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BACKGROUND: The prosocial compound ± 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) is an amphetamine derivative that has shown promise as an adjunct to psychotherapy in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. MDMA increases positive responses to social images, and it has been suggested that the ability of MDMA to positively bias social perception may underlie its therapeutic efficacy as a psychotherapy adjunct. However, the effect of the compound on affective responses to positive or negative social feedback has not been tested. AIMS: In this study, we aimed to test the effects of MDMA compared to placebo and the prototypical stimulant, methamphetamine (MA), on responses to positive and negative social feedback. METHODS: This was a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial (NCT03790618), comparing the effects of two doses of MDMA (0.75 mg/kg, 1.5 mg/kg) to both placebo and MA (20 mg) on responses to a personalized social feedback task, similar to a dating app, in healthy adult volunteers ages 18-40 (N = 36, 18 women, 18 men). RESULTS/OUTCOMES: The high dose of MDMA increased positive affective responses to social feedback. CONCLUSIONS/INTERPRETATIONS: These findings suggest one process by which MDMA may facilitate social connection. Further work is needed to understand how MDMA affects responses to more generalized types of social feedback and to understand these effects in clinical populations.

Introduction: Social ties play a crucial role in determining the health and wellbeing of individuals. However, it remains unclear whether the capacity to process social information distinguishes well-connected individuals from their less-connected peers. This study explored how an individual's social network structure influences the dynamic processing of group norms, utilizing event-related potentials (ERPs). Methods: The study involved 43 university students from the same class who participated in a social network study measuring metrics such as real-life social network size, in-degree, out-degree, and betweenness centrality. Subsequently, 27 students participated in an EEG study assessing their willingness to engage in various exercises after being exposed to peer feedback or in its absence. Results: The results indicate that an individual's social network structure is significantly associated with the dynamic processing of group norms. Notably, well-connected individuals exhibited larger ERP amplitudes linked to feedback (e.g., N200, P300, and LPP), greater functional segregation within the brain network (e.g., local efficiency and clustering coefficient), and enhanced synchronization within frontal area and across different brain areas. Discussion: These findings highlight that well-connected individuals possess enhanced sensitivity and efficiency in processing social information, pointing to potential areas for further research on the factors influencing social network evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collective intelligence challenges are often entangled with collective action problems. For example, voting, rating, and social innovation are collective intelligence tasks that require costly individual contributions. As a result, members of a group often free ride on the information contributed by intrinsically motivated people. Are intrinsically motivated agents the best participants in collective decisions? We embedded a collective intelligence task in a large-scale, virtual world public good game and found that participants who joined the information system but were reluctant to contribute to the public good (free riders) provided more accurate evaluations, whereas participants who rated frequently underperformed. Testing the underlying mechanism revealed that a negative rating bias in free riders is associated with higher accuracy. Importantly, incentivizing evaluations amplifies the relative influence of participants who tend to free ride without altering the (higher) quality of their evaluations, thereby improving collective intelligence. These results suggest that many of the currently available information systems, which strongly select for intrinsically motivated participants, underperform and that collective intelligence can benefit from incentivizing free riding members to engage. More generally, enhancing the diversity of contributor motivations can improve collective intelligence in settings that are entangled with collective action problems.

