The Link between Social Cognition and Self-referential Thought in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex

Mitchell, James; Banaji, Mahzarin R.; Macrae, C. Neil

doi:10.1162/0898929055002418

Cited by 721 publications

(514 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…This analysis also demonstrated that trait information about unfamiliar others selectively engages the dorsal part of the mPFC, whereas the ventral part is implicated when making trait inferences about familiar others or the self [see also Mitchell et al, 2005b]. Knowledge on social scripts involves both parts of the mPFC.…”

Section: Enduring Traits and Scriptsmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…Given that close others are often experienced as very similar to the self, it is perhaps quite plausible that judgments of close others is located in the same brain area as judgments about the self (see later). Similarity to the self was parametrically analyzed by Mitchell et al (2005b) and their results indicated that when others are judged similar to the self, this strongly activates the vmPFC (see also Table I). Self-references: A plethora of studies explored all sorts of inferences about the self, from pure trait ratings and permanent descriptions that are applicable to the self, thinking about one's hopes or memories about the self, to involvement of the self in viewing of one's face, or in interaction games.…”

Section: Identifying the Traits Of Others And Selfmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social cognition and the brain: A meta‐analysis

Overwalle

2008

Human Brain Mapping

1,492

102

1,300

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This meta-analysis explores the location and function of brain areas involved in social cognition, or the capacity to understand people's behavioral intentions, social beliefs, and personality traits. On the basis of over 200 fMRI studies, it tests alternative theoretical proposals that attempt to explain how several brain areas process information relevant for social cognition. The results suggest that inferring temporary states such as goals, intentions, and desires of other people-even when they are false and unjust from our own perspective-strongly engages the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). Inferring more enduring dispositions of others and the self, or interpersonal norms and scripts, engages the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), although temporal states can also activate the mPFC. Other candidate tasks reflecting general-purpose brain processes that may potentially subserve social cognition are briefly reviewed, such as sequence learning, causality detection, emotion processing, and executive functioning (action monitoring, attention, dual task monitoring, episodic memory retrieval), but none of them overlaps uniquely with the regions activated during social cognition. Hence, it appears that social cognition particularly engages the TPJ and mPFC regions. The available evidence is consistent with the role of a TPJ-related mirror system for inferring temporary goals and intentions at a relatively perceptual level of representation, and the mPFC as a module that integrates social information across time and allows reflection and representation of traits and norms, and presumably also of intentionality, at a more abstract cognitive level.

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Section: Enduring Traits and Scriptsmentioning

confidence: 85%

Section: Identifying the Traits Of Others And Selfmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social cognition and the brain: A meta‐analysis

Overwalle

2008

Human Brain Mapping

1,492

102

1,300

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To test Closeness with an out-group member is correlated with less bias and weaker fear responses to out-group faces (Olsson, Ebert, Banaji, & Phelps, 2005). Given the tendency to process close others in regions of the brain associated with processing the self (Mitchell, Banaji, & Macrae, 2005), reductions in implicit racial preferences may be moderated by associations with the self. Accordingly, this intervention aimed to activating self-referential processing in association with outgroup faces in Study 1.…”

Section: Background Design and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing implicit racial preferences: I. A comparative investigation of 17 interventions.

Lai¹,

Marini

Lehr

et al. 2014

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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482

