Conditioned social dominance threat: observation of others’ social dominance biases threat learning

Abstract

Social groups are organized along dominance hierarchies, which determine how we respond to threats posed by dominant and subordinate others. The persuasive impact of these dominance threats on mental and physical well-being has been well described but it is unknown how dominance rank of others bias our experience and learning in the first place. We introduce a model of conditioned social dominance threat in humans, where the presence of a dominant other is paired with an aversive event. Participants first learned about the dominance rank of others by observing their dyadic confrontations. During subsequent fear learning, the dominant and subordinate others were equally predictive of an aversive consequence (mild electric shock) to the participant. In three separate experiments, we show that participants' eye-blink startle responses and amygdala reactivity adaptively tracked dominance of others during observation of confrontation. Importantly, during fear learning dominant vs subordinate others elicited stronger and more persistent learned threat responses as measured by physiological arousal and amygdala activity. Our results characterize the neural basis of learning through observing conflicts between others, and how this affects subsequent learning through direct, personal experiences.

The social hippocampus

“…Although this study focused on the role of the amygdala, the hippocampus is an integral component of the network supporting threat learning (Ji & Maren, ; Lang et al, ; Lonsdorf, Haaker, & Kalisch, ) and has been hypothesized to play a role in observational learning (Olsson & Phelps, ). Consistent with this view, pairing of an aversive outcome with an image of a dominant other (learned by observing face‐to‐face confrontations) led to stronger and more persistent defensive responses than pairing with a subordinate, and activity in the anterior hippocampus to both face images and aversive outcomes as a function of learned dominance has been observed (Haaker, Molapour, & Olsson, ).…”

Social Fear Learning: from Animal Models to Human Function

“…In humans, knowledge about the relative level of dominance of other individuals can be quickly acquired through observing the outcome of their dyadic confrontations. These observational learning experiences are then affecting subsequent learning from personal (FC) experiences about the same individuals whose images are used as CSs paired with the electric shock, so that conditioned threat responses are stronger to dominant versus submissive individuals [51]. …”

The face value of feedback: Facial behavior is shaped by goals and punishments during interaction with dynamic faces

“…Shock calibration and practice phase. A work-up procedure was used to calibrate the shocklevel for each participant to find a level that was subjectively experienced as slightly uncomfortable and not painful (Golkar, Selbing, Flygare, Ohman, & Olsson, 2013;Haaker, Molapour, & Olsson, 2016).…”