Neural responses to others’ decision-making outcomes can be modulated by many social factors. Using the event-related potential (ERP) technique, we explored the neural mechanisms of empathic concern modulating evaluative processing of others’ outcomes. Participants were asked to perform a gambling task for three beneficiaries: themselves and two strangers. One stranger was an economically underprivileged student requiring help (high-empathy condition); the other stranger was a student with no upsetting information to induce empathic concern (low-empathy condition). ERP results showed that the valence effect of the feedback-related negativity (FRN) was larger when participants exhibited high empathic concern than when they did not. The FRN responses to strangers’ outcomes in the high-empathy condition were as strong as those to their own outcomes. The P300 showed no differences between the low- and high-empathy conditions. These findings indicate that empathic concern could modulate the early stage of outcome processing, implying empathic emotional/altruistic motivational impacts of others’ outcomes.

许多社会因素可以调节对他人决策结果的神经反应。使用事件相关电位 (ERP) 技术，我们探索了共情关注调节他人结果的评估处理的神经机制。参与者被要求为三个受益人执行赌博任务：他们自己和两个陌生人。一个陌生人是一个需要帮助的经济贫困学生（高度同理心）；另一个陌生人是一名学生，没有令人不安的信息来引起移情关注（低移情情况）。ERP 结果表明，当参与者表现出高度共情关注时，反馈相关负性 (FRN) 的效价效应比他们没有表现出时更大。在高度共情的情况下，FRN 对陌生人结果的反应与对他们自己结果的反应一样强烈。P300 在低同理心和高同理心条件之间没有差异。这些发现表明，移情关注可以调节结果处理的早期阶段，暗示他人结果的移情情感/利他动机影响。