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Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding
Abstract
Humans devote 30-40% of speech output solely to informing others of their own subjective experiences. What drives this propensity for disclosure? Here, we test recent theories that individuals place high subjective value on opportunities to communicate their thoughts and feelings to others and that doing so engages neural and cognitive mechanisms associated with reward. Five studies provided support for this hypothesis. Self-disclosure was strongly associated with increased activation in brain regions that form the mesolimbic dopamine system, including the nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area. Moreover, individuals were willing to forgo money to disclose about the self. Two additional studies demonstrated that these effects stemmed from the independent value that individuals placed on self-referential thought and on simply sharing information with others. Together, these findings suggest that the human tendency to convey information about personal experience may arise from the intrinsic value associated with self-disclosure.
... Considering the established neural links and findings from the privacy literature that highlight the significant effect of subjective and (neuro and non-neuro) objective emotional responses on privacy decisions [5,15,32], we suggest that stress-relief breathing techniques, such as coherent and box breathing, influence privacy decisions, such as the disclosure of personal information. We formulate and empirically examine the causal relationship between breathing and privacy decisions (i.e., the breavacy hypothesis). ...
... We formulate and empirically examine the causal relationship between breathing and privacy decisions (i.e., the breavacy hypothesis). By examining the breavacy hypothesis, especially in light of the increasing popularity of breathing mobile apps and metaverse applications [17,29], our research offers innovative and essential insights to the NeuroIS literature [13,28] and the broader field of Neuro Privacy [24,32]. ...
... For example, stress-relief breathing, which activates the parasympathetic system, enhances mood and reduces levels of depression and stress [8,27]. Finally, emotional responses have been found to significantly affect privacy decisions [15,32], such that positive moods and emotions increase disclosure of personal information [5,18,21]. These relationships suggest that by manipulating breathing patterns, we can influence the ANS, emotional responses, and ultimately, privacy decisions. ...
... It is part of the mundane conversational activities, such as getting acquainted with someone or sharing personal stories, where participants reveal information about their past experiences and relations to others (e.g., Svennevig, 2014;Antaki, Barnes & Leudar, 2005). It is estimated that approximately 30-40% of the speech contents in daily interactions relate to self-disclosure (Dunbar, Marriott, & Duncan, 1997;Tamir & Mitchell, 2012). Yet, individuals differ in their motivation to make their self known to others and show inter-individual differences in physiological reactivity when revealing self-relevant information (Christensen & Smith, 1993). ...
... Conversation analytic research has shown how participants in first encounters present themselves and share personal information through particular types of conversational sequences (Maynard & Zimmerman, 1984;Svennevig, 2014). Psychological and neuroscientific resopenearch on the topic has shown that selfdisclosure is generally perceived as an intrinsically rewarding activity (Tamir & Mitchell, 2012). In their seminal study, Tamir and Mitchell (2012) reported that engaging in selfdisclosure increased activation in the mesolimbic dopaminergic system involved in, for example, reward processing, and that people were even willing to pay for the possibility of disclosing information about themselves. ...
... Psychological and neuroscientific resopenearch on the topic has shown that selfdisclosure is generally perceived as an intrinsically rewarding activity (Tamir & Mitchell, 2012). In their seminal study, Tamir and Mitchell (2012) reported that engaging in selfdisclosure increased activation in the mesolimbic dopaminergic system involved in, for example, reward processing, and that people were even willing to pay for the possibility of disclosing information about themselves. It has been suggested that, in forming relationships, self-disclosure has a large number of benefits: it is positively associated with trust, liking, attraction, and even mental health (Rosenfeld, 1979, p. 63). ...
... Such self-disclosure of feelings, thoughts, and experiences is key to the realization of OMHCs' benefits for satisfying support-seekers' needs for others' social support and improving their well-being [36,39,53]. On the one hand, proper self-disclosure can provide insightful information about the communicator [26], support impression management practices [70], and facilitate the development of social relationships [64]. On the other hand, posts with poorly articulated or unclear self-disclosure tend to result in receiving less effective informational and emotional support from peers within these communities [71]. ...
... Through self-disclosure, individuals can alleviate stress and engage in self-examination, which could serve as a form of self-therapy [40]. Proper self-disclosure can facilitate the development of social relationship with others and help support-seekers get social support [64]. For example, Yang et al. [71] analyzed the posts and comments in Cancer Survivor Network and found that one's self-disclosure leads others to self-disclose and to provide support. ...
Support-seekers' self-disclosure of their suffering experiences, thoughts, and feelings in the post can help them get needed peer support in online mental health communities (OMHCs). However, such mental health self-disclosure could be challenging. Images can facilitate the manifestation of relevant experiences and feelings in the text; yet, relevant images are not always available. In this paper, we present a technical prototype named MentalImager and validate in a human evaluation study that it can generate topical- and emotional-relevant images based on the seekers' drafted posts or specified keywords. Two user studies demonstrate that MentalImager not only improves seekers' satisfaction with their self-disclosure in their posts but also invokes support-providers' empathy for the seekers and willingness to offer help. Such improvements are credited to the generated images, which help seekers express their emotions and inspire them to add more details about their experiences and feelings. We report concerns on MentalImager and discuss insights for supporting self-disclosure in OMHCs.
... We used a modified pay-per-view task (Tamir & Mitchell, 2012) to assess the intrinsic value associated with opportunities to gain knowledge about parents' and peers' attitudes about externalizing behaviors. Using up to $10 bonus cash earned on a separate task (Kwon et al., 2022), adolescents had the opportunity to pay money to learn how their parents or an unknown peer group rated the same behaviors before rerating those behaviors themselves. ...
... We examined the intrinsic value of parent and peer attitudes by calculating the point of subjective equivalence (PSE) between skipping and seeing others' ratings for each participant (Tamir & Mitchell, 2012). PSEs provide a quantitative metric that reflects the extent to which participants subjectively value learning others' attitudes relative to forgoing that information. ...
This preregistered, longitudinal study examined how much adolescents value and integrate their parents’ and peers’ attitudes into their own attitudes from early to middle adolescence. Across three waves, participants (N = 172, 91 female, 11–16 years across three waves; 439 data points) decided whether to pay money to learn their parents’ or peers’ attitudes about externalizing behaviors. Multivariate growth models revealed that adolescents were consistently willing to pay money over time to learn their parents’ and peers’ attitudes. The value of learning peers’—but not parents’—attitudes predicted changes in personal attitudes during adolescence, and this did not change across age. Moreover, the effect of others’ attitude value on social influence weakened from early to middle adolescence, such that early adolescents who highly valued learning the attitudes of others (i.e., paid more) tended to shift their own attitudes more toward those endorsing positive influence, regardless of the source. In contrast, early adolescents who valued learning others’ attitudes less were less susceptible to positive social influence. Importantly, this effect went away in middle adolescence. Although adolescents are highly motivated to learn their parents’ and peers’ attitudes about externalizing behaviors, how much those attitudes inform their personal attitudes depends on the source of input and the age of adolescents.
... Perhaps most critically, a complex neurological system of communication-for regulating interactions and social bonding with important members of the group-appears to be crucial for many non-human primates, including human social relationships [6]. In humans, a complex network of brain regions underlies the processing of language, including speech comprehension and production, and substantive integration with the social brain, including social-semantic working memory, and encompassing regulation from the neural network level to the neurotransmitter level, including social neurotransmitters such as oxytocin, endorphins, and dopamine [35][36][37][38][39]. ...
... In addition, several studies have shown that both chanting [60] and conversational speech [37] activate neural markers associated with social bonding: specifically, the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), associated with mentalizing, as well as the hypothalamus and amygdala, associated with social reward and motivation. Additional studies have revealed that self-disclosure-an important aspect of social bonding in humans-is intrinsically self-rewarding, due to activation of the mesolimbic dopamine system in the brain [38]. ...
Human language and social cognition are two key disciplines that have traditionally been studied as separate domains. Nonetheless, an emerging view suggests an alternative perspective. Drawing on the theoretical underpinnings of the social brain hypothesis (thesis of the evolution of brain size and intelligence), the social complexity hypothesis (thesis of the evolution of communication), and empirical research from comparative animal behavior, human social behavior, language acquisition in children, social cognitive neuroscience, and the cognitive neuroscience of language, it is argued that social cognition and language are two significantly interconnected capacities of the human species. Here, evidence in support of this view reviews (1) recent developmental studies on language learning in infants and young children, pointing to the important crucial benefits associated with social stimulation for youngsters, including the quality and quantity of incoming linguistic information, dyadic infant/child-to-parent non-verbal and verbal interactions, and other important social cues integral for facilitating language learning and social bonding; (2) studies of the adult human brain, suggesting a high degree of specialization for sociolinguistic information processing, memory retrieval, and comprehension, suggesting that the function of these neural areas may connect social cognition with language and social bonding; (3) developmental deficits in language and social cognition, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), illustrating a unique developmental profile, further linking language, social cognition, and social bonding; and (4) neural biomarkers that may help to identify early developmental disorders of language and social cognition. In effect, the social brain and social complexity hypotheses may jointly help to describe how neurotypical children and adults acquire language, why autistic children and adults exhibit simultaneous deficits in language and social cognition, and why nonhuman primates and other organisms with significant computational capacities cannot learn language. But perhaps most critically, the following article argues that this and related research will allow scientists to generate a holistic profile and deeper understanding of the healthy adult social brain while developing more innovative and effective diagnoses, prognoses, and treatments for maladies and deficits also associated with the social brain.
... Perhaps most critically, a complex neurological system of communication -for regulating interactions and social bonding with important members in the group -appears to be crucial for many non-human primates, including human social relationships [6]. In humans, a complex network of brain regions underlies the processing of language, including speech comprehension and production, and substantive integration with the social brain, including social-semantic working memory, and encompassing regulation from the neural network level to the neurotransmitter level, including social neurotransmitters such as oxytocin and dopamine [35][36][37][38][39]. ...