The relationship between external feedback and cognitive and neurophysiological performance has been extensively investigated in social neuroscience. However, few studies have considered the role of positive and negative external social feedback on electroencephalographic (EEG) and moderate stress response. Twenty‐six healthy adults underwent a moderately stressful job interview consisting of a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test. After each preparation, feedback was provided by an external committee, ranging from positive to negative with increasing impact on subjects. Stress response was measured by analysing response times (RTs) during the speech phase, while cognitive performance was assessed using a Stroop‐like task before and after the test. Results indicate that RTs used to deliver the final speeches with negative feedback were significantly lower compared with those used for the initial speech with positive feedback. Moreover, a generalized improvement in Stroop‐like task performance was observed in the post‐SST compared with the pre‐SST. Consistent with behavioural results, EEG data indicated greater delta, theta, and alpha band responses in right prefrontal and left central areas, and for delta and theta bands, also in parietal areas in response to positive feedback compared with aversive‐neutral feedback, highlighting greater cognitive effort required by the former. Conversely, an increase in these bands in right and left temporal and left occipital areas was observed following negative and aversive feedback, indicative of an adaptive response to stress and emotion‐regulatory processes. These findings suggest that negative social feedback in moderately stressful and noncritical conditions could contribute to improving individual cognitive performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) has been associated with decision-making deficits, yet such deficits may be context dependent, particularly emotional state and social context. Reinforcement learning models offer an avenue to pinpoint decision-making impairments. The current study used reinforcement learning models to examine whether feedback type (social vs. nonsocial) or emotional state (neutral vs. negative) influence the association between BPD and decision making. Adults (N = 131) with a range of BPD symptoms completed a diagnostic interview and a computerized learning task after neutral and negative emotion inductions. We examined accuracy, learning rate, and exploration. We conducted linear models to examine the association between BPD criteria, feedback type, and emotional state on learning parameters and learning accuracy. We found that the negative emotion condition was associated with greater exploration, particularly for those with elevated BPD features. Furthermore, elevated BPD features were associated with impaired accuracy when aiming to avoid loss. A 3-way interaction between BPD, emotion, and feedback indicated that, for people with higher BPD features, learning performance was further impaired when receiving social feedback in the negative emotion condition. Several limitations warrant mention, including a relatively homogenous sample, possible co-occurring diagnoses, and methodological consideration with the learning task. The present study underscored the link between BPD and learning impairments. Amplified learning alterations under negative social contexts have important implications for identifying optimal venues to teach new skills (of relevance to treatment) for those with BPD. • Negative emotions associated with greater exploration, or more random decisions, for those with elevated BPD features • BPD features associated with impaired accuracy when aiming to avoid punishment • Decision making is further impaired for people with BPD features when distressed and receiving social feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractOccupational exoskeletons constitute a new assistive technology for industrial workers. In the social context of the workplace, colleagues are likely to react to the noticeable appearance of these devices. Drawing on established technology acceptance theories and recent exoskeleton research, we addressed the following issues: (1) What is the effect of co-worker feedback and self-perceived attractiveness on workers’ intention to use an exoskeleton over time? And (2) do these variables predict intention to use beyond perceived usefulness and ease of use? We examined these questions in a one-week diary study with 22 industrial workers. They tested passive exoskeletons during their regular work for six consecutive days and completed a short questionnaire including evaluations of perceived usefulness, ease of use, attractiveness, and social feedback received on a daily basis. The collected data were analyzed using hierarchical linear models (HLM). Results showed that usefulness (but not ease of use) significantly predicted intention to use an exoskeleton. Over and above, self-perceived attractiveness significantly affected initial intention to use, whereas the effects of social feedback unfolded over time. Our study contributes to a better understanding of the social dynamics experienced by users of wearable technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated the effect of social feedback on the experiences of our actions and the outcomes (e.g. temporal binding between an action and its outcome, reflecting individuals' causal beliefs modulated by their agency judgments). In Experiment 1a, participants freely decided (voluntary action) their action timing to cause an outcome, which was followed by social feedback. A larger temporal binding (TB) following negative vs. positive events was found. This effect appeared neither in the random context where the causal belief between the action and outcome was absent (Experiment 1b) nor in the involuntary action context where participants' action timing was instructed (Experiment 1c). Experiments 2a and 2b examined the effect when the action-outcome was occluded, including reversing the order of outcome and feedback in Experiment 2b. Experiments 3a and 3b investigated the effect with only social feedback or only action-outcome presented. Results revealed that the effect found in Experiment 1 was driven by social feedback and independent of the availability of the action-outcome and the position of social feedback. Our findings demonstrate a stronger temporal integration of the action and its outcome following negative social feedback, reflecting fluctuations in sense of agency when faced with social feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social stimuli seem to be processed more easily and efficiently than non-social stimuli. The current study tested whether social feedback stimuli improve reward learning in a probabilistic reward task (PRT), in which one response option is usually rewarded more often than the other via presentation of non-social reward stimuli. In a pre-registered online study with 305 participants, 75 participants were presented with a non-social feedback stimulus (a star) and information about gains, which is typically used in published PRT studies. Three other groups (with 73–82 participants each) were presented with one of three social feedback stimuli: verbal praise, an attractive happy face, or a "thumbs up"-picture. The data were analysed based on classical signal detection theory, drift diffusion modelling, and Bayesian analyses of null effects. All PRT variants yielded the expected behavioural preference for the more frequently rewarded response. There was no processing advantage of social over non-social feedback stimuli. Bayesian analyses further supported the observation that social feedback stimuli neither increased nor decreased behavioural preferences in the PRT. The current findings suggest that the PRT is a robust experimental paradigm independent of the applied feedback stimuli. They also suggest that the occurrence of a processing advantage for social feedback stimuli is dependent on the experimental task and design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionSocial ties play a crucial role in determining the health and wellbeing of individuals. However, it remains unclear whether the capacity to process social information distinguishes well-connected individuals from their less-connected peers. This study explored how an individual’s social network structure influences the dynamic processing of group norms, utilizing event-related potentials (ERPs).MethodsThe study involved 43 university students from the same class who participated in a social network study measuring metrics such as real-life social network size, in-degree, out-degree, and betweenness centrality. Subsequently, 27 students participated in an EEG study assessing their willingness to engage in various exercises after being exposed to peer feedback or in its absence.ResultsThe results indicate that an individual’s social network structure is significantly associated with the dynamic processing of group norms. Notably, well-connected individuals exhibited larger ERP amplitudes linked to feedback (e.g., N200, P300, and LPP), greater functional segregation within the brain network (e.g., local efficiency and clustering coefficient), and enhanced synchronization within frontal area and across different brain areas.DiscussionThese findings highlight that well-connected individuals possess enhanced sensitivity and efficiency in processing social information, pointing to potential areas for further research on the factors influencing social network evolution.

Exercise-tracking apps are digital tools for delivering personalized behavioral interventions. Despite the growing usage of exercise applications, the efficacy of in-exercise app features in driving usage and athletic outcomes remains poorly understood. To remain competitive, sports organizations now need to leverage tracking tools to efficiently allocate resources and streamline training regimens and interventions for their core assets (i.e., athletes). In response to these operational needs, we examine two specific forms of such in-exercise interventions, namely performance feedback and social feedback. We conducted an 18-month-long field study with 1,037 uniformed group servicemen to assess the effect of these feedback types on running and usage outcomes. Results from the field study provided evidence that these two app features improved the servicemen's running times and frequency of application usage, on average. Contrary to the common belief that more features are better, the joint usage of two feedback features does not produce additive effects. Tests at more granular levels suggest that users who received both feedback types in exercise episodes exhibit overconfidence behavior by participating in fewer subsequent exercises. The receipt of both feedback may be redundant and can cause user annoyance. Heterogeneity tests revealed that while performance feedback benefited most runners, social features were effective only for already stronger runners. Also, only positive social feedback had a significant impact on running performance. The results further indicate that performance feedback generated a slow but sustained increase in usage frequency, while social feedback spurred quick initial growth in usage but dwindled in effectiveness over time. Implications for theory and practice, as well as directions for further research, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning, an important activity for both human and animals, has long been a focal point of research. During the learning process, subjects assimilate not only their own information but also information from others, a phenomenon known as social learning. While numerous studies have explored the impact of social feedback as a reward/punishment during learning, few studies have investigated whether social feedback facilitates or inhibits the learning of environmental rewards/punishments. This study aims to test the effects of social feedback on economic feedback and its cognitive processes by using the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). One hundred ninety-two participants were recruited and categorized into one non-social feedback group and four social feedback groups. Participants in the social feedback groups were informed that after the outcome of each choice, they would also receive feedback from an online peer. This peer was a fictitious entity, with variations in identity (novice or expert) and feedback type (random or effective). The Outcome-Representation Learning model (ORL model) was used to quantify the cognitive components of learning. Behavioral results showed that both the identity of the peer and the type of