability of self-compassion and Confucian coping to predict anxiety and depression were examined in impoverished Chinese undergraduate students. Three hundred and thirty impoverished undergraduates completed measures of self-compassion, Confucian coping, depression, and anxiety. Results showed that higher self-compassion predicted lower depression and anxiety in impoverished undergraduates. Higher pro-setback thinking and responsibility thinking of Confucian coping were related with lower depression and anxiety. Higher fate thinking of Confucian coping was related with higher depression and anxiety. The predictive ability for depression and anxiety of self-compassion combined with fate thinking was better than self-compassion alone. Intervention to enhance self-compassion and reduce fate thinking may be beneficial to mental health in impoverished undergraduates.