Abstract
Social feedback, such as praise or critique, profoundly impacts our mood and social interactions. It is unknown, however, how parents experience praise and critique about their child and whether their mood and neural responses to such ‘vicarious’ social feedback are modulated by parents’ perceptions of their child. Parents (n = 60) received positive, intermediate and negative feedback words (i.e. personality characteristics) about their adolescent child during a magnetic resonance imaging scan. After each word, parents indicated their mood. After positive feedback their mood improved and activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus increased. Negative feedback worsened parents’ mood, especially when perceived as inapplicable to their child, and increased activity in anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and precuneus. Parents who generally viewed their child more positively showed amplified mood responses to both positive and negative feedback and increased activity in dorsal striatum, inferior frontal gyrus and insula in response to negative feedback. These findings suggest that vicarious feedback has similar effects and engages similar brain regions as observed during feedback about the self and illustrates this is dependent on parents’ beliefs of their child’s qualities and flaws. Potential implications for parent–child dynamics and children’s own self-views are discussed.
Highlights
Social feedback, such as praise or criticism, provides valuable insights into the way one is viewed by others (van Schie et al, 2018)
Positive compared to negative vicarious feedback increased activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)/precuneus
Compared to intermediate feedback, receiving positive vicarious feedback did not elicit any of the Contrast Brain regions
Summary
Social feedback, such as praise or criticism, provides valuable insights into the way one is viewed by others (van Schie et al, 2018). It is a common experience to receive social feedback about their child, for example during conversations with teachers, sport coaches, clinicians, friends or family members Pillet-Shore, 2012, 2015). It is to be expected that parents tend to empathize with their child’s feelings when their child is being socially judged or evaluated, given their genetic ties and their large effort of investment (Brummelman et al, 2015). Parents may feel personally judged, as the feedback potentially touches their own identity, values, parenting.
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