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Many methods for reducing implicit prejudice have been identified, but little is known about their relative effectiveness. We held a research contest to experimentally compare interventions for reducing the expression of implicit racial prejudice. Teams submitted seventeen interventions that were tested an average of 3.70 times each in four studies (total N = 17,021), with rules for revising interventions between studies. Eight of seventeen interventions were effective at reducing implicit preferences for Whites compared to Blacks, particularly ones that provided experience with counterstereotypical exemplars, used evaluative conditioning methods, and provided strategies to override biases. The other nine interventions were ineffective, particularly ones that engaged participants with others' perspectives, asked participants to consider egalitarian values, or induced a positive emotion. The most potent interventions were ones that invoked high self-involvement or linked Black people with positivity and White people with negativity. No intervention consistently reduced explicit racial preferences. Furthermore, intervention effectiveness only weakly extended to implicit preferences for Asians and Hispanics. Abstract = 160 words Keywords = attitudes, racial prejudice, implicit social cognition, malleability, Implicit Association Test September 9, 2016 update: We updated this manuscript to fix several minor reporting errors that we have learned about since the publication of the manuscript in August 2014. For a summary of these updates, please see pages 67 and 68. Authors' note:This project was supported by a gift from Project Implicit. Lai and Hawkins are consultants and Nosek is an officer of Project Implicit, Inc., a non-profit organization that includes in its mission "To develop and deliver methods for investigating and applying phenomena of implicit social cognition, including especially phenomena of implicit bias based on age, race, gender or other factors. Thoughts and feelings outside of conscious awareness shape social perception, judgment and action (Bargh, 1999;Devine, 1989;Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Nowhere has this idea been more explored than in studies of racial prejudice in which people report egalitarian racial attitudes, but also implicitly prefer Whites compared to Blacks (Devine, 1989;Dovidio, Kawakami, Johnson, Johnson, & Howard, 1997;Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995;. These studies have been influential because implicit racial preferences predict behaviors such as negative interracial contact (McConnell & Leibold, 2001), biases in medical decision-making (Green et al., 2007), and hiring discrimination (Rooth, 2010).From the hundreds of studies conducted, we can conclude that implicit preferences (1) are related to, but distinct from, explicit preferences (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995;, (2) are constructed through different mechanisms than explicit preferences (De Houwer, Teige-Mocigemba, Spruyt, & Moors, 2009;Ranganath & Nosek, 2008;Ratliff & Nosek, 2011;Rydell & McConnell, 2006), ...

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“…These theories suggest that people use their own mental states to infer others' beliefs and behaviors (e.g., Hoch, 1987;Krueger, 1998;Marks & Miller, 1987;Nickerson, 1999;Ross, Greene, & House, 1977). Recently, several researchers have argued that this is true mostly for similar and close others (e.g., Ames 2004aAmes , 2004bMitchell, Banaji, & Macrae, 2005;Schul & Vinokur, 2000). For example, recent work by Ames has shown that higher levels of perceived similarity to a target were associated with greater projection and less stereotyping (Ames, 2004a;2004b).…”

Section: Projectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interpersonal similarity as a social distance dimension: Implications for perception of others’ actions

Liviatan

Trope

Liberman

2008

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

513

364

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Building on the assumption that interpersonal similarity is a form of social distance, the current research examines the manner in which similarity influences the representation and judgment of others' actions. On the basis of a construal level approach, we hypothesized that greater levels of similarity would increase the relative weight of subordinate and secondary features of information in judgments of others' actions. The results of four experiments showed that compared to corresponding judgments of a dissimilar target, participants exposed to a similar target person identified that person's actions in relatively more subordinate means-related rather than superordinate ends-related terms (Experiment 1), perceived his or her actions to be determined more by feasibility and less by desirability concerns (Experiment 3), and gave more weight to secondary aspects in judgments of the target's decisions (Experiment 2) and performance (Experiment 4). Implications for the study of interpersonal similarity, as well as social distance in general, are discussed. Keywords interpersonal similarity; social distance; construal level theory; social judgment; mental representations Imagine a close friend giving a job talk. Now imagine a stranger giving the same job talk. What type of representation would you construct for this action? Would you represent it in terms of an abstract superordinate goal (for instance, communicating one's research ideas) or rather bring to mind the subordinate, concrete means by which to achieve the goal (such as presenting power point slides)? And would your representation include primary and central aspects related to this action (for instance, the research question) or more secondary information (such as the slides' background design)?

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The Link between Social Cognition and Self-referential Thought in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex

Cited by 721 publications

References 51 publications

Social cognition and the brain: A meta‐analysis

Social cognition and the brain: A meta‐analysis

Reducing implicit racial preferences: I. A comparative investigation of 17 interventions.

Interpersonal similarity as a social distance dimension: Implications for perception of others’ actions

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