Study Reveals Stress May Make Us More Altruistic in the Face of Injustice

During a brain scan, while engaging in a bystander intervention task, participants experiencing stress displayed distinct neural activation patterns compared to those who were not stressed, and were more likely to help the victim.

According to a study recently published in the journal PLOS Biology, experiencing stress while observing injustice might incline your brain toward altruism. This research was conducted by Huagen Wang and colleagues at Beijing Normal University, China.

It takes more cognitive effort to punish others than it does to help them. Studies show that when witnessing an act of injustice while stressed, people tend to behave selflessly, preferring to help the victim rather than punish the offender. This aligns with theories proposing that distinct brain networks drive intuitive, fast decisions and deliberate, slow decisions, but precisely how a bystander’s brain makes the trade-off between helping and punishing others in stressful situations is unclear.