Being stressed might make you more selfless in the face of injustice. A new study published May 14 in PLOS Biology suggests that people under acute stress are likelier to help victims rather than punish wrongdoers. The study sheds light on how the brain balances empathy and judgment when stakes are high.
Researchers from Beijing Normal University, led by Huagen Wang, explored the neuroscience behind third-party intervention—how people behave when they witness unfairness affecting others. The central finding? While stress tends to cloud decision-making in some situations, it may tip the brain toward altruism.
Helping vs. Punishing: A Cognitive Trade-Off
We all know the feeling of watching someone get an unfair shake—maybe it’s someone being shortchanged, spoken over, or treated poorly. But when it comes to doing something about it, the brain chooses to help the victim or punish the perpetrator.
That choice, the study suggests, isn’t just emotional—it’s cognitive. Helping is the quicker, more intuitive response. Punishing? That takes more mental effort and deliberation. Using functional MRI scans, researchers tracked how 52 participants responded to simulated unfair situations. Participants watched virtual characters split money, often unfairly, then decide whether to penalize the greedy player or reward the one who was shorted.
Ice Water and Injustice: The Stressed Test
To dial up real-world stress, half the participants plunged their hands into ice water for three minutes before the task—a well-established method of inducing acute physical stress. The result? Those stressed were significantly more likely to help the victim than to punish the offender, mainly when the unfairness was severe.
Brain imaging revealed a spike in activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)—a region tied to decision-making and perspective-taking—when stressed individuals chose to punish. However, computational modeling showed that stress reduced the brain’s default bias toward punishing, making helping a more likely outcome.
Stress May Nudge Us Toward Compassion
According to the researchers, punishing someone requires more deliberate mental effort than simply helping a victim. And when the brain is taxed by stress, it may reroute its limited resources toward the more intuitive, less cognitively demanding option—altruism.
“Acute stress shifts third-party intervention from punishing the perpetrator to helping the victim,” the authors wrote. The findings build on previous research suggesting that stress can enhance cooperative behavior and generosity in social settings.
In a world where unfairness is all too common, this study offers a surprising perspective: in moments of stress, our instinct might not be to lash out—but to lift someone up.
Reference: Huagen Wang, Xiaoyan Wu, Jiahua Xu, Ruida Zhu, Sihui Zhang, Zhenhua Xu, Xiaoqin Mai, Shaozheng Qin, Chao Liu. Acute stress during witnessing injustice shifts third-party interventions from punishing the perpetrator to helping the victim. PLOS Biology, 2024.
