A neurobiological association of revenge propensity during intergroup conflict
- Peking University, China
- University of Maryland, United States
- Medical Center of PLA General Hospital, China
Abstract
Revenge during intergroup conflict is a human universal, but its neurobiological underpinnings remain unclear. We address this by integrating functional MRI and measurements of endogenous oxytocin in participants who view an ingroup and an outgroup member's suffering that is caused mutually (Revenge group) or respectively by a computer (Control group). We show that intergroup conflict encountered by the Revenge group is associated with an increased level of oxytocin in saliva compared to in the Control group. Furthermore, the medial prefrontal activity in response to ingroup pain in the Revenge but not Control group mediates the association between endogenous oxytocin and the propensity to give painful electric shocks to outgroup members regardless of whether they were directly involved in the conflict. Our findings highlight an important neurobiological correlate of revenge propensity which may be implicated in conflict contagion across individuals in the context of intergroup conflict.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed for figures of this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data files have been provided for Figures 2-6.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China (31661143039)
- Shihui Han
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Marius V Peelen, Radboud University, Netherlands
Ethics
Human subjects: Informed consent was obtained prior to the experiment. All participants were paid for their participation. This study was approved by the local ethics committee at the School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University.(#2015-12-04)
Version history
- Received: September 19, 2019
- Accepted: February 20, 2020
- Accepted Manuscript published: March 3, 2020 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: March 5, 2020 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2020, Han et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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A neurobiological association of revenge propensity during intergroup conflict
eLife 9:e52014.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.52014
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