Abstract
Abstract. Abnormal social or reward processing is associated with several mental disorders. Although most studies examining reward processing have focused on monetary rewards, recent research also has tested neural reactivity to social rewards (e.g., positive social feedback). However, the majority of these studies only include two feedback valences (e.g., acceptance, rejection). Yet, social evaluation is rarely binary (positive vs. negative) and people often give “on the fence” or neutral evaluations of others. Processing of this type of social feedback may be ambiguous and impacted by factors such as psychopathology, self-esteem, and prior experiences of rejection. Thus, the present study probed the reward positivity (RewP), P300, and late positive potential (LPP) following acceptance, rejection, and “on the fence” [between acceptance and rejection] feedback in undergraduate students (n = 45). Results indicated that the RewP showed more positive amplitudes following acceptance compared to both rejection and “on the fence” feedback, and the RewP was larger (i.e., more positive) following rejection relative to “on the fence” feedback. In contrast, the P300 did not differ between rejection and “on the fence” feedback, and both were reduced compared to acceptance. The LPP was blunted in response to rejection relative to acceptance and “on the fence” feedback (which did not differ from each other). Exploratory analyses demonstrated that greater self-reported rejection sensitivity was associated with a reduced LPP to acceptance. Taken together, these findings suggest that the neural systems underlying the RewP, P300, and LPP may evaluate “on the fence” social feedback differently, and that individuals high on rejection sensitivity may exhibit reduced attention toward and elaborative processing of social acceptance.
References
2016). Control your anger! The neural basis of aggression regulation in response to negative social feedback. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11, 712–720. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsv154
(2017). The neural and behavioral correlates of social evaluation in childhood. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 24, 107–117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.02.007
(2015). Reduction in ventral striatal activity when anticipating a reward in depression and schizophrenia: A replicated cross-diagnostic finding. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1280. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01280
(2015). Identifying differences between depressed adolescent suicide ideators and attempters. Journal of Affective Disorders, 186, 127–133. https://doi.org/j.jad.2015.06.031
(2016). Self‐referential processing in adolescents: Stability of behavioral and ERP markers. Psychophysiology, 53, 1398–1406. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.12686
(1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497
(2014). A single-trial estimation of the feedback-related negativity and its relation to BOLD responses in a time-estimation task. Journal of Neuroscience, 34, 3005–3012. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUR-OSCI.3684-13
(2015). Role of contingency in striatal response to incentive in adolescents with anxiety. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 15, 155–168. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-014-0307-6
(2009). Rejection sensitivity and disruption of attention by social threat cues. Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 1064–1072. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2009.07.007
(2012). An electrophysiological monetary incentive delay (e-MID) task: A way to decompose the different components of neural response to positive and negative monetary reinforcement. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 209, 40–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2012.05.015
(2004). Reactions to acceptance and rejection: Effects of level and sequence of relational evaluation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 14–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-1031(03)00064-7
(2015). Unexpected acceptance? Patients with social anxiety disorder manifest their social expectancy in ERPs during social feedback processing. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01745
(2011). Ventral striatal and medial prefrontal BOLD activation is correlated with reward-related electrocortical activity: A combined ERP and fMRI study. NeuroImage, 57, 1608–1616. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.05.037
(2000). Brain potentials in affective picture processing: Covariation with autonomic arousal and affective report. Biological Psychology, 52, 95–111. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0301-0511(99)00044-7
(2017). Social pain and social gain in the adolescent brain: A common neural circuitry underlying both positive and negative social evaluation. Scientific Reports, 7, 42010. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep42010
(2015). Cardiac and electro-cortical concomitants of social feedback processing in women. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10, 1506–1514. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsv039
(2018). A comparison of the electrocortical response to monetary and social reward. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 13, 247–255. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsy006
(2003). Peer rejection and social information-processing factors in the development of aggressive behavior problems in children. Child Development, 74, 374–393. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.7402004
(1996). Implications of rejection sensitivity for intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 1327–1343. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.6.1327
(2017). Neural responses to social and monetary reward in early adolescence and emerging adulthood. Psychophysiology, 54, 1786–1799. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.12957
(2018). Psychometric properties of neural responses to monetary and social rewards across development. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 132, 311–322. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2018.01.011
(2009). Statistical power analyses using G*Power 3.1: Tests for correlation and regression analyses. Behavior Research Methods, 41, 1149–1160. https://doi.org/10.3758/BRM.41.4.1149
(2006). Event-related potential studies of language and emotion: Words, phrases, and task effects. Progress in Brain Research, 156, 185–203. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0079-6123(06)56009-1
(2011). Emotion and the processing of symbolic gestures: An event-related brain potential study. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 6, 109–118. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsq022
(2018). Adolescents’ neural response to social reward and real-world emotional closeness and positive affect. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 18, 705–717. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-018-0598-0
(2015). Event-related EEG responses to anticipation and delivery of monetary and social reward. Biological Psychiatry, 109, 10–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2015.04.005
(2009). Where’s the fun in that? Broadening the focus on reward function in depression. Biological Psychiatry, 66, 199–200. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.05.001
(2009). Differentiating neural responses to emotional pictures: Evidence from temporal-spatial PCA. Psychophysiology, 46, 521–530. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.2009.00796.x
(2011). Event-related potential activity in the basal ganglia differentiates rewards from nonrewards: Temporospatial principal components analysis and source localization of the feedback negativity. Human Brain Mapping, 32, 2207–2216. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.21182
