scholarly journals Delineating the social valuation network in adolescents

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 1159-1166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Poornima Kumar ◽  
Angela Pisoni ◽  
Erin Bondy ◽  
Rebecca Kremens ◽  
Paris Singleton ◽  
...  

Abstract Adolescents strive for peer approval, and an increased sensitivity to peers’ opinions is normative. However, among vulnerable adolescents, peer evaluation can be detrimental, contributing to affective disorders. It is, therefore, critical to improve our understanding of neural underpinnings of peer evaluation. Prior research has investigated averaged neural responses to peer acceptance or rejection, neglecting to probe trial-by-trial computations that mirror real-time updating of daily activities. In non-social decision-making, a common neural valuation system centered on the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has emerged, which evaluates different reward types on a common scale to guide choices. However, it is unclear whether the mPFC also tracks complex social scenarios involving peer feedback. To address this gap, we acquired fMRI data from 55 healthy adolescents during the Chatroom Task, which probes peer evaluation, and implemented a computational approach to characterize trial-by-trial social value, thereby allowing us to interrogate the neural correlates of social value. Consistent with our hypothesis, social value signals were encoded in the mPFC. Interestingly, analyses also revealed a wider social-specific valuation network including the precuneus and amygdala. Understanding how adolescents make social decisions and neural markers associated with it, may, ultimately, help us clarify promising targets for intervention.

2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (52) ◽  
pp. 16012-16017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve W. C. Chang ◽  
Nicholas A. Fagan ◽  
Koji Toda ◽  
Amanda V. Utevsky ◽  
John M. Pearson ◽  
...  

Social decisions require evaluation of costs and benefits to oneself and others. Long associated with emotion and vigilance, the amygdala has recently been implicated in both decision-making and social behavior. The amygdala signals reward and punishment, as well as facial expressions and the gaze of others. Amygdala damage impairs social interactions, and the social neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) influences human social decisions, in part, by altering amygdala function. Here we show in monkeys playing a modified dictator game, in which one individual can donate or withhold rewards from another, that basolateral amygdala (BLA) neurons signaled social preferences both across trials and across days. BLA neurons mirrored the value of rewards delivered to self and others when monkeys were free to choose but not when the computer made choices for them. We also found that focal infusion of OT unilaterally into BLA weakly but significantly increased both the frequency of prosocial decisions and attention to recipients for context-specific prosocial decisions, endorsing the hypothesis that OT regulates social behavior, in part, via amygdala neuromodulation. Our findings demonstrate both neurophysiological and neuroendocrinological connections between primate amygdala and social decisions.


2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (5) ◽  
pp. 1619-1624 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Strombach ◽  
Bernd Weber ◽  
Zsofia Hangebrauk ◽  
Peter Kenning ◽  
Iliana I. Karipidis ◽  
...  

Most people are generous, but not toward everyone alike: generosity usually declines with social distance between individuals, a phenomenon called social discounting. Despite the pervasiveness of social discounting, social distance between actors has been surprisingly neglected in economic theory and neuroscientific research. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the neural basis of this process to understand the neural underpinnings of social decision making. Participants chose between selfish and generous alternatives, yielding either a large reward for the participant alone, or smaller rewards for the participant and another individual at a particular social distance. We found that generous choices engaged the temporoparietal junction (TPJ). In particular, the TPJ activity was scaled to the social-distance–dependent conflict between selfish and generous motives during prosocial choice, consistent with ideas that the TPJ promotes generosity by facilitating overcoming egoism bias. Based on functional coupling data, we propose and provide evidence for a biologically plausible neural model according to which the TPJ supports social discounting by modulating basic neural value signals in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex to incorporate social-distance–dependent other-regarding preferences into an otherwise exclusively own-reward value representation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 243-249
Author(s):  
Ronja Weiblen ◽  
Melanie Jonas ◽  
Sören Krach ◽  
Ulrike M. Krämer

Abstract. Research on the neural mechanisms underlying Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS) has mostly concentrated on abnormalities in basal ganglia circuits. Recent alternative accounts, however, focused more on social and affective aspects. Individuals with GTS show peculiarities in their social and affective domain, including echophenomena, coprolalia, and nonobscene socially inappropriate behavior. This article reviews the experimental and theoretical work done on the social symptoms of GTS. We discuss the role of different social cognitive and affective functions and associated brain networks, namely, the social-decision-making system, theory-of-mind functions, and the so-called “mirror-neuron” system. Although GTS affects social interactions in many ways, and although the syndrome includes aberrant social behavior, the underlying cognitive, affective, and neural processes remain to be investigated.


