Brain mechanisms of social comparison and their influence on the reward system

Own body perception, and differentiating and comparing one's body to another person's body, are common cognitive functions that have relevance for self‐identity and social interactions. In several psychiatric conditions, including anorexia nervosa, body dysmorphic disorder, gender dysphoria, and autism spectrum disorder, self and own body perception, as well as aspects of social communication are disturbed. Despite most of these conditions having skewed prevalence sex ratios, little is known about whether the neural basis of own body perception differs between the sexes. We addressed this question by investigating brain activation using functional magnetic resonance imaging during a Body Perception task in 15 male and 15 female healthy participants. Participants viewed their own body, bodies of same‐sex, or opposite‐sex other people, and rated the degree that they appeared like themselves. We found that men and women did not differ in the pattern of brain activation during own body perception compared to a scrambled control image. However, when viewing images of other bodies of same‐sex or opposite‐sex, men showed significantly stronger activations in attention‐related and reward‐related brain regions, whereas women engaged stronger activations in striatal, medial‐prefrontal, and insular cortices, when viewing the own body compared to other images of the opposite sex. It is possible that other body images, particularly of the opposite sex, may be of greater salience for men, whereas images of own bodies may be more salient for women. These observations provide tentative neurobiological correlates to why women may be more vulnerable than men to conditions involving own body perception.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Sex differences in own and other body perception

Burke

Majid

Manzouri

et al. 2018

“…This may suggest that the ACC is a common active region associated with social interactions. The dorsal ACC also plays a key role in the processing of prediction errors and expectation violation (Kedia et al, 2014;van der Molen et al, 2017), which may corroborate the common currency hypothesis since individuals viewing others as beneficial may reflect a "worse than T A B L E 3 Significant regions of activation for monetary comparisons split across upward and downward directions and significant regions of activation for social status comparisons split across upward and downward directions (Simmons et al, 2011;Späti et al, 2014), and selfinitiated actions in social exclusion trials (Wang et al, 2019). Addi- be associated with social threat and being intimidated by higher ranking others.…”

Section: Common Activity For Downward and Upward Comparisonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There has been growing interest in exploring the neurological underpinnings of social comparisons using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). For example, neurobiological reviews on social comparisons have suggested a possible role of the reward system and the frontal-parietal system (Chiao, 2010;Kedia, Mussweiler, & Linden, 2014). Convergent evidence from multiple neuroimaging studies on social hierarchy reveal a network of brain regions associated with social status (i.e., ventral striatum, regions of the prefrontal cortex, inferior parietal lobe, and portions of the occipital lobe; Chiao et al, 2008Chiao et al, , 2009Zink et al, 2008;Freeman, Rule, Adams Jr, & Ambady, 2009;Marsh, Blair, Jones, Soliman, & Blair, 2009;Bault, Joffily, Rustichini, & Coricelli, 2011; see Chiao, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Upward and downward comparisons across monetary and status domains

Yaple

2020

The ability to accurately infer one's place with respect to others is crucial for social interactions. Individuals tend to evaluate their own actions and outcomes by comparing themselves to others in either an upward or downward direction. We performed two fMRI meta-analyses on monetary (n = 39; 1,231 participants) and status (n = 23; 572 participants) social comparisons to examine how domain and the direction of comparison can modulate neural correlates of social hierarchy. Overall, both status and monetary downward comparisons activated regions associated with reward processing (striatum) while upward comparisons yielded loss-related activity. These findings provide partial support for the common currency hypothesis in that downward and upward comparisons from both monetary and status domains resemble gains and losses, respectively. Furthermore, status upward and monetary downward comparisons revealed concordant orbitofrontal cortical activity, an area associated with evaluating the value of goals and decisions implicated in both lesion and empirical fMRI studies investigating social hierarchy. These findings may offer new insight into how people relate to individuals with higher social status and how these social comparisons deviate across monetary and social status domains.

“…In addition, we explored several other sources, including (1) direct searches on the names of frequently occurring authors, (2) the bibliography and citation indices of the pre-selected articles, and (3) the reference r Luo et al r r 442 r list of related reviews [Aoki et al, 2015;Du and Chang, 2015;Falk et al, 2012;Fehr and Camerer, 2007;Insel and Fernald, 2004;Izuma, 2013;Jankowski and Takahashi, 2014;Kedia et al, 2014b;Rilling and Sanfey, 2011;Ruff and Fehr, 2014;Swencionis and Fiske, 2014;Tricomi and Sullivan-Toole, 2015]. The search resulted into 119 potential studies, which were further assessed according to the following criteria: (i) subjects were free from psychiatric or neurological diagnoses and neuropharmacological influence; (ii) subjects performed tasks in the context of social comparison; (iii) fMRI was used as the imaging modality; (iv) whole-brain generallinear-model-based analyses (rather than region of interest [ROI] analyses) were applied; (v) statistical models for contrasts of downward/upward social comparison or relevant parametric analyses were reported; and (vi) activations were presented in a standardized stereotaxic space (Talairach or MNI).…”

Section: Literature Search and Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social comparison in the brain: A coordinate‐based meta‐analysis of functional brain imaging studies on the downward and upward comparisons

Luo

Eickhoff

Hétu

et al. 2017

Social comparison is ubiquitous across human societies with dramatic influence on people's well-being and decision making. Downward comparison (comparing to worse-off others) and upward comparison (comparing to better-off others) constitute two types of social comparisons that produce different neuropsychological consequences. Based on studies exploring neural signatures associated with downward and upward comparisons, the current study utilized a coordinate-based meta-analysis to provide a refinement of understanding about the underlying neural architecture of social comparison. We identified consistent involvement of the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex in downward comparison and consistent involvement of the anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in upward comparison. These findings fit well with the "common-currency" hypothesis that neural representations of social gain or loss resemble those for non-social reward or loss processing. Accordingly, we discussed our findings in the framework of general reinforcement learning (RL) hypothesis, arguing how social gain/loss induced by social comparisons could be encoded by the brain as a domain-general signal (i.e., prediction errors) serving to adjust people's decisions in social settings. Although the RL account may serve as a heuristic framework for the future research, other plausible accounts on the neuropsychological mechanism of social comparison were also acknowledged. Hum Brain Mapp 39:440-458, 2018.V C 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.