The role of outgroup homogeneity and the neurodynamics of the frontal cortex during beauty comparisons.

The distance effect states that the closer two compared magnitudes (e.g., two numbers, physical attractiveness in two faces), the more difficult the comparison, and the greater the activity of the frontoparietal control network. However, it is unclear whether this network is also recruited to the same extent when we perform ingroup and outgroup beauty comparisons and whether the activation of these networks is tracked by interindividual variation in the perceptions we hold about an outgroup. We recorded brain activity with fMRI, where participants compared the beauty of two women ostensibly either from their ingroup or from an outgroup. Low-distance conditions produced longer response times than the high-distance conditions, and this was found in both the ingroup and outgroup conditions. However, our neuroimaging analyses revealed that the left IFG/anterior insula showed the classic distance effect only during ingroup processing but not during outgroup processing. Notably, interaction-specific activity within the left IFG/anterior insula was related to perceptions of outgroup homogeneity assessed via a questionnaire. This set of findings reveals the dynamic role of the prefrontal cortex and its interplay with perceptions of outgroup homogeneity in shaping ingroup and outgroup decision-making.

Affective Consequences of Social Comparisons by Women With Breast Cancer: An Experiment.

OBJECTIVE: People with severe illness often meet and compare themselves with other patients. Some of these comparison standards do well, others do poorly. Such comparisons could have positive as well as negative consequences depending on whether people identify or contrast from the standard. In the present study, we examine whether patients with breast cancer can benefit from comparisons by engaging in favorable comparison processes. DESIGN: 102 women diagnosed with breast cancer were randomly assigned to read a (fictitious) self-report from a well or poorly adjusted breast cancer patient. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Participants reported their affective reaction (mood, anxiety, depression) and specified their comparison process (identification or contrast). RESULTS: In general, participants engaged in favorable comparison processes by contrasting predominantly with poorly adjusted patients, and identifying with well-adjusted ones. PARTICIPANTS' MOOD ASSIMILATED TO THE STANDARD: Participants reported more positive mood after having been exposed to the well-adjusted than the poorly adjusted standard. ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION VARIED WITH THE TYPE OF COMPARISON PROCESS: It was lower the more they avoided unfavorable comparisons (contrasting with the well-adjusted patient and identifying with the poorly adjusted one). CONCLUSION: Patients adjust their comparison processes to the standard to experience favorable comparisons. Especially avoiding unfavorable comparison processes reduces the risk of negative consequences after encountering other patients. Thus, patients may profit from comparisons as long as they engage in the right process.

Improving Self-Control: The Influence of Role Models on Intertemporal Choices.

The ability to delay rewards is one of the most useful qualities one may wish to develop. People who possess this quality achieve more successful careers, display better interpersonal skills and are less vulnerable to psychopathology, obesity or addictions. In the present online studies, we investigated the extent to which delay-of-reward behaviors in female participants can be improved by observing others mastering it. We developed an intertemporal choice (IC) paradigm in which participants had to make fictitious choices between sooner smaller rewards and later bigger ones (e.g., $150 in 1 week vs. $170 in 4 weeks). In Study 1 (N = 186), we found that participants who delayed more had higher socioeconomic statuses and were less likely to procrastinate, smoke or develop obesity. In Study 2 (N = 178), we exposed female participants to a role model who, faced with ICs, chose most of the time the delayed option. Results showed that, although participants were only asked to memorize the model's decisions, they tended to choose the delayed option more often after than before exposure to the model. In Study 3 (N = 148), we found that the direction of the influence depended on the model's behavior: our female participants delayed more after having seen a high delay than a low delay model. In Study 4 (N = 370), we confirmed the effect of modeling on ICs in comparison to a control condition and showed that this effect was still significant 3 months after exposure to the model. Altogether, these results speak in favor of a high efficacy of modeling to develop self-control in women.

Inspired to Lend a Hand? Attempts to Elicit Prosocial Behavior Through Goal Contagion.

Helping often occurs in a broader social context. Every day, people observe others who require help, but also others who provide help. Research on goal contagion suggests that observing other people's goal-directed behavior (like helping) activates the same goal in the observer. Thus, merely observing a prosocial act could inspire people to act on the same goal. This effect should be even stronger, the more the observer's disposition makes him or her value the goal. In the case of prosocial goals, we looked at the observer's social value orientation (SVO) as a moderator of the process. In three studies (N = 126, N = 162, and N = 371), we tested the hypothesis that prosocial observations (vs. control) will trigger more subsequent casual prosocial behavior the more the observer is prosocially oriented. In line with the original research, we used texts as stimulus material in Study 1 and short video clips in Study 2 and 3. In Study 1 and 2, SVO was measured directly before the manipulation was induced and in Study 3 even a week prior to the actual experiment. Additionally, we included a second control condition video clip in Study 3, which did not depict human beings. Despite thoroughly developed stimulus material and methods, we found no support for an effect of the interaction, nor of the prosocial observation, but some support for an effect of SVO on casual helping behavior in Study 1 and 2. A mini meta-analysis revealed an effect equivalent to zero for goal contagion and a small, but robust SVO effect across studies. The main implication for the theory of goal contagion is that prosocial goals might not be as contagious as other goals addressed in the literature. We suggest a meta-analytic review of the literature to identify suitable goals and moderators for the goal contagion process.

