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. While existing laboratory tasks can successfully elicit empathy, few are designed to capture empathy in an interpersonal context—especially contexts that require individuals to simultaneously process social information directed toward both the self and a romantic partner. For example, how do people respond to a partner’s good news when also handing negative feedback directed at the self? In this study, a sample of 131 adults (from 71 romantic couples) completed a neuroimaging paradigm that manipulated whether positive or negative partner-directed feedback is presented alone or alongside concurrent affectively salient self-directed feedback. The partner-alone feedback contrasts (partner-directed feedback alone versus a neutral condition) robustly engaged brain regions frequently associated with empathic responding, including dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction. Notably, during the incongruent feedback contrasts—simultaneous conflicting self- and partner-directed feedback compared to self-directed feedback only—participants exhibited diminished affective and brain responses but evidenced unique brain activity in frontoparietal areas (e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and supramarginal gyrus). Furthermore, when responding to positive partner-directed feedback in the presence of negative self-directed feedback, enhanced activity the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex was associated with lower self-reported difficulties in emotion regulation and more partner-rated support provided in everyday life as assessed with daily diaries. Taken together, these findings suggest that salient self-focused information may dampen individuals’ emotional and neural responses to their partners’ uplifting and critical feedback. Emotion regulation tendencies appear to be an important between-subjects moderator of this effect. Moreover, spontaneous responses in this challenging interpersonal context were associated with the amount of interpersonal support provided in real-world settings.