Dataset Information

An association between biased impression updating and relationship facilitation: A behavioral and fMRI investigation.

ABSTRACT: Is ingroup bias associated with any benefit for maintaining close relationships? We examined the link between biased impression updating for ingroup members (i.e., friends) and relationship maintenance, as measured by the number of friends participants reported having (Studies 1 and 2). We also investigated the underlying neural basis of this possible effect, focusing on activity in the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ), a region of the social brain involved in moral updating (Study 2). Specifically, we tested whether selectively discounting negative information about close others, manifested in reduced impression updating, and indexed by reduced RTPJ activity, is related to maintaining close relationships. In Study 1, after imagining a friend and a stranger performing different positive and negative behaviors, participants who were reluctant to update how close they felt to their friend (friend-closeness) reported having more friends in real life. In Study 2, participants were led to believe that a friend and a stranger gave money to them or took money away from them, while they were in the scanner. Participants who engaged in less negative updating of friends versus strangers reported having more friends. Participants who engaged in less friend-closeness updating also showed reduced RTPJ activity when their friend took money from them, and this neural pattern was associated with reports of having more friends. Together, these findings suggest that selectively discounting close others' negative behavior is linked to maintaining close relationships, indicating a potential social benefit of ingroup bias.

SUBMITTER: Park B

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7453880 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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An association between biased impression updating and relationship facilitation: A behavioral and fMRI investigation.

Park BoKyung B Young Liane L

Journal of experimental social psychology 20191123

Is ingroup bias associated with any benefit for maintaining close relationships? We examined the link between biased impression updating for ingroup members (i.e., friends) and relationship maintenance, as measured by the number of friends participants reported having (Studies 1 and 2). We also investigated the underlying neural basis of this possible effect, focusing on activity in the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ), a region of the social brain involved in moral updating (Study 2). Spe ...[more]

PMID: 32863427

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Project description:While future imagination is largely considered to be a cognitive process grounded in default mode network activity, studies have shown that future imagination recruits regions in both default mode and frontoparietal control networks. In addition, it has recently been shown that the ability to imagine the future is associated with cognitive flexibility, and that tasks requiring cognitive flexibility result in increased coupling of the default mode network with frontoparietal control and salience networks. In the current study, we investigated the neural correlates underlying the association between cognitive flexibility and future imagination in two ways. First, we experimentally varied the degree of cognitive flexibility required during future imagination by manipulating the disparateness of episodic details contributing to imagined events. To this end, participants generated episodic details (persons, locations, objects) within three social spheres; during fMRI scanning they were presented with sets of three episodic details all taken from the same social sphere (Congruent condition) or different social spheres (Incongruent condition) and required to imagine a future event involving the three details. We predicted that, relative to the Congruent condition, future simulation in the Incongruent condition would be associated with increased activity in regions of the default mode, frontoparietal and salience networks. Second, we hypothesized that individual differences in cognitive flexibility, as measured by performance on the Alternate Uses Task, would correspond to individual differences in the brain regions recruited during future imagination. A task partial least squares (PLS) analysis showed that the Incongruent condition resulted in an increase in activity in regions in salience networks (e.g. the insula) but, contrary to our prediction, reduced activity in many regions of the default mode network (including the hippocampus). A subsequent functional connectivity (within-subject seed PLS) analysis showed that the insula exhibited increased coupling with default mode regions during the Incongruent condition. Finally, a behavioral PLS analysis showed that individual differences in cognitive flexibility were associated with differences in activity in a number of regions from frontoparietal, salience and default-mode networks during both future imagination conditions, further highlighting that the cognitive flexibility underlying future imagination is grounded in the complex interaction of regions in these networks.

Project description:Individuals prone to anxiety and depression often report beliefs and make judgements about themselves that are more negative than those reported by others. We use computational modeling of a richly naturalistic task to disentangle the role of negative priors versus negatively biased belief updating and to investigate their association with different dimensions of Internalizing psychopathology. Undergraduate participants first provided profiles for a hypothetical tech internship. They then viewed pairs of other profiles and selected the individual they would prefer to work alongside out of each pair. In a subsequent phase of the experiment, participants made judgments about their relative popularity as hypothetical internship partners both before any feedback and after each of 20 items of feedback revealing whether or not they had been selected as the preferred teammate from a given pairing. Scores on latent factors of general negative affect, anxiety-specific affect and depression-specific affect were estimated using participants’ self-report scores on standardized measures of anxiety and depression together with factor loadings from a bifactor analysis conducted previously. Higher scores on the depression-specific factor were linked to more negative prior beliefs but were not associated with differences in belief updating. In contrast, higher scores on the anxiety-specific factor were associated with a negative bias in belief updating but no difference in prior beliefs. These findings indicate that, to at least some extent, distinct processes may impact the formation of belief priors and in-the-moment belief updating and that these processes may be differentially disrupted in depression and anxiety. Future directions for enquiry include examination of the possibility that prior beliefs biases in depression might reflect generalization from prior experiences or global schema whereas belief updating biases in anxiety might be more situationally specific. Author summary Pessimistic beliefs are at the core of both depression and anxiety. How do these beliefs form and is this process similar or different for depression and anxiety? Here, we investigate these questions in a naturalistic experimental setting, in which undergraduate participants competed against one another to be selected by their peers in a hypothetical tech internship and were asked to judge their popularity relative to other participants. Importantly, participants were asked to make these judgements before any feedback and after receiving a series of pieces of feedback about whether or not they had been selected over other specific students. This design, along with computational modelling of the formation of participants’ beliefs, allowed us to establish that anxiety is associated with pessimistic beliefs that arise through negatively biased belief updating–i.e., the incorporation of negative information more readily into one’s beliefs than positive information–while depression is associated with pessimistic prior beliefs–that is, beliefs that are formed before receiving explicit feedback and likely on the basis of prior experiences or pre-existing schema.

Dataset Information

An association between biased impression updating and relationship facilitation: A behavioral and fMRI investigation.

Publications

An association between biased impression updating and relationship facilitation: A behavioral and fMRI investigation.

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