feedback provided significantly influenced the deck selection, with effective social feedback increasing the ratio of chosen good decks. Results in the ORL model showed that the four social feedback groups exhibited lower learning rates for gain and loss compared to the nonsocial feedback group, which suggested, in the social feedback groups, the impact of the recent outcome on the update of value decreased. Parameters such as forgetfulness, win frequency, and deck perseverance in the expert-effective feedback group were significantly higher than those in the non-social feedback and expert-random feedback groups. These findings suggest that individuals proactively evaluate feedback providers and selectively adopt effective feedback to enhance learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Parent-adolescent interactions, particularly parental criticism and praise, have previously been identified as factors relevant to self-concept development and, when negative, to adolescent depression. Yet, whether adolescents with depression show aberrant emotional and neural reactivity to parental criticism and praise is understudied. Methods: Adolescents with depression (n = 20) and healthy controls (n = 59) received feedback supposedly provided by their mother or father in the form of negative ('untrustworthy'), neutral ('chaotic'), and positive ('respectful') personality evaluations while in an MRI-scanner. After each feedback word, adolescents reported their mood. Beforehand, adolescents had rated whether these personality evaluations matched their self-views. Results: In both groups, mood decreased after criticism and increased after praise. Adolescents with depression reported blunted mood responses after praise, whereas there were no mood differences after criticism. Neuroimaging analyses revealed that adolescents with depression (v. healthy controls) exhibited increased activity in response to criticism in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, temporal pole, hippocampus, and parahippocampal gyrus. Praise consistent with adolescents' self-views improved mood independent of depression status, while criticism matching self-views resulted in smaller mood increases in adolescents with depression (v. healthy controls). Exploratory analyses indicated that adolescents with depression recalled criticism (v. praise) more. Conclusions: Adolescents with depression might be especially attentive to parental criticism, as indexed by increased sgACC and hippocampus activity, and memorize this criticism more. Together with lower positive impact of praise, these findings suggest that cognitive biases in adolescent depression may affect how parental feedback is processed, and may be fed into their self-views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social anxiety disproportionately impacts individuals from certain cultural and developmental groups, namely those from Latinx and Asian American cultures and adolescents. Neural sensitivity to social feedback has been shown to vary across individuals and could contribute to this disparity by further exacerbating differences; thus, this could be an important phenomenon for understanding, preventing, and treating social anxiety. The goal of the present study was to examine the association of social anxiety with a neural correlate of feedback processing, the feedback-related negativity (FRN), and determine if there was a moderating effect of racial/ethnic group. A community sample of 104 Latinx (n = 41), Asian American (n = 24), and non-Latinx White (NLW; n = 39) adolescents (ages 13-17) completed a computerized peer feedback task while continuous electroencephalogram was recorded. Social anxiety and FRN measures were differentially associated as a function of race/ethnicity. NLW adolescents demonstrated greater FRN responses to acceptance feedback as social anxiety increased, whereas FRN responses to both rejection and acceptance feedback were related to greater social anxiety for Asian American adolescents. Notably, the Latinx group showed the greatest FRN responses yet endorsed the least amount of social anxiety, with no relation between social anxiety and FRN detected. Results highlight cultural variation in the relation between neural correlates of self-regulatory processes and social anxiety. This information could guide culturally-informed models of social anxiety that adopt a multiple units of analysis framework.

Social pain, a multifaceted emotional response triggered by interpersonal rejection or criticism, profoundly impacts mental well-being and social interactions. While prior research has implicated the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) in mitigating social pain, the precise neural mechanisms and downstream effects on subsequent social attitudes remain elusive. This study employed transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) integrated with fMRI recordings during a social pain task to elucidate these aspects. Eighty participants underwent either active TMS targeting the rVLPFC (n = 41) or control stimulation at the vertex (n = 39). Our results revealed that TMS-induced rVLPFC facilitation significantly reduced self-reported social pain, confirming the causal role of the rVLPFC in social pain relief. Functional connectivity analyses demonstrated enhanced interactions between the rVLPFC and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, emphasizing the collaborative engagement of prefrontal regions in emotion regulation. Significantly, we observed that negative social feedback led to negative social attitudes, whereas rVLPFC activation countered this detrimental effect, showcasing the potential of the rVLPFC as a protective buffer against adverse social interactions. Moreover, our study uncovered the impact role of the hippocampus in subsequent social attitudes, a relationship particularly pronounced during excitatory TMS over the rVLPFC. These findings offer promising avenues for improving mental health within the intricate dynamics of social interactions. By advancing our comprehension of the neural mechanisms underlying social pain relief, this research introduces novel intervention strategies for individuals grappling with social distress. Empowering individuals to modulate rVLPFC activation may facilitate reshaping social attitudes and successful reintegration into communal life.

