Encoding Praise and Criticism During Social Evaluation Alters Interactive Responses in the Mentalizing and Affective Learning Networks.

Shan Gao,Shuxia Yao,Yayuan Geng,Jia Li,Yunxiao Zhou

doi:10.3389/fnins.2018.00611

Abstract

Verbal communication with evaluative characters of different emotional valence has a considerable impact on the extent to which social relations are facilitated or undermined. Here using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated how the brain acts in response to social praise and criticism, leading to differential affective judgments. We engaged thirty men and women in a task associating sex-balanced, neutral faces with praising or criticizing comments targeting others or objects. A whole-brain analysis revealed that criticism as compared to praise enhanced the activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), particularly its dorsal portion, whereas the right amygdala displayed an opposite pattern of changes. Comments on others relative to objects increased the reactivity in the left posterior superior temporal sulcus and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) such that both praise and criticism of others produced stronger activation in these two regions than their object-targeted counterparts. The interaction of valence and target was identified in the mPFC with greater reactivity in the contrasts of criticism vs. praise in the social context and others- vs. object-targeted criticism. Comments also modulated the functional connectivity of prior activated regions with the left temporoparietal junction, bilateral caudate and left PCC/precuneus showing reduced connectivity in response to social criticism but greatly strengthened connectivity for social praise as compared to non-social counterparts. These neural effects subsequently led to altered likeability ratings for the faces. Neither behavioral nor neural effects observed were influenced by the gender of participants. Taken together, our findings suggest a fundamental interactive role of the mentalizing and affective learning networks in differential encoding of individuals associated with praising or criticizing others, leading to learning of valenced traits and subsequent approach or avoidance responses in social interactions.

Highlights

Language has been proposed to function as a context that shapes human perception (Barrett et al, 2007)
Faces paired with criticism were rated the least likeable (M ± SE, 3.817 ± 0.149), those paired with praise the most (5.939 ± 0.152), and those paired with both criticism and praise ranked in the middle (4.958 ± 0.124)
The overall likeability of individuals commenting on non-social objects (5.074 ± 0.114) was higher than that of those targeting other people (4.735 ± 0.105)

Summary

Introduction

Language has been proposed to function as a context that shapes human perception (Barrett et al, 2007). Verbal information conveying different affective value may promote inference of character traits, affect how this person is judged (Bliss-Moreau et al, 2008; Baron et al, 2011; Schwarz et al, 2013), and alter the balance between approach and avoidance behavior (Todorov et al, 2008) In everyday communication, those who tend to criticize often may display their negative (e.g., anti-social) attributes and lead to others disfavoring and avoiding them socially; in contrast, praising comments may play the opposite role (Blair et al, 2008; Gao et al, 2016; Miedl et al, 2016). We did not have further predictions on whether the responses of this region would be more intense to social criticism or to social praise since previous findings in this regard remained contradictory such that some showed stronger responses to negative (Perry et al, 2012) whilst some to positive social information (Harris et al, 2007)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion