Dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex Mediates Rapid Evaluations Predicting the Outcome of Romantic Interactions

Abstract

Humans frequently make real-world decisions based on rapid evaluations of minimal information; for example, should we talk to an attractive stranger at a party? Little is known, however, about how the brain makes rapid evaluations with real and immediate social consequences. To address this question, we scanned participants with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they viewed photos of individuals that they subsequently met at real-life "speed-dating" events. Neural activity in two areas of dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), paracingulate cortex, and rostromedial prefrontal cortex (RMPFC) was predictive of whether each individual would be ultimately pursued for a romantic relationship or rejected. Activity in these areas was attributable to two distinct components of romantic evaluation: either consensus judgments about physical beauty (paracingulate cortex) or individualized preferences based on a partner's perceived personality (RMPFC). These data identify novel computational roles for these regions of the DMPFC in even very rapid social evaluations. Even a first glance, then, can accurately predict romantic desire, but that glance involves a mix of physical and psychological judgments that depend on specific regions of DMPFC.

What kind of love is love at first sight? An empirical investigation

“…The trait is highly desirable in a partner (Eastwick et al, ) and is literally assessed at first sight (Olson & Marshuetz, ; Willis & Todorov, ). Accordingly, it has been shown to be a strong predictor of partner choice in speed‐dating studies (Asendorpf et al, ; Cooper et al, ; Kurzban & Weeden, ) and of romantic attraction at zero acquaintance (Olderbak et al, ). As our data show, some even report LAFS with attractive people they see for the first time.…”

“…It is an important trait in a partner that can be assessed very quickly. Accordingly, studies show that physical attraction at zero acquaintance predicts the outcomes of speed‐dating sessions very well (Cooper, Dunne, Furey, & O'Doherty, ; Kurzban & Weeden, ). Initial physical attraction is a frequent theme in LAFS narratives (Aron et al, 2008; Aron, Dutton, Aron, & Iverson, ; Chung, ; Naumann, ; Swami, ; Tennov, 1998).…”

The MatchNMingle Dataset: A Novel Multi-Sensor Resource for the Analysis of Social Interactions and Group Dynamics In-the-Wild During Free-Standing Conversations and Speed Dates

“…Social science researchers have collected various forms of unimodal and multimodal data to test various hypotheses in speed-dating studies, including photos ( [12], [20]), video ( [53], [62]) and audio ( [38], [47]). These studies employed ratings of media given by participants or trained raters, with the exceptions of [38], who transcribed interactions and subjected the transcripts to text analysis software, and [47] who transcribed interactions and extracted features from the audio, both for a qualitative analysis.…”

Implicit Bias, Reinforcement Learning, and Scaffolded Moral Cognition

“…For example, when we use linguistic labels and other minimal types of information to guide inferences about the unobserved features of group members, this process must initially depend on the use of abstract representations, and perhaps even model-based computations. This is likely the reason why such tasks typically recruit activity in regions of the medial PFC that are commonly associated with abstract social reasoning (Cooper et al 2012;Mitchel, McCrae, & Banaji 2006). But connections between the amygdala and mPFC allow these more abstract impressions to rapidly be off-loaded onto model-free systems.…”