So pretty! The neural correlates of self-other vs familiar-other attractiveness comparisons.

Previous research has demonstrated that comparing two persons activates a frontoparietal network associated with numbers and nonsocial magnitudes. However, it is unclear whether this network is also recruited by comparisons involving the self. Self-reflection engages self-serving motivations (e.g., the maintenance of a positive self-image) and is associated with specific brain structures, such as the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), the anterior insula (AI) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Self-other comparisons may thus rely on distinct neural activity. To clarify this question, we used fMRI and asked female participants to compare their own attractiveness (or the attractiveness of a familiar woman) to pictures of unknown women. Participants were slower for comparisons with targets whose attractiveness was similar to their own (or their familiar other). Yet although this behavioral result resembles the distance effect reported for nonsocial magnitudes, at the brain level, it was linked to the activity of the AI, the ACC and the MPFC. The effect of distance in these regions was stronger for self-other than familiar-other comparisons. We interpret these results in relation to previous literature in social psychology and social neuroscience.

Key Elements of mHealth Interventions to Successfully Increase Physical Activity: Meta-Regression.

BACKGROUND: Mobile technology gives researchers unimagined opportunities to design new interventions to increase physical activity. Unfortunately, it is still unclear which elements are useful to initiate and maintain behavior change. OBJECTIVE: In this meta-analysis, we investigated randomized controlled trials of physical activity interventions that were delivered via mobile phone. We analyzed which elements contributed to intervention success. METHODS: After searching four databases and science networks for eligible studies, we entered 50 studies with N=5997 participants into a random-effects meta-analysis, controlling for baseline group differences. We also calculated meta-regressions with the most frequently used behavior change techniques (behavioral goals, general information, self-monitoring, information on where and when, and instructions on how to) as moderators. RESULTS: We found a small overall effect of the Hedges g=0.29, (95% CI 0.20 to 0.37) which reduced to g=0.22 after correcting for publication bias. In the moderator analyses, behavioral goals and self-monitoring each led to more intervention success. Interventions that used neither behavioral goals nor self-monitoring had a negligible effect of g=0.01, whereas utilizing either technique increased effectiveness by Δg=0.31, but combining them did not provide additional benefits (Δg=0.36). CONCLUSIONS: Overall, mHealth interventions to increase physical activity have a small to moderate effect. However, including behavioral goals or self-monitoring can lead to greater intervention success. More research is needed to look at more behavior change techniques and their interactions. Reporting interventions in trial registrations and articles need to be structured and thorough to gain accurate insights. This can be achieved by basing the design or reporting of interventions on taxonomies of behavior change.

From the Brain to the Field: The Applications of Social Neuroscience to Economics, Health and Law.

Social neuroscience aims to understand the biological systems that underlie people's thoughts, feelings and actions in light of the social context in which they operate. Over the past few decades, social neuroscience has captured the interest of scholars, practitioners, and experts in other disciplines, as well as the general public who more and more draw upon the insights and methods of social neuroscience to explain, predict and change behavior. With the popularity of the field growing, it has become increasingly important to consider the validity of social neuroscience findings as well as what questions it can and cannot address. In the present review article, we examine the contribution of social neuroscience to economics, health, and law, three domains with clear societal relevance. We address the concerns that the extrapolation of neuroscientific results to applied social issues raises within each of these domains, and we suggest guidelines and good practices to circumvent these concerns.

Self-viewing is associated with negative affect rather than reward in highly narcissistic men: an fMRI study.

Subclinical narcissism is a personality trait with two faces: According to social-cognitive theories it is associated with grandiosity and feelings of superiority, whereas psychodynamic theories emphasize vulnerable aspects like fluctuating self-esteem and emotional conflicts. The psychodynamic view, however, is commonly not supported by self-report studies on subclinical narcissism. Personality neuroscience might help to better understand the phenomenon of narcissism beyond the limits of self-report research. While social-cognitive theory would predict that self-relevant processing should be accompanied by brain activity in reward-related areas in narcissistic individuals, psychodynamic theory would suggest that it should be accompanied by activation in regions pointing to negative affect or emotional conflict. In this study, extreme groups of high and low narcissistic individuals performed a visual self-recognition paradigm during fMRI. Viewing one's own face (as compared to faces of friends and strangers) was accompanied by greater activation of the dorsal and ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in highly narcissistic men. These results suggest that highly narcissistic men experience greater negative affect or emotional conflict during self-relevant processing and point to vulnerable aspects of subclinical narcissism that might not be apparent in self-report research.