... In addition, several studies have shown that both chanting [60] and conversational speech [37] activate neural markers associated with social bonding: specifically, the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), associated with mentalizing, as well as the hypothalamus and amygdala, associated with social reward and motivation. Additional studies have revealed that self-disclosure -an important aspect of social bonding in humans -is intrinsically selfrewarding, due to activation of the mesolimbic dopamine system in the brain [38]. In summary, language and social cognition are two deeply interrelated capacities of the human species that have traditionally been studied as two separate domains. ...
Human language and social cognition are two key disciplines that have traditionally been studied as separate domains. However, emerging research from detailed studies of comparative animal behavior, human social behavior, language acquisition in children, social cognitive neuroscience, and the cognitive neuroscience of language suggest that language and social cognition are two deeply interrelated capacities of the human species. For instance, recent developmental studies on the acquisition of language in infants and young children, draw attention to the important crucial benefits associated with several different aspects of social stimulation for youngsters, including the quantity and quality of linguistic input, dyadic infant/child-to-parent verbal and non-verbal social interactions, and other important social cues integral for facilitating language learning and social bonding. Studies of the adult human brain further suggest a high degree of specialization for sociolinguistic information processing, memory retrieval, and comprehension, suggesting the function of these regions may link language with social cognition and social bonding. In effect, the social brain and social complexity hypotheses may jointly help to explain how neurotypical children and adults learn language, why autistic adults and children exhibit simultaneous deficits in language and social cognition, and why nonhuman primates and other animals with significant computational abilities do not acquire the capacity for language. But perhaps most critically, the following article argues that this and related research will allow scientists to generate a holistic profile and deeper understanding of the healthy adult social brain, while developing more innovative and effective diagnoses, prognoses, and treatments for maladies and deficits also associated with the social brain.
... Another good example is affect labelling, a simple and implicit emotional regulation technique aimed at explicitly expressing emotions, or in other words-putting feelings into words [78]. In addition, the act of self-disclosure is highly useful for emotional introspective process, selfreflection on one's emotions, actions, and behaviours [79], and is a meaningful act of mindfulness [80]. In the previous section, we mentioned several studies applying social robots in emotionally supportive settings [see 38,47,61], but social robotic interventions rarely encourage open selfdisclosure [see 81]. ...
... These findings contribute to the introduction of social robots as conversational partners, and how this type of verbal interaction could support people with emotional regulation by talking about stressors and well-being. Simple tasks, like the one described in the study, are relatively easy to administer automatically in HRIs (by focusing on providing general and broad responses to users' disclosures) but can simulate effective procedures via self-disclosure like affect labelling [78] and other emotional introspective processes with users self-reflecting on their emotions and behaviours [79]. Accordingly, social robots can offer meaningful opportunities for self-managed interventions designed to support people's emotional health and well-being. ...
While interactions with social robots are novel and exciting for many people, one concern is the extent to which people’s behavioural and emotional engagement might be sustained across time, since during initial interactions with a robot, its novelty is especially salient. This challenge is particularly noteworthy when considering interactions designed to support people’s well-being, with limited evidence (or empirical exploration) of social robots’ capacity to support people’s emotional health over time. Accordingly, our aim here was to examine how long-term repeated interactions with a social robot affect people’s self-disclosure behaviour toward the robot, their perceptions of the robot, and how such sustained interactions influence factors related to well-being. We conducted a mediated long-term online experiment with participants conversing with the social robot Pepper 10 times over 5 weeks. We found that people self-disclose increasingly more to a social robot over time, and report the robot to be more social and competent over time. Participants’ moods also improved after talking to the robot, and across sessions, they found the robot’s responses increasingly comforting as well as reported feeling less lonely. Finally, our results emphasize that when the discussion frame was supposedly more emotional (in this case, framing questions in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic), participants reported feeling lonelier and more stressed. These results set the stage for situating social robots as conversational partners and provide crucial evidence for their potential inclusion in interventions supporting people’s emotional health through encouraging self-disclosure.
... In addition to their societal impact, sharing personal experiences, especially those involving stress or adversity, can provide benefits to the discloser. Research indicates that such disclosures can lead to improvements in physical health, psychological functioning, and subjective well-being [4][5][6][7][8] . The benefits of disclosure could be particularly important in racial discrimination disclosure, as experiencing discrimination either directly or vicariously through a family member has been linked to greater depressive symptoms, anxiety, and anger 9 . ...
Sharing experiences with racism (racial discrimination disclosure) has the power to raise awareness of discrimination and spur meaningful conversations about race. Sharing these experiences with racism on social media may prompt a range of responses among users. While previous work investigates how disclosure impacts disclosers and listeners, we extend this research to explore the impact of observing discussions about racial discrimination online—what we call vicarious race talk. In a series of experiments using real social media posts, we show that the initial response to racial discrimination disclosure—whether the response denies or validates the poster’s perspective—influences observers’ own perceptions and attitudes. Despite observers identifying denial as less supportive than validation, those who observed a denial response showed less responsive attitudes toward the poster/target (Studies 1–3) and less support for discussions about discrimination on social media in general (Studies 2–3). Exploratory findings revealed that those who viewed denial comments also judged the transgressor as less racist, and expressed less support and more denial in their own comments. This suggests that even as observers negatively judge denial, their perceptions of the poster are nonetheless negatively influenced, and this impact extends to devaluing the topic of discrimination broadly. We highlight the context of social media, where racial discrimination disclosure—and how people respond to it—may be particularly consequential.
... Moreover, language is a pathway for social reward and bonding; humor, constructive problem-solving, gossip, and sharing positive news have been linked to increases in social functioning/relationship quality (Boydstun et al., 2023;Brondino et al., 2017;Hall, 2017;Kriegelewicz, 2006;Peters et al., 2018;Weaver & Bosson, 2011). Moreover, self-disclosure can increase feelings of interpersonal closeness (Aron et al., 1997) and liking (Collins & Miller, 1994), and even activate the brain's reward systems (Tamir & Mitchell, 2012). In sum, language is a rich source of behavioral data that captures the complexity of social experience and may play a causal role in social reward and bonding-fundamental human needs. ...
Background
Language is a fundamental aspect of human social behavior that is linked to many rewarding social experiences, such as social bonding. Potential effects of alcohol on affiliative language may therefore be an essential feature of alcohol reward and may elucidate pathways through which alcohol is linked to social facilitation. Examinations of alcohol's impact on language content, however, are sparse. Accordingly, this investigation represents the first systematic review and meta‐analysis of alcohol's effects on affiliative language. We test the hypothesis that alcohol increases affiliative verbal approach behaviors and discuss future research directions.
Methods
PsycInfo and Web of Science were systematically searched in March 2023 according to our preregistered plan. Eligible studies included social alcohol administration experiments in which affiliative verbal language was assessed. We present a random‐effects meta‐analysis that examines the effect of alcohol compared to control on measures of affiliative verbal behavior.
Results
Our search identified 16 distinct investigations (comprising 961 participants) that examined the effect of alcohol on affiliative verbal behavior. Studies varied greatly in methods and measures. Meta‐analytic results demonstrated that alcohol is modestly associated with increases in affiliative verbal behavior (Hedges' g = 0.164, 95% CI [0.027, 0.301], p = 0.019). Study quality was rated using an adapted version of the Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies and did not significantly moderate alcohol's effects.
Conclusions
This study provides preliminary evidence that alcohol can increase affiliative verbal behaviors. This effect may be an important feature of alcohol reward. Given heterogeneity in study features, low study quality ratings, and limited reporting of effect size data, results simultaneously highlight the promise of this research area and the need for more work. Advances in language processing methodologies that could allow future work to systematically expand upon this finding are discussed.
... Self-disclosure refers to the intentional revelation of intimate information about the self to another person (Finkenauer et al., 2018;Greene et al., 2006). People have a desire to self-disclose: They readily forgo money to disclose about the self, and self-disclosure is associated with increased activation in the brain's reward system (Mobasser et al., 2022;Tamir & Mitchell, 2012). Self-disclosure aids the development of relational intimacy. ...
Feeling loved by one's parents is critical for children's health and well‐being. How can such feelings be fostered? A vital feature of loving interactions is reciprocal self‐disclosure, where individuals disclose intimate information about themselves. In a proof‐of‐concept experiment, we examined whether encouraging reciprocal self‐disclosure in parent‐child dyads would make children feel more loved during the conversation. Participants were 218 children (ages 8–13, 50% girls, 94% Dutch) and one of their parents (ages 28–56, 62% women, 90% Dutch). Parent‐child dyads received a list of 14 questions and took turns asking them each other for 9 min. Dyads were assigned randomly to engage in self‐disclosure (questions invoking escalated intimacy) or small talk (questions invoking minimal intimacy). Before and after, children reported how loved they felt by their parent during the conversation. Self‐disclosure made children feel more loved during the conversation than did small talk. Compared to small talk, self‐disclosure did not instigate conversations that were lengthier or more positive; rather, it instigated conversations that were more emotionally charged (reflecting anger, anxiety, and sadness), social (discussing family and friends), reflective (creating insight), and meaningful (addressing deeply personal topics, including the passing of loved ones). The dyad's gender composition did not significantly moderate these effects. Our research suggests that reciprocal self‐disclosure can make children feel more loved in the moment, uncovers linguistic signatures of reciprocal self‐disclosure, and offers developmental scientists a tool to examine causal effects of reciprocal self‐disclosure in parent‐child dyads. Future work should examine long‐term effects in everyday parent‐child interactions.
Research Highlights
How can parents make children feel more loved by them in the moment? We theorize that these feelings can be cultivated through reciprocal self‐disclosure.
In a proof‐of‐concept experiment, we examined effects of reciprocal self‐disclosure versus small talk in 218 parent‐child dyads, with children aged 8−13.
Self‐disclosure (vs. small talk) made children feel more loved during the conversation. Linguistically, self‐disclosure instigated conversations that were more emotionally charged, social, reflective, and meaningful.
This research provides an experimental method to study self‐disclosure in parent‐child dyads and suggests that self‐disclosure can make children feel more loved in the moment.
... People commonly enjoy sharing information, often doing so voluntarily, even at the expense of investing significant time and energy [1][2][3] . Individuals share information for a wide variety of reasons, ranging from simple socialization to building up reputation and prestige 4 . ...
