The interactive effect of social pain and executive functioning on aggression: an fMRI experiment

Abstract

Social rejection often increases aggression, but the neural mechanisms underlying this effect remain unclear. This experiment tested whether neural activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula in response to social rejection predicted greater subsequent aggression. Additionally, it tested whether executive functioning moderated this relationship. Participants completed a behavioral measure of executive functioning, experienced social rejection while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging and then completed a task in which they could aggress against a person who rejected them using noise blasts . We found that dACC activation and executive functioning interacted to predict aggression. Specifically, participants with low executive functioning showed a positive association between dACC activation and aggression, whereas individuals with high executive functioning showed a negative association. Similar results were found for the left anterior insula. These findings suggest that social pain can increase or decrease aggression, depending on an individual's regulatory capability.

Prefrontal recruitment during social rejection predicts greater subsequent self-regulatory imbalance and impairment: neural and longitudinal evidence

“…Participants were socially accepted then rejected via the Cyberball task (as in Chester et al, 2014; Williams, Cheung, & Choi, 2000). Cyberball was implemented as a three block-design (60 seconds per block).…”

The push of social pain: Does rejection’s sting motivate subsequent social reconnection?

“…To do so, participants experienced social acceptance and then rejection from the same two people while undergoing functional neuroimaging (fMRI), were given an opportunity to aggress against one of their rejecters, and then were given an opportunity to affiliate with their other rejecter through interpersonal proximity. Social pain’s association with aggressive behavior is reported in another manuscript (Chester et al, 2014) and the aggression data is excluded from this manuscript for several reasons. First, aggressive and affiliative behaviors are increasingly viewed as distinct phenomena, not polar opposites (Krueger, Hicks, & McGue, 2001; McGinley & Carlo, 2007).…”

“…Specifically, activation of both the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the anterior insula have been reliably associated with social rejection (e.g., Chester et al, 2014; Eisenberger, 2015; Eisenberger, Gable, & Lieberman, 2007; Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003; Kawamoto et al, 2012). This well-replicated observation of neural pain signatures during rejection led to the coining of the term social pain , the aversive, affective response to social injury (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2004; MacDonald & Leary, 2005).…”

Greater positive schizotypy relates to reduced N100 activity during rejection scenes

“…The dACC is involved in experiencing social pain due to rejection across multiple paradigms (Eisenberger, 2012;Premkumar 2012), such that greater distress is associated with lower dACC activity during rejection scenes in high RS individuals (Kross, Egner, Ochsner, Hirsch, & Downey, 2007). Furthermore, the increased rejection-related dACC activity when participants are subjected to direct aggression is moderated by poorer Stroop performance (Chester et al, 2013), suggesting that poor early attention increases the effect that rejection-induced pain has on subsequent social pain. Moreover, N100 modulation by Stroop performance indicates early selective attention (David et al, 2011).…”