 circle your empathic wagons, sort of intensifying your care and protectiveness for people in your group. But that comes at a cost. When you pour all of your empathy into an in-group, then people on the outside, you might dehumanize those people. You might even feel schadenfreude or joy at their pain. Researchers in neuroscience find that when you see somebody who's a threat to you in pain, that actually can biologically be a relaxing experience.