In interpersonal conflicts, empathy fosters socially adaptive behaviors that facilitate reconciliation, such as offering comprehensive and non-defensive apologies. Perceivers adjust their behaviors based on inferences about the intentions of social targets during social interactions. How do these inferences relate to perceivers’ empathy and shape their adaptive behaviors in conflicts? This study examined two aspects of intention inference: inference accuracy (how accurately perceivers infer targets’ intentions) and target-oriented inference (how much perceivers focus on targets’ states). We investigated whether these inferences link the relationship between empathy and adaptive behaviors. Our results showed that empathetic perceivers focused more on targets’ states when inferring their intentions, which was associated with offering more comprehensive apologies. Inference accuracy, however, did not influence the relationship between empathy and either the provision of comprehensive apologies or the reduction of defensive responses. Our study underscores the importance of considering others’ states in promoting adaptive behaviors during interpersonal conflicts.