Individuals often rely on the advice of more experienced peers to minimize uncertainty and increase success likelihood. In most domains where knowledge is acquired through experience, advisers are themselves continuously learning. Here we examine the way advising behavior changes throughout the learning process, and the way that costs and benefits of giving advice shape this behavior. We ran a series of experiments implementing a decision task within a reinforcement learning framework, where participants could decide to share their choices as advice to others. Participants were overall likely to share their choices as advice, even on the first trial before learning. Tendency to share advice and advice quality increased as advisers learned about the value of choices, and moved from exploratory to exploitative behavior. The introduction of consequences to advising resulted in a shift of the overall tendency to give advice, lowering it when advising implicated monetary loss, and increasing it when advising held reputational value. Individual differences in social anxiety levels were associated with lower tendency to share exploratory decisions. Our results show that advisers tend to share choices that are backed by their own experience, but that this relationship can be altered by advice-consequences and individual traits.
... Prior research has steadily revealed that, both offline and online, "selfdisclosure is inherently functional, motivated by the needs for expression, self-clarification, relationship development, and social validation" (Chu et al., 2023: 578). Interestingly, it has also been shown that disclosing personal information is not only an inherent need in humans, but it can even become addictive given the increased levels of dopamine talking about the self produces in our brain (see Tamir & Mitchell, 2012). ...
This chapter focuses on self-disclosure or the self-presentation strategy of making personal information available to others. More specifically, self-disclosure encompasses two dimensions: breadth (the amount of personal information a user displays) and depth (the intimacy level of such information). Previous research has shown that age often influences both dimensions, but results have proven rather inconsistent. This chapter also presents a case study on self-presentation on X by Spanish male members of Parliament, whose strategies are influenced by their political ascription (left versus right-wing).
... As a result, studies show that 90% of individuals tend to give up privacy of their data, often without any added value [8], although 76% intend to protect it [13,14]. This insight is fundamental to several studies on the willingness to accept rewards for giving up privacy or willingness to pay a cost for preserving privacy [8,15,16,17]. Implications of giving up excessive personal data include energy-intensive and expensive data centers with unprocessed data growing faster than Moore's law predictions, stress and anxiety, algorithmic biases, discrimination, censorship and influence of election results [18,19,20,8,21,22]. Therefore, establishing a coordinated data sharing is a collective action for the recovery of privacy with an immense impact on the environment, health, society and democracy. ...
Collective privacy loss becomes a colossal problem, an emergency for personal freedoms and democracy. But, are we prepared to handle personal data as scarce resource and collectively share data under the doctrine: as little as possible, as much as necessary? We hypothesize a significant privacy recovery if a population of individuals, the data collective, coordinates to share minimum data for running online services with the required quality. Here we show how to automate and scale-up complex collective arrangements for privacy recovery using decentralized artificial intelligence. For this, we compare for the first time attitudinal, intrinsic, rewarded and coordinated data sharing in a rigorous living-lab experiment of high realism involving >27,000 real data disclosures. Using causal inference and cluster analysis, we differentiate criteria predicting privacy and five key data-sharing behaviors. Strikingly, data-sharing coordination proves to be a win-win for all: remarkable privacy recovery for people with evident costs reduction for service providers.
... Future research may expand beyond this point of departure, using affect and its prediction errors to complement our understanding of valuation in contexts where value is less tangible than monetary reward (Lindström et al., 2021;E. R. Pool et al., 2022;Tamir & Mitchell, 2012), encompassing policy decisions, social interactions, and more. The potential breadth of this approach is made evident in a recent study that ventured beyond tangible reward by leveraging affective prediction errors to study wishful thinking (Melnikoff & Strohminger, 2023). ...
Scientists increasingly apply concepts from reinforcement learning to affect, but which concepts should apply? And what can their application reveal that we cannot know from directly observable states? An important reinforcement learning concept is the difference between reward expectations and outcomes. Such reward prediction errors have become foundational to research on adaptive behavior in humans, animals, and machines. Owing to historical focus on animal models and observable reward (e.g., food or money), however, relatively little attention has been paid to the fact that humans can additionally report correspondingly expected and experienced affect (e.g., feelings). Reflecting a broader “rise of affectivism,” attention has started to shift, revealing explanatory power of expected and experienced feelings—including prediction errors—above and beyond observable reward. We propose that applying concepts from reinforcement learning to affect holds promise for elucidating subjective value. Simultaneously, we urge scientists to test—rather than inherit—concepts that may not apply directly.
... Financial contributions therefore provide a means to directly socialize and self-disclose with a streamer and reflect more effortful active participation beyond simply commenting in Chat (Johnson & Woodcock, 2019b;Wohn et al., 2018). Tamir and Mitchell (2012) demonstrated that individuals are willing to forgo money for the opportunity to disclose information about themselves to others which may lead to a response, liking, and possibly stronger social attachments and relationships. This act of self-disclosure, independent of social interaction, may itself promote psychological well-being (Pennebaker & Chung, 2011). ...
This study examines how active participation, financial commitment, and passive participation in the leading social live-streaming service, Twitch.tv, relate to individuals’ psychological well-being. The three dimensions of social capital—structural, relational, and cognitive—as well as parasocial relationship are explored as mediators. Cross-sectional survey data from 396 respondents was analyzed by comparing two fully saturated structural equation models. Findings indicate actively participating in a favorite streamers’ Chat is positively associated with increased well-being. Structural social capital, or having more social interaction ties, positively mediates the relationship between active participation and well-being, as well as financial commitment and well-being. Greater cognitive social capital, or shared values and goals with a favorite streamer, is related to decreased well-being. Parasocial relationship does not significantly mediate the relationship between use and well-being. Our results demonstrate the importance of tangible social ties over the perceived relationships or identification with a favorite streamer.
... This communication can take manifold forms, including direct messages between close friends and loved ones, photograph sharing and status updates targeted at one's broader social network, and consumer experience reviews intended for unknown members of the public. Such communication can be inherently pleasurable (Tamir & Mitchell, 2012), engender health and psychological benefits (Frattaroli, 2006;Lambert et al., 2013;Pennebaker, 1997;Reis et al., 2010), and result in positive social outcomes (Altman & Taylor, 1973;Collins & Miller, 1994;Ensari & Miller, 2002;Miller, 2002). At the same time, these new opportunities for selfexpression take on a public and often permanent character, amplifying the potential for material and reputational damage resulting from selfdisclosure (Brandimarte, Vosgerau, & Acquisti, 2018;Hofstetter, Rüppell, & John, 2017). ...
... Being liked brings reputation; reputation brings 'likes'. Tamir and Mitchell (2012) studied the consistency of such outcomes to investigate whether the same brain areas are activated when one has the chance to divulge information about themselves. According to their study, subjects alternated between revealing their thoughts and ideas and speculating about the beliefs and opinions of another individual while undertaking functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning. ...
Jean Baudrillard states, the theoretical equivalence of body and objects as signs is actually, ‘buy; you will be at peace with yourself’(Baudrillard, 2014). Baudrillard’s phrase ‘buy, and you will be at ease in your body’ has given way to ‘buy and share, you will be at ease in your body’. This research aims to investigate whether displaying purchased luxury goods on Instagram is a type of conspicuous consumption (Veblen, 1899) that may structure a new form of social capital and reputation capital as suggested by Pierre Bourdieu. We argue that this new form of social capital is a digital capital that serves to shape a contemporary reputation capital. The study involves 354 social media users and the data were gathered through an online survey. Our findings reveal that there is insufficient evidence of a relationship between high reputation capital and high social status; however, the aforementioned consumption type depicts reputation capital as a contemporary method of social capital.
... Altmetric scores (see Fig. 11). As a consequence, only two studies (Kassam, Markey, Cherkassky, Loewenstein, & Just, 2013;Tamir & Mitchell, 2012) were ranked among the top ten in both WoS and Altmetric rank-orderings (purple-colored points in Fig. 10). The same was true for field-normalized citation scores, where the overlap between top-ranked studies using WoS citation scores and field-normalized citation scores was very low (despite the relatively high correlations between the two measures). ...
... Although a large body of literature has been dedicated to the empirical study of primary and secondary rewards, the empirical study of intrinsic rewards is still in its infancy (for recent work see refs. 7,11,[81][82][83][84][85]. This line of research is challenging as intrinsic rewards are difficult to quantify, yet critical for a full and deep understanding of the human experience. ...
Humans frequently engage in intrinsically rewarding activities (for example, consuming art, reading). Despite such activities seeming diverse, we show that sensitivity to intrinsic rewards is domain general and associated with mental health. In this cross-sectional study, participants online ( N = 483) were presented with putative visual, cognitive and social intrinsic rewards as well as monetary rewards and neutral stimuli. All rewards elicited positive feelings (were ‘liked’), generated consummatory behaviour (were ‘wanted’) and increased the likelihood of the action leading to them (were ‘reinforcing’). Factor analysis revealed that ~40% of response variance across stimuli was explained by a general sensitivity to all rewards, but not to neutral stimuli. Affective aspects of mental health were associated with sensitivity to intrinsic, but not monetary, rewards. These results may help explain thriving and suffering: individuals with high reward sensitivity will engage in a variety of intrinsically rewarding activities, eventually finding those they excel at, whereas low sensitivity individuals will not.
Social rewards are strong drivers of behavior and fundamental to well-being, yet there is a lack of consensus regarding what actually defines a reward as “social.” Because a systematic overview of existing social reward operationalizations is currently absent, a review of the literature seems necessary to advance toward a unified framework and to better guide research and theory. To bridge this gap, we preregistered and conducted the first comprehensive systematic review of human and animal experimental studies that used the term “social reward” and charted existing operationalizations, revealing the implicit and explicit definitions used in the field. Stimulus characteristics and measures of social reward were extracted from a total of 384 studies encompassing 42,118 participants and subjects. We provide detailed summaries of these elements, stratified by species (human/animal) and study type (behavioral, brain imaging, pharmacological, and physiological). Two main aspects were found to account for most of the difference in operationalizations: the sensory richness of a stimulus (intimacy) and engagement in social interaction (i.e., the synchronous observation and action between at least two individuals, viz., immediacy). Drawing insights from second-person neuroscience approaches and theoretical models in the field of human–computer interaction, we propose that human and animal research can greatly benefit from considering these properties, as they have important theoretical and practical consequences for human and translational research, with far-reaching implications for neighboring research fields such as those pertaining to social media and the development of artificial intelligence.
