When Empathy Gets Tough: Neural Responses to Conflicting Self- and Partner-Directed Feedback in a Novel Paradigm

Empathy lies at the core of human social interactions, particularly in the intimate relationships that shape our wellbeing and mental health. Although existing laboratory tasks can successfully elicit empathy, everyday life is challenged by personal stressors and self-focused concerns that often interfere with empathic responding. Across 131 adults (from 71 romantic couples), we introduce and empirically validate a spontaneous empathy paradigm designed to mimic these kinds of everyday personal challenges to empathy by manipulating whether partner-directed feedback is presented alone or alongside concurrent affectively salient self-directed feedback. Consistent with prior literature, the conventional contrasts (partner-directed feedback alone versus a neutral condition) robustly engaged brain regions typically associated with empathy, including dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction. Notably, the challenging empathy contrasts–simultaneous conflicting self- and partner-directed feedback compared to self-directed feedback only–exhibited dampened behavioral and brain empathic responses but increased activity in frontoparietal areas (e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and supramarginal gyrus), relative to conventional empathy contrasts. Furthermore, when responding to positive partner-directed feedback in the presence of negative self-directed feedback, enhanced activity in prefrontal and midline regions, particularly the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, was associated with higher trait emotion regulation and more partner-rated support provision in everyday life as assed with daily diaries. Together, these findings highlight emotion regulation during challenging empathic situations as an important source of individual variability in empathy and real-world support provision within romantic relationships.