Memories that can be recalled but are no longer believed are termed nonbelieved memories. The current studies examined the creation of emotionally negative nonbelieved memories after viewing negatively valenced pictures. In both experiments, participants took part in two sessions. In Session 1, after being presented with a set of neutral and negative pictures, participants had to rate their emotional state. One week later, in Session 2, participants had to complete a recognition task to identify pictures that had appeared during the previous session. During this task, participants' memories for some pictures were challenged by telling them that their answers were incorrect in order to evoke nonbelieved memories. The experimental procedure was successful in creating nonbelieved memories in the participants. Specifically, in Experiment 1 (N = 35), we induced nonbelieved true memories for both negative and neutral pictures. We found a significant decrease in both belief and recollection after the challenge, with the change in belief being twice as large as the change in recollection. In Experiment 2 (N = 43), we successfully induced both nonbelieved true and false memories for negative pictures. Again, the reduction of belief was significantly greater than that of recollection. In general, participants evinced better memory for negative pictures, but following challenges people were just as likely to accept false social feedback and change their memories regarding other types of pictures. In both experiments, our challenges did not lead to notable changes in emotional state. In general, our findings show that emotionally negative nonbelieved memories can be successfully evoked in an experimental setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implicit learning refers to the process of unconsciously learning complex knowledge through feedback. Previous studies investigated the influences of different types of feedback (e.g., social and non-social feedback) on implicit learning. This study focused on the social information presented in the learning situation and tried to explore the effects of different social feedback on implicit rule learning. We assigned participants randomly into an encouraging facial feedback group (happy expression for correct answer, neutral but not negative expression for incorrect answer) and a discouraging facial feedback group (neutral but not happy expression for correct answer, negative expression for incorrect answer). The implicit learning task included four difficulty levels, and social feedback was presented in the learning phase but not the testing phase in two experiments. The only difference between the two experiments was that the sad face used as negative feedback in Experiment 1 was replaced with an angry face in Experiment 2 to enhance the ecological validity of the discouraging facial feedback group. These two experiments yielded consistent results: the performances in the encouraging facial feedback group were more accurate in both the learning and the testing phases at all difficulty levels. These findings indicated that the influence of encouraging social feedback for a better implicit learning achievement was stable and established a new groundwork for future research on incentive-based education, making it critical to investigate the impact of various forms of encouraging-based education on learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The retrospective view of temporal binding (TB), the temporal contraction between one's actions and their effects, proposes that TB is influenced by what happens after the action. However, the role of the interaction between multiple sources of information following the action in the formation of TB has received limited attention. The current study aims to address this gap by investigating the combined influence of social feedback and outcome valence (i.e., positive or negative outcomes) on TB. In Experiment 1, the valenced outcome was followed by either positive or negative social feedback. The results showed that negative social feedback enlarged the difference between TB over negative and positive outcomes relative to positive social feedback. The modulatory effect of social feedback on TB was not observed in the absence of causal beliefs between actions and outcomes (Experiment 2). These results highlight the importance of considering the complex interplay between cognitive, emotional, and social factors in shaping our subjective temporal experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implicit learning refers to the fact that people acquire new knowledge (structures or rules) without conscious awareness. Previous studies have shown that implicit learning is affected by feedback. However, few studies have investigated the role of social feedback in implicit learning concretely. Here, we conducted two experiments to explore how in-group and out-group facial feedback impact different difficulty levels of implicit rule learning. In Experiment 1, the Chinese participants in each group could only see one type of facial feedback, i.e., either in-group (East Asian) or out-group (Western) faces, and learned the implicit rule through happy and sad facial expressions. The only difference between Experiment 2 and Experiment 1 was that the participants saw both the in-group and out-group faces before group assignment to strengthen the contrast between the two group identities. The results showed that only in Experiment 2 but not Experiment 1 was there a significant interaction effect in the accuracy of tasks between the difficulty levels and groups. For the lowest difficulty level, the learning accuracy of the in-group facial feedback group was significantly higher than that of the out-group facial feedback group, whereas this did not happen at the two highest levels of difficulty. In conclusion, when the contrast of group identities was highlighted, out-group feedback reduced the accuracy of the least difficult task; on the contrary, there was no accuracy difference between out-group and in-group feedback conditions. These findings have extensively important implications for our understanding of implicit learning and improving teaching achievement in the context of educational internationalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social environment that individuals experience appears to be a particularly salient mediator of stress resilience, as the nature and valence of social interactions are often related to subsequent