The extent to which people self-disclose depends on the valence and intimacy of that information. We developed a 16-item measure that features both dimensions to assess participants’ inclination to self-disclose to humans and robots across three studies, i.e., the VISS scale. We hypothesized that participants would prefer a human over a robot conversation partner, independent of the valence and intimacy of the topic. Using the VISS, participants reported equal willingness to self-disclose to a human and a robot. However, in one out of three studies, participants were more willing to self-disclose positive topics that are low in intimacy (PTLI) to a fellow human, whereas in two out of three studies, they were less prone to self-disclose negative topics that are high in intimacy (NTHI) to a human compared to a robot. Two out of three studies provide a plausible explanation for these differences: participants indicated more motives to self-disclose PTLI to a human than to a robot, with relationship development being one central motive that was more strongly indicated in relation to a human. Furthermore, participants perceived more risks to self-disclose NTHI to a human than to a robot, with the risk of rejection being most prevalent for a human.
Social networks have become a new environment in which a large part of our daily life has been transposed. It has become a new research environment and tool for two reasons: It is easy and cheap to use and offers the chance to provide a large amount of novelty. However, questions arise as people navigate privacy on social media differently than in real life, meaning, less intuitively and over a longer time. With this in mind, this study examines how people perceive privacy on social networks and how collecting data without consent violates users' privacy rights, even when the information is public. For this, we focus on the Romanian case study and explore new perspectives on online research to uphold human rights and maintain research objectivity. The results show that managing privacy online is not intuitive, and it requires time for the users to understand how their data can be accessed and used, and to learn the tools they can employ to limit other's access to personal information. We also have found that the majority of our study participants see social networks as a tool for socialization and the use of their information outside this purpose violates their privacy rights. The paper proposes a set of principles and markers to help researchers differentiate between personal and public information to comply with research ethics and not breach human rights.
Charitable organizations are increasingly soliciting donors to engage in word-of-mouth (WOM) as a strategy to foster future contributions. While some organizations encourage donors to share WOM that focuses on their own donations (donor-focused WOM; e.g., “I just donated to the kids of @StJude. Join me in saving children’s lives.”), others prompt donors to share WOM that focuses on the organization itself (charity-focused WOM; e.g., “Smile Train gives children with clefts the #PowerOfASmile.”). Contrary to the common belief that people mostly want to talk about themselves, the current research demonstrates that donor-focused WOM backfires, such that donors are less likely to share donor- than charity-focused WOM. This effect is driven by their belief that donor-focused WOM is less altruistic and is therefore less efficacious in persuading others to contribute to the same cause. In addition to sharing, the type of WOM solicited exerts far-reaching impact, with donor-focused WOM attracting fewer new donors in comparison to charity-focused WOM. Together, the current research improves the understanding of WOM type, its effect, and the underlying processes.
Partisan animosity has been growing in the United States and around the world over the past few decades, fueling efforts by researchers and practitioners to help heal the divide. Many studies have been conducted to test interventions that aim to promote open-mindedness; however, these studies have been conducted in disparate literatures that do not always use the same terminology. In this review, we integrate research on open-mindedness in order to facilitate cross-talk and collaboration between disciplines. We review various concepts related to open-mindedness and then offer a conceptual model to help guide the further development of interventions and research to understand open-mindedness. We propose that open-mindedness is multifaceted and dynamic, such that interventions should focus on targeting multiple psychological pathways in order to maximize and sustain their effects. Specifically, we propose that interventions that target cognitive and/or motivational pathways can induce open-mindedness initially. Then, training in emotion regulation and/or social skills can help to sustain and build on open-mindedness once individuals enter into a situation where their beliefs are challenged. We conclude with a discussion of potential future directions for research on open-mindedness interventions.
TikTok se ha convertido en un canal en el que la guerra de Rusia y Ucrania se retransmite casi en directo. La lógica de las redes sociales se hibrida con la lógica de los medios para ofrecer a los usuarios contenidos informativos que traspasan los límites de los medios tradicionales. Se estudia la evolución de la construcción y consumo de los vídeos sobre hechos de actualidad en TikTok. Se investigan los géneros periodísticos, los elementos audiovisuales y su finalidad en los vídeos publicados por perfiles anónimos, influencers, medios de comunicación y periodistas verificados en TikTok. Mediante análisis de contenido se decodifican 415 vídeos sobre la guerra entre ambos países durante 40 días (24/2/2022/5.04.2022). Se confirma que los perfiles anónimos e influencers se están apropiando de los géneros de los medios de comunicación tradicionales, y que los periodistas se están adaptando a los formatos propios de las redes sociales. El interés de la audiencia se centra en vídeos que no combinan elementos audiovisuales, sino que se decantan por vídeos con música sólo o sólo voz. En la finalidad no se detecta la hibridación de lógica de los medios de comunicación, por la falta de pluralidad y por el elevado uso de la emotividad, empleada principalmente por los influencers, y que es la que despierta más interés en la audiencia.
Part of the current mental health crisis is attributed to the increasing reliance on social media for daily tasks. By understanding behavioral or cognitive patterns that influence facets of well-being in real-time within individuals, we can empower individuals to intentionally adjust their behavior, thereby enhancing these aspects. This study utilized an experience sampling method to investigate the real-time effects of social media-induced social comparisons and posting on self-esteem and connectedness. Six times per day for 5 days, 74 adults reported on their social media use in the previous hour and their experiences of connectedness and self-esteem. Multilevel modeling demonstrated statistically significant within-person associations. Social media-induced upward comparison was related to momentary decreases in self-esteem, and moments when individuals posted on social media were related to higher levels of connectedness. The findings emphasize that specific experiences on social media may produce immediate effects for connectedness and self-esteem.
From close friends to people on a first date, imagining a shared future appears fundamental to relationships. Yet, no previous research has conceptualized the act of imagination as a socially constructed process that affects how connected we feel to others. The present studies provide a framework for investigating imagination as a collaborative process in which individuals cocreate shared representations of hypothetical events—what we call collaborative imagination. Across two preregistered studies ( N = 244), we provide evidence that collaborative imagination of a shared future fosters social connection in novel dyads—beyond imagining a shared future individually or shared experience in general. Subjective ratings and natural language processing of participants’ imagined narratives illuminate the representational features of imagined events shaped by collaborative imagination. Together, the present findings have the potential to shift how we view the structure and function of imagination with implications for better understanding interpersonal relationships and collective cognition.
Purpose
Consumers send billions of messages with high ephemerality each day, yet the effects of this type of communication are relatively unknown. Online ephemeral communication refers to sending and receiving information with a predetermined, finite lifespan in computer-mediated environments. The purpose of this paper is to conceptually understand online marketing communications with high ephemerality relative to messages with low ephemerality within a consumer’s goal system.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is an attempt to conceptually understand how high ephemerality differs from low ephemerality, particularly as online ephemeral communication has emerged and is widely used by consumers and firms. Goal systems theory is applied to understand how ephemerality is a means for consumers to reach their communication goals.
Findings
Consumers are more likely to use messages with high ephemerality to impress with narrowly relevant content, regulate emotions, build social relationships, persuade others through peripheral cues and protect privacy, but messages with high ephemerality are less likely to help consumers manage their impression, acquire or share useful information or present strong arguments. It is also proposed that messages with high ephemerality can help marketers increase interest through frequent peripheral cues, including fun and friendly content, drive sales by creating a sense of urgency and increase loyalty, but are less likely to increase awareness, build interest through flattering or informative content or drive sales through transactional messages.
Research limitations/implications
This study primarily advances the goal systems literature by introducing ephemerality. The defining feature of ephemerality, lifespan, also has research implications for studies of word-of-mouth marketing. The propositions in this study are ready for empirical investigation as to when consumers and firms choose to send messages with low or high ephemerality.
Practical implications
Firms need to understand how consumers are using messages sent with low and high ephemerality in order for firms to best move consumers through the sales funnel.
Originality/value
To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first paper to differentiate messages with low and high ephemerality, identify the presence and effects of ephemerality in offline and online communication and explain how and why sending messages with low or high ephemerality can help consumers and firms reach their communication goals. There is only one other paper in marketing on ephemerality in online marketing communications and no other conceptual work.
In recent years, social media applications have grown in number and in user bases. Recommendation algorithms on these platforms refer social others and related content to users. Using Granovetter's tie strength theory and the literature on relationship formation as conceptual foundations, we argue that these social media algorithms can damage a user's ability to establish diverse relationships and the benefits therein, thereby reducing personal, and, when aggregated, societal advantages. We argue that this occurs because the algorithms take on social actor roles and operate as “weak tie imposters” that serve as bridges to like others and content. This work provides a new conceptualization of the role recommendation algorithms play in social relationships, argues how they impact social relationship development and user privacy, and offers potential solutions to the issues related to algorithmic interference.
Background
The authors identified a need for instruments that measure a task model of self-regulation as opposed to an emotion model of self-regulation. Such instruments are particularly applicable to student populations.
Objective
This paper explains the construction of one such instrument, Steer Tracking. A four-factor bi-polar conceptual model of four necessary self-regulatory tasks is presented: Trust of Self, Trust of Others, Self-Disclosure and Seeking Change.
Methods
A novel assessment method was developed, requiring a participant to imagine a mental space in which they perform the four self-regulatory tasks. The instrument was deployed in populations of students aged 8-18 attending UK primary and secondary schools. Principal Component Analyses evaluated the proposed four-factor structure across two age groups: 8 to 12 years olds ( n = 2171) and 13 to 18 years old ( n = 658). A Support Vector Machine (SVM) model in a separate sample ( n = 2518) evaluated the assessment’s utility in identifying students who display risk on three wellbeing measures: experiencing bullying, thinking about or engaging in self-harm, and struggling to cope with pressure at school.
Results & Discussion
Analyses provided initial support for the validity of the conceptual model and its ability to identify at-risk students. Key instrument features such as non-standardisation and generalised versus in-school comparison are explained.