Immediate relativity: EEG reveals early engagement of comparison in social information processing.

A wide array of social decisions relies on social comparisons. As such, these decisions require fast access to relative information. Therefore, we expect that signatures of the comparative process should be observable in electrophysiological components at an early stage of information processing. However, to date, little is known about the neural time course of social target comparisons. Therefore, we tested this hypothesis in 2 electroencephalography (EEG) studies using a social distance effect paradigm. The distance effect capitalizes on the fact that stimuli close on a certain dimension take longer to compare than stimuli clearly differing on this dimension. Here, we manipulated the distance of face characteristics regarding their levels of attractiveness (Study 1) and trustworthiness (Study 2), 2 essential social dimensions. In both studies, size comparisons served as a nonsocial control condition. In Study 1, distance related effects were apparent 170 ms (vertex positive potential, VPP) and 200 ms (N2) after stimulus onset for attractiveness comparisons. In Study 2, trustworthiness comparisons took effect already after 100 ms (N1) and likewise carried over to an event-related N2. Remarkably, we observed a similar temporal pattern for social (attractiveness, trustworthiness) and nonsocial (size) dimensions. These results speak in favor of an early encoding of comparative information and emphasize the primary role of comparison in social information processing. (PsycINFO Database Record

Brain mechanisms of social comparison and their influence on the reward system.

Whenever we interact with others, we judge them and whenever we make such judgments, we compare them with ourselves, other people, or internalized standards. Countless social psychological experiments have shown that comparative thinking plays a ubiquitous role in person perception and social cognition as a whole. The topic of social comparison has recently aroused the interest of social neuroscientists, who have begun to investigate its neural underpinnings. The present article provides an overview of these neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies. We discuss recent findings on the consequences of social comparison on the brain processing of outcomes and highlight the role of the brain's reward system. Moreover, we analyze the relationship between the brain networks involved in social comparisons and those active during other forms of cognitive and perceptual comparison. Finally, we discuss potential future questions that research on the neural correlates of social comparison could address.

The neural correlates of beauty comparison.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. How attractive someone is perceived to be depends on the individual or cultural standards to which this person is compared. But although comparisons play a central role in the way people judge the appearance of others, the brain processes underlying attractiveness comparisons remain unknown. In the present experiment, we tested the hypothesis that attractiveness comparisons rely on the same cognitive and neural mechanisms as comparisons of simple nonsocial magnitudes such as size. We recorded brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while participants compared the beauty or height of two women or two dogs. Our data support the hypothesis of a common process underlying these different types of comparisons. First, we demonstrate that the distance effect characteristic of nonsocial comparisons also holds for attractiveness comparisons. Behavioral results indicated, for all our comparisons, longer response times for near than far distances. Second, the neural correlates of these distance effects overlapped in a frontoparietal network known for its involvement in processing simple nonsocial quantities. These results provide evidence for overlapping processes in the comparison of physical attractiveness and nonsocial magnitudes.

Justice for the average Joe: the role of envy and the mentalizing network in the deservingness of others' misfortunes.

The misfortunes of enviable individuals are met by observers with pleasure whereas those of "average", non-enviable individuals elicit pain. These responses are mirrored in deservingness judgments, as enviable individuals' misfortunes are perceived as deserved and those of non-enviable individuals perceived as undeserved. However, the neural underpinnings of these deservingness disparities remain unknown. To explore this phenomenon, we utilized fMRI to test the hypotheses that (A) non-enviable targets' misfortunes would be associated with activation of brain regions that mediate empathic responding (pain matrix, mentalizing network) and not for enviable targets and (B) that activation of those regions would predict decreases in deservingness judgments. Supporting our first hypothesis, the misfortunes of non-enviable targets (as opposed to good fortunes) were associated with activation of the mentalizing network: medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, temporal-parietal junction, and anterior temporal lobes. Supporting our second hypothesis, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex activation from this contrast was negatively correlated with subsequent reports of how much the non-enviable target deserved his/her misfortune. These findings suggest that non-enviable individuals' misfortunes are perceived as unjust due, in part, to the recruitment of the mentalizing network.

Brain networks of social comparison.

