Abstract
Social comparison orientation (SCO), the tendency to compare oneself with others, is universal, varies widely across individuals, and predicts important life and health outcomes. However, the neural mechanism underlying individual differences in SCO is still not well-understood. In the present study, we identified intrinsic neural markers of SCO in healthy young adults (n = 42) using a multimodal neuroimaging approach that included diffusion tensor imaging and resting-state functional MRI data. We found that higher SCO was associated with weaker structural and functional connectivity (SC, FC) strengths between the ventral striatum and the medial prefrontal cortex, which are core regions of the brain reward network. Additionally, individual SCO was negatively associated with neural fluctuations in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), part of the frontoparietal network, and positively with FC between the IPS and anterior insula/amygdala cluster. This finding was further confirmed by the observation of independently-defined, large-scale, inter-network FC between the frontoparietal network and cingulo-opercular network. Taken together, these results provide novel evidence for intrinsic functional and structural connectivity of the human brain associated with individual differences in SCO.
Highlights
Social comparison—comparing one’s own opinions and abilities with those of others—is a constant and ubiquitous experience that occurs throughout life
The Social comparison orientation (SCO) scores were negatively associated with both structural connectivity (SC) (r = −0.350, p = 0.027) and functional connectivity (FC) (r = −0.479, p = 0.001) between the right ventral striatum (VS) and the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), whereas no correlation was found in the left hemisphere (SC: r = 0.044, p = 0.787; FC: r = 0.054, p = 0.734) (Figure 1)
Voxel-level whole-brain RS-fMRI analysis revealed that the fALFF value in the right intraparietal sulcus (IPS) was negatively associated with SCO score (Figure 2A)
Summary
Social comparison—comparing one’s own opinions and abilities with those of others—is a constant and ubiquitous experience that occurs throughout life. Individuals vary in their tendency to engage in social comparison, and a person’s tendency to compare oneself with others is referred to as social comparison orientation (SCO). This can be measured using the Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure (INCOM) [3]. Neural Mechanisms of Social Comparison susceptibility to mental illness such as depression [7]. The neural markers that may underlie individual differences in SCO have been only sparsely investigated
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