Neural responses to social acceptance predict behavioral adjustments following peer feedback in the context of a real‐time social interaction task

Abstract

Strong social connections are important predictors of both mental and physical health. The ability to effectively process social feedback from other people and adjust behavior accordingly is a critical part of skillfully navigating the social landscape. However, relatively few studies have considered neural systems driving these behavioral adjustments. In this study, 254 participants engaged in a peer interaction game while electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. In this game, participants repeatedly “interact” with a small set of virtual peers over a series of rounds, in which they provide feedback to their peers, and receive feedback from them in turn. A reward‐sensitive event‐related potential called the Reward Positivity (RewP) was extracted from the EEG following positive feedback from peers, and multilevel modeling was used to examine whether the RewP moderated associations between the feedback participants received during the task and their subsequent behavior. Participants were more likely to accept coplayers who had previously voted to accept them, and to like coplayers who had voted to accept them on the same round. A larger RewP was associated with a stronger tendency to modify behavior following feedback from peers, both in terms of voting behavior and expressions of liking. These data suggest that initial neural responsiveness to reward within 300 ms of positive social feedback may guide social behaviors. Thus, this line of research represents an important step toward a more complete understanding of the ways in which neural responses to feedback are involved in human social behaviors.

Neural response to rewarding social feedback in never-depressed adolescent girls and their mothers with remitted depression: Associations with multiple risk indices.

“…A blunted social reward response might specifically predict interpersonal stress if it disincentivizes social interactions, facilitates social withdrawal, and impedes the ability to maintain healthy relationships (Auerbach et al, 2014; Davey et al, 2008). Social skills may suffer in those with low social reward sensitivity if they are less attuned to social cues (Auerbach et al, 2014), and there is evidence that those with a smaller social RewP engage with others in a less reciprocal manner (Weinberg et al, 2021). Therefore, the cross-sectional association between the RewP and stress observed in the mother sample should be examined as a dynamic association in future longitudinal studies.…”

“…Participants complete 51 trials over six rounds, receiving approximately 50% acceptance and 50% rejection feedback. For a more detailed description of this version of the task, see the and Weinberg and colleagues (2021).…”

“…The component used to measure reward sensitivity in the island getaway task was the Reward Positivity (RewP), a frontocentral positivity maximal to positive relative to negative feedback, typically peaking between 325 ms to 375 ms in this task (Ethridge et al, 2017; Kujawa et al, 2017; Pegg et al, 2019). Because the waveforms elicited by feedback in this task are complex and involve overlapping componentry (Ethridge et al, 2017), we used a temporospatial principal component analysis (PCA) to empirically isolate the RewP from overlapping components (Ethridge et al, 2017; Weinberg et al, 2021). See the for further information about the PCA.…”

Understanding Trajectories to Anxiety and Depression: Neural Responses to Errors and Rewards as Indices of Susceptibility to Stressful Life Events

“…One avenue that we have pursued is the possibility that a smaller RewP in response to positive feedback might less effectively guide adaptive behaviors, particularly interpersonal behaviors (Weinberg et al, 2021), thereby leading to greater interpersonal stress. Supporting this idea, one of our recent studies demonstrated that women with a history of depression show a blunted RewP in response to social acceptance, and that this blunted RewP is associated with decreased relationship quality outside of the lab.…”

Interpersonal context and desired emotional closeness in neural response to negative visual stimuli: Preliminary findings

“…Future studies should also examine whether trait desired emotional closeness plays a role in neural response to social reward. Real‐world positive interpersonal interactions are related to the recruitment of social circuitry during laboratory social rewards in fMRI studies (Flores et al., 2018; Morningstar et al., 2019), as well as a reward‐sensitive event‐related potential in response to a social reward in an electroencephalogram (EEG) study (Weinberg et al., 2021). Examining the role of desired emotional closeness during other prosocial emotional processes would help to further elucidate the role of desired emotional closeness in affective neural response.…”