health, physiology, microbiota, and overall stress resilience. Relatively few studies have simultaneously manipulated the social environment and ecological challenges under natural conditions. Here, we report the results of experiments in wild tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) in which we manipulated both ecological challenges (predator encounters and flight efficiency reduction) and social interactions (by experimental dulling of a social signal). In two experiments conducted in separate years, we reversed the order of these treatments so that females experienced either an altered social signal followed by a challenge or vice‐versa. Before, during, and after treatments were applied, we tracked breeding success, morphology and physiology (mass, corticosterone, and glucose), nest box visits via an RFID sensor network, cloacal microbiome diversity, and fledging success. Overall, we found that predator exposure during the nestling period reduced the likelihood of fledging and that signal manipulation sometimes altered nest box visitation patterns, but little evidence that the two categories of treatment interacted with each other. We discuss the implications of our results for understanding what types of challenges and what conditions are most likely to result in interactions between the social environment and ecological challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media use among preadolescents continues to increase each year. The current cross-sectional study examined how preadolescents' different (i.e., authentic and inauthentic) online presentation strategies, as well as the social feedback these representations receive, are associated with their perceived attractiveness. The results of our study (n = 638; 52.4% girls, 9–13 years, Mage = 10.94, SDage = 0.85) showed that more truthful online self-presentation practices coincided with feeling more positive about one's appearance. A significant moderation effect was found for social feedback, with the association becoming stronger as levels of online feedback (e.g., online popularity, likes, comments, and tags by other users) increased. Contrary to our expectations, inauthentic self-presentation was negatively related to preadolescents' perceived attractiveness, while no significant interaction effect with online feedback was found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In complex and diverse social circumstances, decision making is affected by social feedback. Although previous studies have examined the electrophysiological correlates of social feedback with a binary valence, those related to non-binary feedback, or the magnitude of social feedback, remain unclear. This study investigated the electrophysiological correlates of non-binary social feedback and subsequent action selection processing. Participants were asked to complete a Gabor patch direction judgment task in which they were required to make judgments before and after receiving social feedback. They were informed that the feedback stimuli represented the degree to which other participants made the same choice. The results revealed that feedback that was highly concordant with the participant's judgments elicited greater P300 activity, which was associated with the fulfillment of expectations regarding social reward. Moreover, moderately concordant feedback induced stronger theta band power, which may indicate monitoring of subjective conflict. Temporal changes in theta power during feedback phase may also relate to adjustments in prediction error. Additionally, when an initial judgment was maintained following social feedback, we observed a stronger increase in beta power, indicating an association with post-social-feedback action processing. • This study aims to investigate electrophysiological evidence for processing non-binary magnitudes of social agreement. • We employed a series of pseudo-gradually changing natural numbers to represent non-binary social feedback. • Using CBPT, we observed electrophysiological correlates linked to non-binary social feedback and following action selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study scrutinizes the influence of attenuating beliefs about the veracity of traumatic experiences on the manifestation of intrusive recollections and the memory amplification effect. Participants were exposed to distress-inducing visual stimuli, subsequently rating their emotional status pre and post exposure. They engaged in a recognition task, identifying scenarios within the stimuli. Participants' recall was contested, casting doubt about the occurrence of certain scenes. Subsequently, they maintained a daily log of intrusive memories over a week. A second session reiterated the same process. This method effectively diminished the certainty in the participants' traumatic memories. Scenes whose occurrence was contested demonstrated a significant decline in both intrusive memories and memory amplification when juxtaposed with uncontested ones. Interestingly, no significant correlation emerged between the diminished belief in traumatic incidents and reductions in intrusive memory or memory amplification. Thus, this study advocates that interrogating the veracity of traumatic recollections can mitigate the prevalence of intrusive memories and the memory amplification effect, suggesting a novel potential therapeutic approach for trauma-related disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Affective distress (as observed in anxiety and depression) has been observed to be related to insufficient sensitivity to changing reinforcement during operant learning. Whether such findings are specific to anxiety or depression is unclear given a wider literature relating negative affect to abnormal learning and the possibility that relationships are not consistent across incentive types (i.e., punishment and reward) and outcomes (i.e., positive or negative). In two separate samples (n 1 = 100; n 2 = 88), participants completed an operant learning task with positive or negative, and neutral socio-affective feedback, designed to assess adaptive responses to changing environmental volatility. Individual parameter estimates were generated with hierarchical Bayesian modelling. Effects of manipulations were modelled by decomposing parameters into a linear combination of effects on the logit scale. While effects tended to support prior work, neither general affective distress nor anxiety or depression were consistently related to a decrease in