Conclusion
Application, relevance and potential benefits of the Steer Tracking instrument for educators and school managers are explored.
This handbook reviews theory and research on the accuracy of personality judgments. The various chapters explain the major theoretical models that guide research in this area, describe various methodological approaches to evaluating accuracy, and review recent empirical findings. Topics considered include moderators of accuracy including judge, target, trait, and information. Chapters also summarize recent work on self-other asymmetry, the accuracy of self-knowledge, meta-perceptions and meta-accuracy. The various pieces of information used in making personality judgments, including nonverbal cues, contextual and environmental information, normative information, and group stereotypes are identified and their roles in accurate judgment are described. Examples of some of the domains to which accuracy research can be applied including interpersonal relationships, clinical practice, the workplace, and accuracy training are included. And finally, possible future directions for the study and application of accurate personality judgments are provided.
Las redes sociales no solo han modificado las relaciones interpersonales, sino que también están impactando en el ecosistema informativo. Los más jóvenes se decantan por informarse a través de las redes sociales, en las que periodistas y medios de comunicación tradicionales pugnan por mantener su papel como fuentes de información. Para observar esta evolución en el consumo informativo, se estudia la guerra entre Ucrania y Rusia. Se investigan los perfiles-autores que publican más acerca de este conflicto bélico y los contenidos más viralizados en TikTok, la red social más descargada actualmente. Mediante un análisis de contenido, se examinan 420 vídeos sobre la guerra ruso-ucraniana creados y compartidos por 107 autores durante los primeros 42 días del conflicto (22/02/2022 – 05/04/2022). Se estudian los perfiles de medios de comunicación, influencers, usuarios anónimos, autoridades, profesionales, entidades gubernamentales e internacionales y ONG como fuentes informativas del conflicto. Los resultados confirman que los autores anónimos y los influencers son los que más contenidos comparten sobre la guerra, y que los influencers son los perfiles más seguidos, con más de 113 millones de audiencia, cifra altamente superior a la alcanzada por los medios de comunicación verificados (más de 49 millones).
The literature on privacy-related behaviors and preferences often frames disclosure as strategic—the result of a weighing of costs and benefits and a pursuit of instrumental benefits rather than as a goal in and of itself. In the present article, we summarize evidence supporting the view that disclosure can exhibit drive-like qualities and that this “drive to disclose” can, at times, overwhelm the motive to maintain privacy. We discuss implications of this perspective, highlighting ways in which recognizing the existence of a drive to disclose can inform privacy research and policy making.
Objectives
We examined the possibility of using shared experiences to recruit human intelligence (HUMINT) sources. The research was based on two hypotheses. (a) Shared experiences amplify interpersonal affiliation, which increases the extent to which sources will commit to an intelligence arrangement. (b) The social connection opportunity shared experiences afford is what increases such commitment.
Methods
Participants assumed the role of a source meeting a potential handler, a police officer, to discuss an arrangement whereby they might supply intelligence. We manipulated shared experience via the meeting's setting. Half of the participants underwent a shared experience to facilitate interpersonal affiliation with the handler, and the other half did not undergo such an experience. The handler used one of two approaches to propose the arrangement. One approach afforded a social connection opportunity, and the other constrained the possibility of a social connection in the arrangement.
Results
The findings indicated that shared experiences can have interpersonal influence. The shared experience operationalization positively influenced felt closeness and social connection affordance. However, there was little indication that handlers could capitalize on shared experience to bolster commitment.
While meditation is commonly practiced by individuals on their own, several programmes have incorporated dyadic forms, too. However, the setting – meditating alone or in dyads – and its impact on the effects of meditation have not yet been examined. We expected that dyadic compassion meditation (CM) may improve perceived social closeness more compared to closely-matched individual CM. N = 50 couples were randomly assigned to do a brief 15-min CM induction either together with their partner or individually. Social closeness was rated by both partners. Secondary outcomes were positive and negative affect as well as parasympathetic response, indicated by heart rate variability (HRV). Due to the dyadic data structure, multilevel models were tested. We found no difference between dyadic and individual CM in self-report. After both forms social closeness and positive affect were improved, while negative affect decreased. Only HRV differed between the two conditions over time: while HRV significantly decreased in the individual condition, there was no such change in the dyadic condition. The accompanying physiological profile suggests that CM may involve effort at least in the individual CM. Done individually or with a partner, brief CM can foster social closeness and improve affect and can be employed to improve socio-emotional well-being.
This research study employed a linear regression analysis to examine the influence of social media usage and the level of motivation on students' academic performance. The research questions explored the levels of social media usage in terms of academic, socialization, entertainment, informativeness, and constraint; level of motivation in terms of intrinsic motivation, grade motivation, career motivation, and self-determination; and academic performance in quarters 1 to 3 among Junior High School and Senior High School students. In the sampling procedures the researchers utilized Slovin's formula. Based on Slovin's formula, a sample size of approximately 320.69 or 321 is required to achieve a margin of error of 5% for a total population size of 1614. The researchers utilized the Stratified Random Sampling which defines as a probability technique that involves segmenting the population into distinct subpopulations and then selecting samples from each subpopulation. The findings revealed that students exhibited a moderate level of social media usage (x=3.36), while demonstrating a high level of motivation (x=3.62). However, despite these moderate to high levels, students' academic performance remained at an average level (x=3.15). Furthermore, the research indicated that there was no significant relationship between social media usage and academic performance, as well as between the level of motivation and academic performance. Consequently, the study concluded that neither social media usage nor motivation significantly influenced students' academic performance. Lastly, further research is warranted to explore additional factors and potential interventions that could enhance academic outcomes in this population.
People manage their social reputation by selectively sharing achievements, thereby shaping the way others think about them. Autistic traits and social anxiety may have opposing impacts on reputation management. This study aimed to identify the influence of autistic traits and social anxiety on reputation management behavior, independently and in co‐occurrence with one another. Seventy‐seven adults with varying levels of autistic and social anxiety traits completed a novel self‐disclosure task that required them to complete a computerized game and decide whether to disclose their scores to another participant. This design provided a safe social environment for sharing performance outcomes and allowed us to manipulate performance outcomes for participants and set a perceived ‘norm’ of high self‐disclosure. Results showed that participants were more likely to disclose their high than low scores to the other player. Social anxiety reliably predicted the likelihood of disclosing their scores while high autistic traits predicted the likelihood of disclosure only in combination with high social anxiety. Additionally, establishing the norm of high disclosure facilitated self‐disclosure in all the participants. This study shows that social anxiety may influence reputation management via selective self‐disclosure more when co‐occurring with high autistic traits. People with varying levels of autistic traits may not behave differently to maintain a social reputation.
Aaron Ben-Ze'ev, A. (2023). In defense of moderate romantic curiosity and information avoidance: A conceptual outlook of balanced curiosity. Abstract Abstract Curiosity, which is the human motive to seek information, is extremely valuable, since it enables people to widen their horizons and develop their capacities. However, there are many cases in which curiosity is harmful and not learning more information is preferable. In the romantic realm, this complexity is particularly relevant. Although knowledge is valuable in romantic relationships, there are circumstances in which ignorance and avoidance of information may be more beneficial. I suggest the restriction of central virtues of romantic love, such as curiosity and sensitivity, while giving some limited weight to oft-called vices in romantic relationships, such as ignorance and indifference. This suggestion has significant implications for the nature of romantic relationships, and in particular, for enhancing flexibility and diversity of such relationships, and the ongoing need to find an optimal balance.
Because most people possess positive associations about themselves, most people prefer things that are connected to the self (e.g., the letters in one's name). The authors refer to such preferences as implicit egotism. Ten studies assessed the role of implicit egotism in 2 major life decisions: where people choose to live and what people choose to do for a living. Studies 1-5 showed that people are disproportionately likely to live in places whose names resemble their own first or last names (e.g., people named Louis are disproportionately likely to live in St. Louis). Study 6 extended this finding to birthday number preferences. People were disproportionately likely to live in cities whose names began with their birthday numbers (e.g., Two Harbors, MN). Studies 7-10 suggested that people disproportionately choose careers whose labels resemble their names (e.g., people named Dennis or Denise are overrepresented among dentists). Implicit egotism appears to influence major life decisions. This idea stands in sharp contrast to many models of rational choice and attests to the importance of understanding implicit beliefs.
Combining the methods of neuroscience and economics generates powerful tools for studying the brain processes behind human social interaction. We argue that hedonic interpretations of theories of social preferences provide a useful framework that generates interesting predictions and helps interpret brain activations involved in altruistic, fair and trusting behaviors. These behaviours are consistently associated with activation in reward-related brain areas such as the striatum and with prefrontal
activity implicated in cognitive control, the processing of emotions, and integration of benefits and costs, consistent with resolution of a conflict between self-interest and
other-regarding motives.
Different lines of research have explored many aspects of self-disclosure, yet there are few broad, connecting principles that can be used to describe this behavior. A Disclosure Decision model is introduced that specifies a cognitive process resulting in decisions that affect the content, depth, breadth, and duration of self-disclosure. One of 5 possible disclosure goals must be made accessible. Disclosure must be selected as a strategy for reaching that goal, and a disclosure target must be selected. Potential disclosers then evaluate the subjective utility and the subjective risk of disclosing. The subjective utility of disclosing is hypothesized to decrease breadth and increase duration of disclosure. Subjective risk is hypothesized to decrease depth of disclosure. The Disclosure Decision model is designed to provide a framework for studying and predicting self-disclosure across situations.
No man is the Lord of any thing Til he communicate his parts to others. Nor does he of himself know them for aught Til he behold them formed in th’applause. Perseverence, my lord, Keeps honour bright, to have done is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery (Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida).