(1999). Interacting minds – a biological basis. Science, 286, 1692–1695. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.286.5445.1692
(1983). A new method for off-line removal of ocular artifact. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 55, 468–484. https://doi.org/10.1016/0013-4694(83)90135-9
(2017). Valence and magnitude ambiguity in feedback processing. Brain and Behavior, 7, e00672. https://doi.org/10.1002/brb3.672
(2010). Anxiety and outcome evaluation: The good, the bad and the ambiguous. Biological Psychology, 85, 200–206. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.07.001
(2011). Motivated expectations of positive feedback in social interactions. The Journal of Social Psychology, 151, 455–477. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2010.503722
(2008). The devil you know: Neuroticism predicts neural response to uncertainty. Psychological Science, 19(10), 962–967. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02183.x
(2006). The good, the bad and the neutral: Electrophysiological responses to feedback stimuli. Brain Research, 1105, 93–101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2005.12.015
(2014). The feedback-related negativity reflects “more or less” prediction error in appetitive and aversive conditions. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 8, 108. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2014.00108
(2002). The core of loneliness: Lack of pleasurable engagement – more so than painful disconnection – predicts social impairment, depression onset, and recovery from depressive disorders among adolescents. Journal of Personality Assessment, 79, 472–491. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327752JPA7903_05
(2015). Best practices for event-related potential research in clinical populations. Biological Psychiatry, 1, 110–115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2015.11.007
(2001). Drug addiction, dysregulation of reward, and allostasis. Neuropsychopharmacology, 24, 97–129. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0893-133X(00)00195-0
(2014). Electrocortical reactivity to social feedback in youth: A pilot study of the Island Getaway task. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 10, 140–147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2014.08.008
(2017). Social processing in early adolescence: Associations between neurophysiological, self-report, and behavioral measures. Biological Psychology, 128, 55–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2017.07.001
(2013). The feedback negativity reflects favorable compared to non-favorable outcomes based on global, not local, alternatives. Psychophysiology, 50, 134–138. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.12002
(2013). The Personality Inventory for DSM-5 – Brief form (PID-5-BF) – Adult. Retrieved from http://www.psychiatry.org/practice/dsm/dsm5/online-assessment-measures
(2016). Oscillatory profiles of positive, negative and neutral feedback stimuli during adaptive decision making. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 107, 37–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2016.06.018
(2009). Neural correlates of social exclusion during adolescence: Understanding the distress of peer rejection. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 4, 143–157. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsp007
(2016). The effects of reward magnitude on reward processing: An averaged and single trial event-related potential study. Biological Psychology, 118, 154–160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2016.06.002
(2017). Considering ERP difference scores as individual difference measures: Issues with subtraction and alternative approaches. Psychophysiology, 54, 114–122. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.12664
(2004). What’s in a (neutral) face? Personality disorders, attachment styles, and the appraisal of ambiguous social cues. Journal of Personality Disorders, 18, 320–336. https://doi.org/10.1521/pedi.18.4.320.40344
(1999). Life events and depression in adolescence: Relationship loss as a prospective risk factor for first onset of major depressive disorder. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 108, 606–614. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.108.4.606
(2013). The psychometric properties of the late positive potential during emotion processing and regulation. Brain Research, 1516, 66–75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2013.04.018
(2012). Interpretation of ambiguous social scenarios in social phobia and depression: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Biological Psychology, 89, 387–397. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.12.001
(2016). Blunted neural response to rewards as a prospective predictor of the development of depression in adolescent girls. American Journal of Psychiatry, 173, 1223–1230. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2016.15121524
(1994). Psychometric theory (3rd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
(1971). The assessment and analysis of handedness: The Edinburgh Inventory. Neuropsychologia, 9, 97–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/0028-3932(71)90067-4
(1989). Spherical splines for scalp potential and current density mapping. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 72, 184–187. https://doi.org/10.1016/0013-4694(89)90180-6
(2007). Updating P3b: An integrative theory of P3a and P3b. Clinical Neurophysiology, 118, 2128–2148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2007.04.019
(2015). A neural reward prediction error revealed by a meta-analysis of ERPs using great grand averages. Psychological Bulletin, 141, 213–235. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000006
(2007). Self-esteem discrepancies and defensive reactions to social feedback. International Journal of Psychology, 42, 174–183. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207590601068134
(1988). Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 193–210. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.103.2.193
(1911). Animal intelligence: Experimental studies. New York, NY: The Macmillan.
(2001). If you can’t join them, beat them: Effects of social exclusion on aggressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 1058–1069. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.81.6.1058
(2017). Why don’t you like me? Midfrontal theta power in response to unexpected peer rejection feedback. NeuroImage, 146, 474–483. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.08.045
(2011). ERPs associated with monitoring and evaluation of monetary reward and punishment in children with ADHD. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 52, 942–953. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2010.02352.x
(2017). Development of monetary and social reward processes. Scientific Reports, 7, 11128. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11558-6
(2017). Abnormal neural responses to feedback in depressed adolescents. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 126, 19–31. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000228
(2011). The late positive potential predicts subsequent interference with target processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 2994–3007. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2011.21630
(2016). Blunted reward processing in remitted melancholic depression. Clinical Psychological Science, 5, 14–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702616633158
(2008). Interpreting neutral faces as threatening is a default mode for socially anxious individuals. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 117, 680–685. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.117.3.680
(