Forgiveness weakens counterempathy at the early and late stage of empathic responses to opponents’ expressions

Our emotional response to people is discordant with their emotional experience in competitive situations; this phenomenon is termed "counterempathy." Using event-related potentials, this study investigated the neural underpinnings of the effect of forgiveness on counterempathy. Twenty-seven female university students participated in a two phase-interpersonal competitive game with two other players whose smiles and frowns indicated the participant's losing and winning, respectively. In the "passive" phase, participants were passively punished with a high- or low-intensity noise chosen by the opponent each time they lost a trial (i.e., the opponent smiles). During the break, participants received a negative or friendly message from each opponent. Participants were more likely to forgive the opponent who had sent a friendly message. In the "active" phase, participants could punish both opponents when they won a trial (i.e., the opponent frowns). Behavioral data showed that participants' empathic responses were inconsistent with the opponents' expressions, and that forgiveness could weaken this effect. The electrophysiological data revealed that both very early emotional sharing (reflected in the N170) and late elaborative cognitive evaluation stage (reflected in the P300) of counterempathy were affected by forgiveness, whereas the early automatic cognitive evaluation stage (reflected in the feedback-related negativity [FRN]) was not. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).