[the author's] thesis is that the activity we sometimes describe as gossip . . . is fundamental to the functioning of all human collectives / the functions . . . concern the successful adaptation of humans to the requirements of group living and the control mechanisms that operate to conserve effectively functioning human groups / central to these functions are what may be called reputational processes
far from being a trivial and superficial activity that appeals only to shallow and idle minds, gossip is intelligent action / it is a complex and sophisticated instrument of adaptation / gossip is a powerful process in the politics of everyday life (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
How does memory for an incident vary depending on whether, and how, the person relates the information to himself? Trait adjectives are better remembered if they were judged in reference to oneself rather than judged for meaning or sound. Our first experiment found a similar mnemonic advantage of referring a described episode or object to some event from one's life. Pleasant events were remembered better than unpleasant ones. A second experiment found incidental memory for trait adjectives was equally enhanced by judging each directly in reference to one's self-concept or indirectly by retrieving an episode either from one's life or from one's mother's life. Contrariwise, memory was poorer when traits were judged in reference to a less familiar person. Thus, good memory depends on relating the inputs to a well-differentiated memory structure.
Observational studies of human conversations in relaxed social settings suggest that these consist predominantly of exchanges
of social information (mostly concerning personal relationships and experiences). Most of these exchanges involve information
about the speaker or third parties, and very few involve critical comments or the soliciting or giving of advice. Although
a policing function may still be important (e.g., for controlling social cheats), it seems that this does not often involve
overt criticism of other individuals’ behavior. The few significant differences between the sexes in the proportion of conversation
time devoted to particular topics are interpreted as reflecting females’ concerns with networking and males’ concerns with
self-display in what amount to a conventional mating lek.
Comparative studies have implicated striatal and mesial forebrain circuitry in the generation of autonomic, endocrine, and behavioral responses for incentives. Using blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging, we sought to visualize functional activation of these regions in 12 normal volunteers as they anticipated and responded for monetary incentives. Both individual and group analyses of time-series data revealed significant activation of striatal and mesial forebrain structures (including insula, caudate, putamen, and mesial prefrontal cortex) during trials involving both monetary rewards and punishments. In addition to these areas, during trials involving punishment, group analysis revealed activation foci in the anterior cingulate and thalamus. These results corroborate comparative studies which implicate striatal and mesial forebrain circuitry in the elaboration of incentive-driven behavior. This report also introduces a new paradigm for probing the functional integrity of this circuitry in humans.
In this work we examine the characteristics of social activity and patterns of communication on Twitter, a prominent example of the emerging class of communication systems we call "social awareness streams." We use system data and message content from over 350 Twitter users, applying human coding and quantitative analysis to provide a deeper understanding of the activity of individuals on the Twitter network. In particular, we develop a content-based categorization of the type of messages posted by Twitter users, based on which we examine users' activity. Our analysis shows two common types of user behavior in terms of the content of the posted messages, and exposes differences between users in respect to these activities. Author Keywords Social media, Twitter, communication systems.
The lateral prefrontal cortex undergoes both structural and functional changes with healthy aging. In contrast, there is little structural change in the medial prefrontal cortex, but relatively little is known about the functional changes to this region with age. Using an event-related fMRI design, we investigated the response of medial prefrontal cortex during self-referencing in order to compare age groups on a task that young and elderly perform similarly and that is known to actively engage the region in young adults. Nineteen young (M age = 23) and seventeen elderly (M age = 72) judged whether adjectives described themselves, another person, or were presented in upper case. We assessed the overlap in activations between young and elderly for the self-reference effect (self vs. other person), and found that both groups engage medial prefrontal cortex and mid-cingulate during self-referencing. The only cerebral differences between the groups in self versus other personality assessment were found in somatosensory and motor-related areas. In contrast, age-related modulations were found in the cerebral network recruited for emotional valence processing. Elderly (but not young) showed increased activity in the dorsal prefrontal cortex for positive relative to negative items, which could reflect an increase in controlled processing of positive information for elderly adults.
We propose that the cognitive mechanisms that enable the transmission of cultural knowledge by communication between individuals constitute a system of 'natural pedagogy' in humans, and represent an evolutionary adaptation along the hominin lineage. We discuss three kinds of arguments that support this hypothesis. First, natural pedagogy is likely to be human-specific: while social learning and communication are both widespread in non-human animals, we know of no example of social learning by communication in any other species apart from humans. Second, natural pedagogy is universal: despite the huge variability in child-rearing practices, all human cultures rely on communication to transmit to novices a variety of different types of cultural knowledge, including information about artefact kinds, conventional behaviours, arbitrary referential symbols, cognitively opaque skills and know-how embedded in means-end actions. Third, the data available on early hominin technological culture are more compatible with the assumption that natural pedagogy was an independently selected adaptive cognitive system than considering it as a by-product of some other human-specific adaptation, such as language. By providing a qualitatively new type of social learning mechanism, natural pedagogy is not only the product but also one of the sources of the rich cultural heritage of our species.
Dopamine released in the nucleus accumbens is thought to contribute to the decision to exert effort to seek reward. This hypothesis is supported by findings that performance of tasks requiring higher levels of effort is more susceptible to disruption by manipulations that reduce accumbens dopamine function than tasks that require less effort. However, performance of some low-effort cue-responding tasks is highly dependent on accumbens dopamine. To reconcile these disparate results, we made detailed behavioral observations of rats performing various operant tasks and determined how injection of dopamine receptor antagonists into the accumbens influenced specific aspects of the animals' behavior. Strikingly, once animals began a chain of operant responses, the antagonists did not affect the ability to continue the chain until reward delivery. Instead, when rats left the operandum, the antagonists severely impaired the ability to return. We show that this impairment is specific to situations in which the animal must determine a new set of approach actions on each approach occasion; this behavior is called "flexible approach." Both high-effort operant tasks and some low-effort cue-responding tasks require dopamine receptor activation in the accumbens because animals pause their responding and explore the chamber, and accumbens dopamine is required to terminate these pauses with flexible approach to the operandum. The flexible approach hypothesis provides a unified framework for understanding the contribution of the accumbens and its dopamine projection to reward-seeking behavior.
Two Heads Are Better Than One
When two people peer into the distance and try to figure out if a faint number is a three or an eight, classical signal detection theory states that the joint decision can only be as good as that of the person with higher visual acuity. Bahrami et al. (p. 1081 ; see the Perspective by Ernst ) propose that a discussion not only of what each person perceives but also of the degree of confidence in those assignments can improve the overall sensitivity of the decision. Using a traditional contrast-detection task, they showed that, when the individuals did not differ too much in their powers of visual discrimination, collective decision-making significantly improved sensitivity. The model offered here formalizes debates held since the Enlightenment about whether collective thinking can outperform that of elite individuals.
The ability to think about oneself--to self--reflect--is one of the defining features of the human mind. Recent research has suggested that this ability may be subserved by a particular brain region: the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). However, although humans can contemplate a variety of different aspects of themselves, including their stable personality traits, current feelings, and physical attributes, no research has directly examined the extent to which these different forms of self-reflection are subserved by common mechanisms. To address this question, participants were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while making judgments about their own personality traits, current mental states, and physical attributes as well as those of another person. Whereas some brain regions responded preferentially during only one form of self-reflection, a robust region of MPFC was engaged preferentially during self-reflection across all three types of judgment. These results suggest that--although dissociable--diverse forms of self-referential thought draw on a shared cognitive process subserved by MPFC.
There is a growing consensus that the brain computes value and saliency-like signals at the time of decision-making. Value
signals are essential for making choices. Saliency signals are related to motivation, attention, and arousal. Unfortunately,
an unequivocal characterization of the areas involved in these 2 distinct sets of processes is made difficult by the fact
that, in most experiments, both types of signals are highly correlated. We dissociated value and saliency signals using a
novel human functional magnetic resonance imaging decision-making task. Activity in the medial orbitofrontal, rostral anterior
cingulate, and posterior cingulate cortices was modulated by value but not saliency. The opposite was true for dorsal anterior
cingulate, supplementary motor area, insula, and the precentral and fusiform gyri. Only the ventral striatum and the cuneus
were modulated by both value and saliency.
Although cells in many brain regions respond to reward, the cortical-basal ganglia circuit is at the heart of the reward system. The key structures in this network are the anterior cingulate cortex, the orbital prefrontal cortex, the ventral striatum, the ventral pallidum, and the midbrain dopamine neurons. In addition, other structures, including the dorsal prefrontal cortex, amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus, and lateral habenular nucleus, and specific brainstem structures such as the pedunculopontine nucleus, and the raphe nucleus, are key components in regulating the reward circuit. Connectivity between these areas forms a complex neural network that mediates different aspects of reward processing. Advances in neuroimaging techniques allow better spatial and temporal resolution. These studies now demonstrate that human functional and structural imaging results map increasingly close to primate anatomy.
The dopaminergic mechanisms that control reward-motivated behavior are the subject of intense study, but it is yet unclear how, in humans, neural activity in mesolimbic reward-circuitry and its functional neuroimaging correlates are related to dopamine release. To address this question, we obtained functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measures of reward-related neural activity and [(11)C]raclopride positron emission tomography measures of dopamine release in the same human participants, while they performed a delayed monetary incentive task. Across the cohort, a positive correlation emerged between neural activity of the substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area (SN/VTA), the main origin of dopaminergic neurotransmission, during reward anticipation and reward-related [(11)C]raclopride displacement as an index of dopamine release in the ventral striatum, major target of SN/VTA dopamine neurons. Neural activity in the ventral striatum/nucleus accumbens itself also correlated with ventral striatal dopamine release. Additionally, high-reward-related dopamine release was associated with increased activation of limbic structures, such as the amygdala and the hippocampus. The observed correlations of reward-related mesolimbic fMRI activation and dopamine release provide evidence that dopaminergic neurotransmission plays a quantitative role in human mesolimbic reward processing. Moreover, the combined neurochemical and hemodynamic imaging approach used here opens up new perspectives for the investigation of molecular mechanisms underlying human cognition.
Learning that certain actions lead to risky rewards is critical for biological, social, and economic survival, but the precise neural mechanisms of such reward-guided learning remain unclear. Here, we show that the human nucleus accumbens plays a key role in learning about risks by representing reward value. We recorded electrophysiological activity directly from the nucleus accumbens of five patients undergoing deep brain stimulation for treatment of refractory major depression. Patients engaged in a simple reward-learning task in which they first learned stimulus-outcome associations (learning task), and then were able to choose from among the learned stimuli (choosing task). During the learning task, nucleus accumbens activity reflected potential and received reward values both during the cue stimulus and during the feedback. During the choosing task, there was no nucleus accumbens activity during the cue stimulus, but feedback-related activity was pronounced and similar to that during the learning task. This pattern of results is inconsistent with a prediction error response. Finally, analyses of cross-correlations between the accumbens and simultaneous recordings of medial frontal cortex suggest a dynamic interaction between these structures. The high spatial and temporal resolution of these recordings provides novel insights into the timing of activity in the human nucleus accumbens, its functions during reward-guided learning and decision-making, and its interactions with medial frontal cortex.
