How embarrassing! The behavioral and neural correlates of processing social norm violations

Abstract

Social norms are important for human social interactions, and violations of these norms are evaluated partly on the intention of the actor. Here, we describe the revised Social Norm Processing Task (SNPT-R), a paradigm enabling the study of behavioral and neural responses to intended and unintended social norm violations among both adults and adolescents. We investigated how participants (adolescents and adults, n = 87) rate intentional and unintentional social norm violations with respect to inappropriateness and embarrassment, and we examined the brain activation patterns underlying the processing of these transgressions in an independent sample of 21 adults using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). We hypothesized to find activation within the medial prefrontal cortex, temporo-parietal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex in response to both intentional and unintentional social norm violations, with more pronounced activation for the intentional social norm violations in these regions and in the amygdala. Participants’ ratings confirmed the hypothesis that the three types of stories are evaluated differently with respect to intentionality: intentional social norm violations were rated as the most inappropriate and most embarrassing. Furthermore, fMRI results showed that reading stories on intentional and unintentional social norm violations evoked activation within the frontal pole, the paracingulate gyrus and the superior frontal gyrus. In addition, processing unintentional social norm violations was associated with activation in, among others, the orbitofrontal cortex, middle frontal gyrus and superior parietal lobule, while reading intentional social norm violations was related to activation in the left amygdala. These regions have been previously implicated in thinking about one’s self, thinking about others and moral reasoning. Together, these findings indicate that the SNPT-R could serve as a useful paradigm for examining social norm processing, both at the behavioral and the neural level.

Imaging the socially-anxious brain: recent advances and future prospects

“…Furthermore, we employed two fMRI paradigms to explore the potential of brain responses as SAD endophenotypes. Using the first paradigm, the Social Norm Processing Task (revised version 141 ; based on work by 142,143), we found evidence for hyperreactivity of the medial PFC and frontal pole in response to unintentional social norm violations as a neurobiological endophenotype of social anxiety 144 . Second, we investigated responses to neutral faces.…”

Stability or Plasticity? – A Hierarchical Allostatic Regulation Model of Medial Prefrontal Cortex Function for Social Valuation

“…First, the rmPFC activity is often associated with different types of self-conscious emotions that can occur depending on whether one's behavior is appropriate to social standards or not (Edelmann, 1987;Leary and Kowalski, 1990;Keltner and Buswell, 1997;Tracy and Robins, 2004;Tangney et al, 2007). For example, in many studies using emotion-evoking scenarios, rmPFC activity has been linked to subjective experience of various selfconscious emotions such as embarrassment (Takahashi et al, 2004;Burnett et al, 2009;Bas-Hoogendam et al, 2017), shame (Michl et al, 2012), guilt (Shin et al, 2000;Takahashi et al, 2004;Zahn et al, 2008;Burnett et al, 2009;Basile et al, 2011;Wagner et al, 2011;Fourie et al, 2014;Gilead et al, 2016), and pride (Zahn et al, 2008;Gilead et al, 2016).…”

Not intended, still embarrassed: Social anxiety is related to increased levels of embarrassment in response to unintentional social norm violations

“…In the SNPT-R, the three types of stories were written in second-person, in order to let the ratings reflect how participants think about their own SN violations. Data of this sample on the SNPT-R have been published previously [25].…”