The neuroscience of intergroup emotion

What happens to our emotions and in our brains when we experience the world through the lens of our group memberships rather than as individuals? Here we review recent advances in social and affective neuroscience that have identified potential input variables and processing mechanisms underlying one widely studied emotion in intergroup contexts: empathy. There is a well-documented in-group bias in empathy but the mental processes that generate it are poorly understood. Drawing from recent insights in memory research, we suggest that episodic simulation - the ability to imagine events - is an underexplored candidate process that is likely to be involved in shaping emotional experience in intergroup settings.