The degree to which the self is implicated in processing personal information was investigated. Subjects rated adjectives on four tasks designed to force varying kinds of encoding: structural, phonemic, semantic, and self-reference. In two experiments, incidental recall of the rated words indicated that adjectives rates under the self-reference task were recalled the best. These results indicate that self-reference is a rich and powerful encoding process. As an aspect of the human information-processing system, the self appears to function as a superordinate schema that is deeply involved in the processing, interpretation, and memory of personal information.
Literature relating to the verbal disclosure of information about oneself is reviewed. First, the role of self disclosure as a personality attribute is considered. It is suggested that the failure of researchers to find consistent relationships between self disclosure and other personality variables is due to the poor development of paper and pencil measures of disclosure which themselves do not relate to actual disclosure. It is suggested that researchers interested in personality correlates of self disclosure employ behavioral measures of disclosure. The role of self disclosure in interpersonal relationships is considered, and the principle variables that appear to facilitate disclosure are reviewed. However, it is suggested that factors inhibiting intimate disclosure, such as needs for privacy, have not been adequately treated in disclosure research. The role of self disclosure in experimenter subject, interviewer interviewee, and therapist client relationships is reviewed. Finally, the review considers the relationship between self disclosure and nonverbal aspects of communication. (Journal received: 4 Dec. 1974)
Self-disclosure plays a central role in the development and maintenance of relationships. One way that researchers have explored these processes is by studying the links between self-disclosure and liking. Using meta-analytic procedures, the present work sought to clarify and review this literature by evaluating the evidence for 3 distinct disclosure-liking effects. Significant disclosure-liking relations were found for each effect: (a) People who engage in intimate disclosures tend to be liked more than people who disclose at lower levels, (b) people disclose more to those whom they initially like, and (c) people like others as a result of having disclosed to them. In addition, the relation between disclosure and liking was moderated by a number of variables, including study paradigm, type of disclosure, and gender of the discloser. Taken together, these results suggest that various disclosure-liking effects can be integrated and viewed as operating together within a dynamic interpersonal system. Implications for theory development are discussed, and avenues for future research are suggested.
Dopaminergic neurotransmission may be involved in learning, reinforcement of behaviour, attention, and sensorimotor integration. Binding of the radioligand 11C-labelled raclopride to dopamine D2 receptors is sensitive to levels of endogenous dopamine, which can be released by pharmacological challenge. Here we use 11C-labelled raclopride and positron emission tomography scans to provide evidence that endogenous dopamine is released in the human striatum during a goal-directed motor task, namely a video game. Binding of raclopride to dopamine receptors in the striatum was significantly reduced during the video game compared with baseline levels of binding, consistent with increased release and binding of dopamine to its receptors. The reduction in binding of raclopride in the striatum positively correlated with the performance level during the task and was greatest in the ventral striatum. These results show, to our knowledge for the first time, behavioural conditions under which dopamine is released in humans, and illustrate the ability of positron emission tomography to detect neurotransmitter fluxes in vivo during manipulations of behaviour.
The external granule layer (EGL) on the dorsal surface of the developing cerebellum consists of neural progenitors originating from the rostral rhombic lip (RRL). The RRL and the EGL were thought to give rise exclusively to the granule neurons of the cerebellum (Alder et al., 1996). To study the fate of individual RRL cells, we used a retroviral library to mark clones in the chick embryo at Hamberger-Hamilton stages 10-12. RRL clones comprised the EGL and cerebellar granule cells, as expected. Surprisingly, however, as many as 50% of the RRL clones also contained cells ventral to the cerebellum proper. Ventral derivatives were found in clones with a medial origin, as well as in those with a lateral origin along the RRL. Some of the ventral progeny appeared to be in the process of migration, whereas others appeared to be differentiating neurons in the isthmus and the rostral hindbrain region, including the locus coeruleus (LC) and pontine reticular formation. Furthermore, the Phox2a marker of LC precursors was detected in the EGL within the anterior aspect of the cerebellum. A stream of cells originating in the EGL and expressing Phox2a was observed to terminate ventrally in the LC. These data demonstrate that single RRL progenitor cells are not restricted to producing only cerebellar granule cells; they produce both cerebellar granule cells and ventral derivatives, some of which become hindbrain neurons. They also suggest that some progeny of the EGL escape the cerebellum via the anterior aspect of the cerebellar peduncles, to contribute to the generation of ventral structures such as the LC.
Comparative studies have implicated the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) in the anticipation of incentives, but the relative responsiveness of this neural substrate during anticipation of rewards versus punishments remains unclear. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated whether the anticipation of increasing monetary rewards and punishments would increase NAcc blood oxygen level-dependent contrast (hereafter, "activation") in eight healthy volunteers. Whereas anticipation of increasing rewards elicited both increasing self-reported happiness and NAcc activation, anticipation of increasing punishment elicited neither. However, anticipation of both rewards and punishments activated a different striatal region (the medial caudate). At the highest reward level ($5.00), NAcc activation was correlated with individual differences in self-reported happiness elicited by the reward cues. These findings suggest that whereas other striatal areas may code for expected incentive magnitude, a region in the NAcc codes for expected positive incentive value.
We performed successive H(2)(15)O-PET scans on volunteers as they ate chocolate to beyond satiety. Thus, the sensory stimulus and act (eating) were held constant while the reward value of the chocolate and motivation of the subject to eat were manipulated by feeding. Non-specific effects of satiety (such as feelings of fullness and autonomic changes) were also present and probably contributed to the modulation of brain activity. After eating each piece of chocolate, subjects gave ratings of how pleasant/unpleasant the chocolate was and of how much they did or did not want another piece of chocolate. Regional cerebral blood flow was then regressed against subjects' ratings. Different groups of structures were recruited selectively depending on whether subjects were eating chocolate when they were highly motivated to eat and rated the chocolate as very pleasant [subcallosal region, caudomedial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), insula/operculum, striatum and midbrain] or whether they ate chocolate despite being satiated (parahippocampal gyrus, caudolateral OFC and prefrontal regions). As predicted, modulation was observed in cortical chemosensory areas, including the insula and caudomedial and caudolateral OFC, suggesting that the reward value of food is represented here. Of particular interest, the medial and lateral caudal OFC showed opposite patterns of activity. This pattern of activity indicates that there may be a functional segregation of the neural representation of reward and punishment within this region. The only brain region that was active during both positive and negative compared with neutral conditions was the posterior cingulate cortex. Therefore, these results support the hypothesis that there are two separate motivational systems: one orchestrating approach and another avoidance behaviours.
This theoretical integration of social psychology's main cognitive and affective constructs was shaped by 3 influences: (a) recent widespread interest in automatic and implicit cognition, (b) development of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, & J. L. K. Schwartz. 1998), and (c) social psychology's consistency theories of the 1950s, especially F. Heider's (1958) balance theory. The balanced identity design is introduced as a method to test correlational predictions of the theory. Data obtained with this method revealed that predicted consistency patterns were strongly apparent in the data for implicit (IAT) measures but not in those for parallel explicit (self-report) measures. Two additional not-yet-tested predictions of the theory are described.
Because most people possess positive associations about themselves, most people prefer things that are connected to the self (e.g., the letters in one's name). The authors refer to such preferences as implicit egotism. Ten studies assessed the role of implicit egotism in 2 major life decisions: where people choose to live and what people choose to do for a living. Studies 1-5 showed that people are disproportionately likely to live in places whose names resemble their own first or last names (e.g., people named Louis are disproportionately likely to live in St. Louis). Study 6 extended this finding to birthday number preferences. People were disproportionately likely to live in cities whose names began with their birthday numbers (e.g., Two Harbors, MN). Studies 7-10 suggested that people disproportionately choose careers whose labels resemble their names (e.g., people named Dennis or Denise are overrepresented among dentists). Implicit egotism appears to influence major life decisions. This idea stands in sharp contrast to many models of rational choice and attests to the importance of understanding implicit beliefs.
Researchers have long debated whether knowledge about the self is unique in terms of its functional anatomic representation within the human brain. In the context of memory function, knowledge about the self is typically remembered better than other types of semantic information. But why does this memorial effect emerge? Extending previous research on this topic (see Craik et al., 1999), the present study used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate potential neural substrates of self-referential processing. Participants were imaged while making judgments about trait adjectives under three experimental conditions (self-relevance, other-relevance, or case judgment). Relevance judgments, when compared to case judgments, were accompanied by activation of the left inferior frontal cortex and the anterior cingulate. A separate region of the medial prefrontal cortex was selectively engaged during self-referential processing. Collectively, these findings suggest that self-referential processing is functionally dissociable from other forms of semantic processing within the human brain.
Over two decades of research devoted to the writing paradigm has resulted in substantial findings that translating emotional events into words leads to profound social, psychological, and neural changes. How and why would constructing stories about important personal events be so beneficial? The chapter describes the writing paradigm used in this research, offering an overview of the research findings and examination of its historical antecedents. While the precise mechanisms through which a narrative heals are still unrealized, we review three underlying processes that might explain its power: emotional inhibition, cognitive processes, and linguistic processes that echo changes in social orientation. Most recently, advances in computerized text analysis, in addition to the rapid development of the Internet, have afforded a new lens on the psychological transformations achieved through the writing paradigm. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) is one such computerized text analysis program that captures style and content words. Originally created to better understand the language of emotional upheaval and recovery, with a focus on content and emotional valence, more recent research has focused on subtle stylistic differences in function words such as pronouns, articles, and prepositions. These "junk words" have proven to be reliable markers of demographics, biological activity, depression, life stressors, deception, and status. The chapter briefly reviews recent LIWC-based research regarding the often-overlooked stylistic components of sharing one's story.
