People generally empathize with others and find harm aversive. Yet aggression, for example, between groups, abounds. How do people learn to overcome this aversion in order to aggress? Many models of learning emphasize outcome prediction errors-deviations from expected outcomes in the environment-but aggression may also be fueled by affective prediction errors (affective PEs)-deviations from how we expect to feel. Across five preregistered online experiments that hold outcome prediction errors constant (N = 4,607), participants choosing aggressive or nonaggressive actions aggressed more against disliked group members and often escalated or persisted in taking actions that felt better than expected (positive affective PE), especially when those actions were aggressive. Crucially, inducing incidental empathy toward the group of the target rendered affective PE signals sensitive to group identification-participants escalated aggression that felt better than expected relatively less toward liked versus disliked group members. That said, affective PEs did not always add explanatory power beyond levels of postoutcome affect alone; we discuss the importance and implications of these results. In summary, we reveal affective PE integration as a candidate algorithm facilitating exceptions to harm aversion in intergroup conflict. More broadly, we highlight for affective science and decision-making researchers the necessity of appropriately testing separable components of affective signals in predicting subsequent behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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攻击行为持续和升级的情感预测错误。


人们通常会同情他人并厌恶伤害。然而，例如群体之间的攻击行为却比比皆是。人们如何学会克服这种厌恶以进行攻击？许多学习模型强调结果预测错误——偏离环境中的预期结果——但攻击性也可能是由情感预测错误（情感PE）——偏离我们期望的感受所助长。在五个预先注册的在线实验中，结果预测误差保持不变（N = 4,607），选择攻击性或非攻击性行为的参与者对不喜欢的群体成员更具攻击性，并且经常升级或坚持采取感觉比预期更好的行为（积极情感 PE），特别是当这些行为具有侵略性。至关重要的是，诱导对目标群体的附带同理心使得情感 PE 信号对群体识别敏感，参与者会升级攻击性，这种攻击性比预期的要好，对喜欢的群体成员和不喜欢的群体成员的感觉相对较少。也就是说，情感 PE 并不总能增加解释力，超越单独的结果影响水平。我们讨论这些结果的重要性和影响。总之，我们揭示了情感 PE 整合作为一种候选算法，促进群体间冲突中损害厌恶的例外情况。更广泛地说，我们向情感科学和决策研究人员强调，在预测后续行为时适当测试情感信号的可分离成分的必要性。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。