2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benoît Testé ◽  
Samantha Perrin

The present research examines the social value attributed to endorsing the belief in a just world for self (BJW-S) and for others (BJW-O) in a Western society. We conducted four studies in which we asked participants to assess a target who endorsed BJW-S vs. BJW-O either strongly or weakly. Results showed that endorsement of BJW-S was socially valued and had a greater effect on social utility judgments than it did on social desirability judgments. In contrast, the main effect of endorsement of BJW-O was to reduce the target’s social desirability. The results also showed that the effect of BJW-S on social utility is mediated by the target’s perceived individualism, whereas the effect of BJW-S and BJW-O on social desirability is mediated by the target’s perceived collectivism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Zachary Nowak ◽  
Bradley M. Jones ◽  
Elisa Ascione

This article begins with a parody, a fictitious set of regulations for the production of “traditional” Italian polenta. Through analysis of primary and secondary historical sources we then discuss the various meanings of which polenta has been the bearer through time and space in order to emphasize the mutability of the modes of preparation, ingredients, and the social value of traditional food products. Finally, we situate polenta within its broader cultural, political, and economic contexts, underlining the uses and abuses of rendering foods as traditional—a process always incomplete, often contested, never organic. In stirring up the past and present of polenta and placing it within both the projects of Italian identity creation and the broader scholarly literature on culinary tradition and taste, we emphasize that for so-called traditional foods to be saved, they must be continually reinvented.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Zhou ◽  
Xiangyi Li

We consider cross-space consumption as a form of transnational practice among international migrants. In this paper, we develop the idea of the social value of consumption and use it to explain this particular form of transnationalism. We consider the act of consumption to have not only functional value that satisfies material needs but also a set of nonfunctional values, social value included, that confer symbolic meanings and social status. We argue that cross-space consumption enables international migrants to take advantage of differences in economic development, currency exchange rates, and social structures between countries of destination and origin to maximize their expression of social status and to perform or regain social status. Drawing on a multisited ethnographic study of consumption patterns in migrant hometowns in Fuzhou, China, and in-depth interviews with undocumented Chinese immigrants in New York and their left-behind family members, we find that, despite the vulnerabilities and precarious circumstances associated with the lack of citizenship rights in the host society, undocumented immigrants manage to realize the social value of consumption across national borders and do so through conspicuous consumption, reciprocal consumption, and vicarious consumption in their hometowns even without being physically present there. We conclude that, while cross-space consumption benefits individual migrants, left-behind families, and their hometowns, it serves to revive tradition in ways that fuel extravagant rituals, drive up costs of living, reinforce existing social inequality, and create pressure for continual emigration.


1981 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Larry L. Naylor

Basically, this paper concentrates on two major ideas: 1) archaeologists have not utilized informants as much as they could or perhaps should in site survey; and, 2) the use of serious amateur archaeologists as sources of information on sites and site locations may be more efficient and effective than traditional site survey techniques that tend to emphasize only on-ground visitations. The paper stresses the idea that survey results can be improved upon given the development of increased sensitivity to the social/cultural environment in which the survey is to be undertaken and by broadening survey skills to encompass the identification, locating and interviewing of local informants.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3075
Author(s):  
Miguel Ángel Martín Valmayor ◽  
Beatriz Duarte Monedero ◽  
Luis A. Gil-Alana

In this paper, we examine the concept of the social balance sheet (SBS) and its evolution in corporate social reports that large companies have to issue today in their yearly statements. The SBS allows companies to evaluate their compliance with corporate social responsibility during a specific period and quantify its level of accomplishment. From a methodological perspective, this research analyzed the information that should be contained in the SBS report comparing economic value added (EVA) with other social value added statements (SVA), analyzing also in detail the case of Spain’s Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) bank as one of the pioneers in offering social reports. Along with this study, their metrics following EVA were recalculated and a more academic SVA statement was proposed for this specific case.


Author(s):  
Xinmu Hu ◽  
Xiaoqin Mai

Abstract Social value orientation (SVO) characterizes stable individual differences by an inherent sense of fairness in outcome allocations. Using the event-related potential (ERP), this study investigated differences in fairness decision-making behavior and neural bases between individuals with prosocial and proself orientations using the Ultimatum Game (UG). Behavioral results indicated that prosocials were more prone to rejecting unfair offers with stronger negative emotional reactions compared with proselfs. ERP results revealed that prosocials showed a larger P2 when receiving fair offers than unfair ones in a very early processing stage, whereas such effect was absent in proselfs. In later processing stages, although both groups were sensitive to fairness as reflected by an enhanced medial frontal negativity (MFN) for unfair offers and a larger P3 for fair offers, prosocials exhibited a stronger fairness effect on these ERP components relative to proselfs. Furthermore, the fairness effect on the MFN mediated the SVO effect on rejecting unfair offers. Findings regarding emotional experiences, behavioral patterns, and ERPs provide compelling evidence that SVO modulates fairness processing in social decision-making, whereas differences in neural responses to unfair vs. fair offers as evidenced by the MFN appear to play important roles in the SVO effect on behavioral responses to unfairness.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document