Repeating Moore's work on conversations, but in a different part of the country, the authors attempted to throw light upon the influence of social status upon the subjects of conversation and upon the effect of situation on type of conversation. Men are most interested in business and money, and to lesser degrees in sports and amusement. Women are interested primarily in men and clothes. Persons play little part in men's conversations and a large part in women's. Business people, even outside of business hours and places of business, still talk financial matters. Students, however (if we regard school-work as "shop") do not talk shop to any great degree. Situation has an effect on conversation but not enough to obscure the fundamental trends. From Psych Bulletin 23:08:00346. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This experiment tested the social reward potential of self-disclosure and its impact on a receiver's attraction towards the sender. Further, a sender self-perception effect was tested. Just as a receiver is speculated to use the intimacy level of a disclosure as an indication of sender regard and trust, the self-perception hypothesis maintains that the sender also uses intimacy level to self-attribute liking and trust for the receiver. A forced-compliance procedure with college males was used to have a sender subject send either a high or low intimacy self-disclosure essay. Consistent with the social reward and self-perception hypotheses were measures of sender's behavior as trusting and measures of feelings during the disclosure process. General measures of liking and trust were not successful, however.
The self is a complex concept that has long been investigated in philosophy and most recently in neuroscience. The present
paper discusses some conceptual issues revolving around the self and how that match with the current empirical data. It becomes
clear that we need to abandon the traditional Cartesian-based concept of the self as entity or substance and replace it by
more process-based concept of the self in which medial cortical regions seem to play a central role.
KeywordsCortical Midline Structures-Entity versus Processes-Self
This study aims to understand the factors that influence bloggers' continuous self-disclosure from the cost-benefit perspective and the self-disclosure theory. From the ldquobenefitsrdquo aspect, it investigates the influence of self-disclosure on bloggers' self-esteem, social life, and positive affect. From the ldquocostrdquo aspect, it discusses the influence of self-disclosure on bloggers' loss of face, privacy, and negative affect. The study then discusses the influence of these factors on bloggers' subjective well-being, along with the benefits and the costs resulting from blogging. Finally, it probes into how the individuals' intention to continuously blog and the perception of subjective well-being influence their continuous self-disclosure in blogs. As a whole, compared to ldquonegative costsrdquo, the ldquopositive benefitsrdquo obtained by bloggers from self-disclosure have greater influence on their perception of subjective well-being and stimulate their intention and behavior toward continuous self-disclosure in blogs.
Dopamine was measured by microdialysis in the nucleus accumbens of freely moving rats while they experienced rewarding food, brain stimulation and drugs. Extracellular dopamine increased 37% when the animals pressed a lever for food reward. Electrical stimulation of a lateral hypothalamic feeding-reward (self-stimulation) site caused a similar increase in dopamine, with or without food. At the site in the nucleus accumbens where rats will administer amphetamine to themselves, injections of amphetamine or cocaine increased extracellular dopamine five-fold. Thus amphetamine and cocaine increase dopamine in a behavior reinforcement system which is normally activated by eating. Conversely, the release of dopamine by eating could be a factor in addiction to food.
People typically demand more to relinquish the goods they own than they would be willing to pay to acquire those goods if they did not already own them (the endowment effect). The standard economic explanation of this phenomenon is that people expect the pain of relinquishing a good to be greater than the pleasure of acquiring it (the loss aversion account). The standard psychological explanation is that people are reluctant to relinquish the goods they own simply because they associate those goods with themselves and not because they expect relinquishing them to be especially painful (the ownership account). Because sellers are usually owners, loss aversion and ownership have been confounded in previous studies of the endowment effect. In two experiments that deconfounded them, ownership produced an endowment effect but loss aversion did not. In Experiment 1, buyers were willing to pay just as much for a coffee mug as sellers demanded if the buyers already happened to own an identical mug. In Experiment 2, buyers’ brokers and sellers’ brokers agreed on the price of a mug, but both brokers traded at higher prices when they happened to own mugs that were identical to the ones they were trading. In short, the endowment effect disappeared when buyers were owners and when sellers were not, suggesting that ownership and not loss aversion causes the endowment effect in the standard experimental paradigm.
Recent studies have suggested that the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) contributes both to understanding the mental states of others and to introspecting about one's own mind. This finding has suggested that perceivers might use their own thoughts and feelings as a starting point for making inferences about others, consistent with "simulation" or "self-projection" views of social cognition. However, perceivers cannot simply assume that others think and feel exactly as they do; social cognition also must include processes that adjust for perceived differences between self and other. Recent cognitive work has suggested that such correction occurs through a process of "anchoring-and-adjustment" by which perceivers serially tune their inferences from an initial starting point based on their own introspections. Here, we used functional MRI to test two predictions derived from this anchoring-and-adjustment view. Participants (n = 64) used a Likert scale to judge the preferences of another person and to indicate their own preferences on the same items, allowing us to calculate the discrepancy between the participant's answers for self and other. Whole-brain parametric analyses identified a region in the MPFC in which activity was related linearly to this self-other discrepancy when inferring the mental states of others. These findings suggest both that the self serves as an important starting point from which to understand others and that perceivers customize such inferences by serially adjusting away from this anchor.
Although typically defined as the study of how people and groups interact, the field of social psychology comprises several disparate domains that make only indirect contributions to understanding interpersonal interaction, such as emotion, attitudes and the self. Although these various phenomena seem to have little in common, recent evidence indicates that the topics at the core of social psychology form a natural group of domains with a common functional neuroanatomy, centered on the medial prefrontal cortex. That self-referential, attitudinal, affective and other social phenomena converge on this region might reflect their shared reliance on inexact and internally generated estimates that differ from the more precise representations underlying other psychological phenomena.
We often change our decisions and judgments to conform with normative group behavior. However, the neural mechanisms of social conformity remain unclear. Here we show, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, that conformity is based on mechanisms that comply with principles of reinforcement learning. We found that individual judgments of facial attractiveness are adjusted in line with group opinion. Conflict with group opinion triggered a neuronal response in the rostral cingulate zone and the ventral striatum similar to the "prediction error" signal suggested by neuroscientific models of reinforcement learning. The amplitude of the conflict-related signal predicted subsequent conforming behavioral adjustments. Furthermore, the individual amplitude of the conflict-related signal in the ventral striatum correlated with differences in conforming behavior across subjects. These findings provide evidence that social group norms evoke conformity via learning mechanisms reflected in the activity of the rostral cingulate zone and ventral striatum.
While assuming that the reception of self-disclosing information is rewarding, it was suggested that various costs become salient when the information is highly intimate, making the overall autcome negative. 30 female Ss were exposed to a low, medium, and high disclosing other in a role-playing experiment. Ss reciprocated the intimacy level of the low and medium disclosing others. Although an obtained increase in subject intimacy with the medium to high increase in other intimacy was unexpected, reciprocity became less powerful as a determinant of responses at high intimacy levels. As predicted, there was a curvilinear relationship between self-disclosure and liking. Ss perceived the high disclosing other as significantly less well-adjusted than either the low or medium disclosers.
An important challenge in the design and analysis of event-related or single-trial functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments is to optimize statistical efficiency, i.e., the accuracy with which the event-related hemodynamic response to different stimuli can be estimated for a given amount of imaging time. Several studies have suggested that using a fixed inter-stimulus-interval (ISI) of at least 15 sec results in optimal statistical efficiency or power and that using shorter ISIs results in a severe loss of power. In contrast, recent studies have demonstrated the feasibility of using ISIs as short as 500 ms while still maintaining considerable efficiency or power. Here, we attempt to resolve this apparent contradiction by a quantitative analysis of the relative efficiency afforded by different event-related experimental designs. This analysis shows that statistical efficiency falls off dramatically as the ISI gets sufficiently short, if the ISI is kept fixed for all trials. However, if the ISI is properly jittered or randomized from trial to trial, the efficiency improves monotonically with decreasing mean ISI. Importantly, the efficiency afforded by such variable ISI designs can be more than 10 times greater than that which can be achieved by fixed ISI designs. These results further demonstrate the feasibility of using identical experimental designs with fMRI and electro-/magnetoencephalography (EEG/MEG) without sacrificing statistical power or efficiency of either technique, thereby facilitating comparison and integration across imaging modalities.
The brain circuitry processing rewarding and aversive stimuli is hypothesized to be at the core of motivated behavior. In this study, discrete categories of beautiful faces are shown to have differing reward values and to differentially activate reward circuitry in human subjects. In particular, young heterosexual males rate pictures of beautiful males and females as attractive, but exert effort via a keypress procedure only to view pictures of attractive females. Functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3 T shows that passive viewing of beautiful female faces activates reward circuitry, in particular the nucleus accumbens. An extended set of subcortical and paralimbic reward regions also appear to follow aspects of the keypress rather than the rating procedures, suggesting that reward circuitry function does not include aesthetic assessment.
The aim of this study was to determine the brain regions involved in anticipation of a primary taste reward and to compare these regions to those responding to the receipt of a taste reward. Using fMRI, we scanned human subjects who were presented with visual cues that signaled subsequent reinforcement with a pleasant sweet taste (1 M glucose), a moderately unpleasant salt taste (0.2 M saline), or a neutral taste. Expectation of a pleasant taste produced activation in dopaminergic midbrain, posterior dorsal amygdala, striatum, and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). Apart from OFC, these regions were not activated by reward receipt. The findings indicate that when rewards are predictable, brain regions recruited during expectation are, in part, dissociable from areas responding to reward receipt.
A recent flurry of neuroimaging and decision-making experiments in humans, when combined with single-unit data from orbitofrontal cortex, suggests major additions to current models of reward processing. We review these data and models and use them to develop a specific computational relationship between the value of a predictor and the future rewards or punishments that it promises. The resulting computational model, the predictor-valuation model (PVM), is shown to anticipate a class of single-unit neural responses in orbitofrontal and striatal neurons. The model also suggests how neural responses in the orbitofrontal-striatal circuit may support the conversion of disparate types of future rewards into a kind of internal currency, that is, a common scale used to compare the valuation of future behavioral acts or stimuli.