More of myself: Manipulating interoceptive awareness by heightened attention to bodily and narrative aspects of the self

Decreased interoceptive accuracy following social exclusion

“…However, Hess and Pickett (2010) highlight that by disengaging from the self, the individual can simultaneously avoid the distress brought about by social failure, while freeing attentional resources, which can then be allocated to others and the external world, with the aim to increase affiliation and improve the likelihood of social success in the future. As past research shows that conditions characterized by heightened self-focus are associated with enhanced HPA (Ainley et al, 2012;Ainley et al, 2013), it is likely that the decrease in HPA following social exclusion observed in the present study reflects decreased self-focus and increased other-focus following the exclusion. Of course, it should be noted that in the present study we did not measure other-focus.…”

“…Player 2 was the participant, and the photograph of the participant was not visible on the screen during the game in order not to increase participants self-focus, which has been found to enhance heartbeat perception accuracy (Ainley et al, 2012(Ainley et al, , 2013. In the included condition the tosses were distributed equally among the three players with the participant receiving the ball on one third of the tosses (10 tosses in total), while in the excluded condition the participant received the ball 2 times, at the very beginning of the game (once A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT INTEROCEPTION AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION 6 from Player 1 and once from Player 2), after which the participant was excluded from the game while the ball was passed only between Player 1 and Player 3 for the remainder of tosses (28 tosses).…”

Startle eye-blink modulation by facial self-resemblance and current mood

“…Previous findings point to a potential feedback-loop between bodily sensations and processes underlying visual self-recognition (Tsakiris, 2008), which might even extend to an interplay between interoceptive sensitivity and self-awareness (Ainley et al, 2013). However, no evidence for any kind of cardiac modulation could be provided in the present study, suggesting that visceral afferent feedback does not play a role in the processing of self-resemblance.…”

“…The finding that the accuracy of counting one's heartbeat can be improved by simultaneous presentation of one's own face (as well as through exposure to self-related words; Ainley et al, 2013) also points to an intrinsic connection between the processing of bodily signals, on the one hand, and self-face recognition, on the other. Therefore, we made use of naturally occurring changes in afferent baroreceptor activity as a model of intraindividual alterations in visceral sensations, by presenting pictorial stimuli locked to different phases of the cardiac cycle.…”

Feeling me, feeling you? Links between the Dark Triad and internal body awareness

“…Thus, it is possible that narcissism relates to an enhanced awareness of one's internal body. In fact, recent experiments have found that participants had increased interoception ability when they were asked to concentrate on their own mirror image (Ainley, Tajadura-Jiménez, Fotopoulou, & Tsakiris, 2012), self-related words, or a photograph of the self (Ainley, Maister, Brokfeld, Farmer, & Tsakiris, 2013). It seems that activating aspects of the self is associated with being more in tune with the internal workings of the body.…”