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Acute stress shifts third party intervention from punishing the perpetrator to helping the victim
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
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Being stressed when witnessing injustice may nudge your brain toward altruism, according to a study published in the journal PLOS Biology by Huagen Wang of Beijing Normal University and colleagues.
Punishing others requires more cognitive effort than helping them. Research shows that when witnessing an act of injustice under stress, people tend to behave selflessly, choosing to help the victim rather than punish the perpetrator. This is consistent with theories suggesting that different brain networks govern intuitive, quick decisions and deliberate, slow decisions. However, until now it has been unclear how exactly the bystander’s brain makes decisions about helping or punishing in stressful situations.
To better understand the neural processes that govern third-party intervention in the face of unfairness, Wang and his colleagues recruited 52 participants to perform a simulated third-party intervention task in an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scanner. Participants watched someone decide how to distribute a monetary reward between themselves and another character, who was required to passively accept the offer.
The participant then decided whether to take the money from the first character or give the money to the second. About half of the participants dipped their hands in ice water for three minutes right before the task began to induce stress.
Acute stress affected decision-making in situations of extreme unfairness, where a participant observed someone taking a large portion of money that they were supposed to split with another person. The researchers observed greater activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) — a brain region typically associated with thought processes and decision-making — when stressed participants chose to punish the offender. Computer modeling showed that acute stress reduced punishment bias, making a person more likely to help the victim.
The authors argue that their findings suggest that punishing others requires more thought, cognitive control, and reliance on calculations than helping a victim. These findings are consistent with a growing body of evidence that people under stress tend to act more cooperatively and generously, perhaps because they devote more of their cognitive resources to deciding whether to help a victim rather than punish the offender.
The authors add: "Acute stress shifts third-party intervention from punishing the offender to helping the victim."