Social comparison, that is, the process of comparing oneself to other people, is a ubiquitous social cognitive mechanism; however, so far its neural correlates have remained unknown. The present study tested the hypothesis that social comparisons are supported by partly dissociated networks, depending on whether the dimension under comparison concerns a physical or a psychological attribute. We measured brain activity with functional MRI, whereas participants were comparing their own height or intelligence to that of individuals they personally know. Height comparisons were associated with higher activity in a frontoparietal network involved in spatial and numerical cognition. Conversely, intelligence comparisons recruited a network of midline areas that have been previously implicated in the attribution of mental states to oneself and others (Theory of mind). These findings suggest that social comparisons rely on diverse domain-specific mechanisms rather than on one unitary process.

Decreased sensitivity to facial emotions in adolescents with Borderline Personality Disorder.

Whereas severe relationship dysfunction in BPD is well described in adolescence, little is known about the way these patients process facial expressions of emotion. Because few data are available regarding this issue, the present study compared the sensitivity to morphed facial emotional expressions of 22 BPD female adolescents versus 22 matched controls. Participants had to identify as rapidly as possible the various emotions displayed progressively and continuously on faces. Results indicate that adolescents with BPD are less sensitive to facial expressions of anger and happiness, i.e. they require more intense facial expressions than control participants to correctly identify these two emotions. However, they did not exhibit any deficit in recognizing fully expressed emotions. These results suggest that sensitivity to facial emotions is impaired in adolescents with BPD. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

[Psychometric properties of the French version of the Guilt Inventory]. / Propriétés psychométriques de la version française de l'inventaire de sentiment de culpabilité.

OBJECTIVE: the feeling of guilt is essential to a interpersonal functioning but can also play a role in self-destructive. Although there is about 20 guilt scales in English, none has yet been validated in French. This study intends to fill this gap by proposing a French version of the Guilt Inventory (GI) that evaluates trait guilt, state guilt, and moral standards. METHOD: seven hundred and thirty-eight students filled GI in French as well as scales measuring trait anxiety and state anxiety, and empathy skills. In a sample subgroup, we also evaluated depression, social desirability, and personality factors. RESULTS: an exploratory factor analysis conducted on half of the participants resulted in keeping 18 of 20 items in trait GI, and 9 of 10 items in state GI, but also in disregarding the moral standard scale. A confirmatory factor analysis performed on the sample other half has validated this two-factor structure. The expected correlations between guilt scores, negative affectivity and interpersonal functioning were observed. CONCLUSION: this study suggests that the GI French version is an adequate measure of trait guilt and state guilt, and could prove to be a useful tool for both research and clinical purposes.

Cross-cultural validation of the empathy quotient in a French-speaking sample.

OBJECTIVE: The Empathy Quotient (EQ) is a self-report that was developed to measure the cognitive and affective aspects of empathy. We further evaluated its validity in 2 studies. METHOD: The psychometric qualities of the French version of the EQ, and its correspondence with 2 other measures of empathy (Interpersonal Reactivity Index and the Empathy Scale of the Impulsiveness-Venturesomeness-Empathy Questionnaire), and with dimensions of the emotional state (depression and anxiety), were evaluated in a sample of 410 students (201 men and 209 women). Second, the clinical validity of the EQ was investigated in participants expected to have dysfunctional empathy. For this purpose, EQ scores of 16 people with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) were collected. RESULTS: The EQ showed satisfying internal, convergent, test-retest and discriminant validity. The confirmatory factorial analyses suggested a 3-factor structure offered a good fit to the data. The women's superiority in empathy was replicated. As expected, the ASD EQ scores were very low. CONCLUSION: This study provides further evidence that the EQ is reliable in this population and should be recommended to estimate empathy problems, notably in individuals with troubled interpersonal interaction patterns.

An agent harms a victim: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study on specific moral emotions.

The statement: "An agent harms a victim," depicts a situation that triggers moral emotions. Depending on whether the agent and the victim are the self or someone else, it can lead to four different moral emotions: self-anger ("I harm myself"), guilt ("I harm someone"), other-anger ("someone harms me"), and compassion ("someone harms someone"). In order to investigate the neural correlates of these emotions, we examined brain activation patterns elicited by variations in the agent (self vs. other) and the victim (self vs. other) of a harmful action. Twenty-nine healthy participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while imagining being in situations in which they or someone else harmed themselves or someone else. Results indicated that the three emotional conditions associated with the involvement of other, either as agent or victim (guilt, other-anger, and compassion conditions), all activated structures that have been previously associated with the Theory of Mind (ToM, the attribution of mental states to others), namely, the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, the precuneus, and the bilateral temporo-parietal junction. Moreover, the two conditions in which both the self and other were concerned by the harmful action (guilt and other-anger conditions) recruited emotional structures (i.e., the bilateral amygdala, anterior cingulate, and basal ganglia). These results suggest that specific moral emotions induce different neural activity depending on the extent to which they involve the self and other.