the adaptive adjustment of learning-rates in response to changing environmental volatility (Sample 1: β α : volatility = −0.01, 95 % HDI = −0.14, 0.13; Sample 2: β α : volatility = −0.15, 95 % HDI = −0.37, 0.05). Interaction effects in Sample 1 suggested that while distress was associated with decrements in adaptive learning under punishment-minimisation, it was associated with improvements under reward-maximisation. While our results are broadly consistent with prior work, they suggest that the role of anxiety or depression in volatility learning, if present, is subtle and difficult to detect. Inconsistencies between our samples, along with issues of parameter identifiability complicated interpretation. • General affective distress, rather than anxiety or depression, was somewhat associated with impaired adaptation of learning in a social learning paradigm • A distressed sample showed many differences in behavior to a normative sample that may reflect difficulties with such a task • The effect of psychological distress on learning behaviour is likely small and difficult to detect [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sleep loss may lead to negative bias during social interaction. In the current study, we conducted a revised social evaluation task experiment to investigate how sleep deprivation influences the self-referential and cognitive processes of social feedback. The experiment consisted of a first impression task and a social feedback task. Seventy-eight participants completed the first impression task and were divided into normal and poor sleep groups. The results of an independent samples t-test showed that participants who slept worse were less likely to socialize with others but did not evaluate others as less attractive. Afterward, 22 of the participants from the first impression task were recruited to complete the social feedback task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on the mornings following two different sleep conditions at night: one night of normal sleep and one night of sleep deprivation. The results of this within-subject design study showed that participants who experienced the latter condition showed increased activation within the default mode network (i.e. superior parietal lobule, precuneus, inferior parietal lobule, inferior temporal gyrus, and medial frontal gyrus) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and stronger negative insula functional connectivity (FC) with the precuneus to negative feedback than positive feedback. The altered activation and behavioral pattern may indicate a negative bias for social cues. However, stronger negative coupling may indicate stronger cognitive control, which may protect against potential damage to self-concept. Our study suggested that sleep impairs most social functions, but may protect against impairment of important ones, such as self-concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust is fundamental in building meaningful social interactions. With the advance of social robotics in collaborative settings, trust in Human–Robot Interaction (HRI) is gaining more and more scientific attention. Indeed, understanding how different factors may affect users' trust toward robots is of utmost importance. In this study, we focused on two factors related to the robot's behavior that could modulate trust. In a two-forced choice task where a virtual robot reacted to participants' performance, we manipulated the human-likeness of the robot's motion and the valence of the feedback it provided. To measure participant's subjective level of trust, we used subjective ratings throughout the task as well as a post-task questionnaire, which distinguishes capacity and moral dimensions of trust. We expected the presence of feedback to improve trust toward the robot and human-likeness to strengthen this effect. Interestingly, we observed that humans equally trust the robot in most conditions but distrust it when it shows no social feedback nor human-like behavior. In addition, we only observed a positive correlation between subjective trust ratings and the moral and capacity dimensions of trust when robot was providing feedback during the task. These findings suggest that the presence and human-likeness of feedback behaviors positively modulate trust in HRI and thereby provide important insights for the development of non-verbal communicative behaviors in social robots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social anxiety is a problem in modern society because it can affect many areas of a person’s life. This can negatively affect not only interpersonal relationships but also learning outcomes. The study analyses the relationship between students’ social anxiety and self-esteem and the perception of feedback, in order to find out the prognostic value of the variables as well. The study revealed that individuals with stronger social anxiety usually perceive the feedback received in the academic environment negatively, and their self-esteem is lower than among students who do not feel strong social anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People experience instances of social feedback as interdependent with potential implications for their entire self-concept. How do people maintain positivity and coherence across the self-concept while updating self-views from feedback? We present a network model describing how the brain represents the semantic dependency relations among traits and uses this information to avoid an overall loss of positivity and coherence. Both male and female human participants received social feedback during a self-evaluation task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. We modeled self-belief updating by incorporating a reinforcement learning model within the network structure. Participants learned more rapidly from positive than negative feedback and were less likely to change self-views for traits with more dependencies in the network. Further, participants back propagated feedback across network relations while retrieving prior feedback on the basis of network similarity to inform ongoing self-views. Activation in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) reflected the constrained updating process such that positive feedback led to higher activation and negative feedback to less activation for traits with more dependencies. Additionally, vmPFC was associated with the novelty of a trait relative to previously self-evaluated traits in the network, and angular gyrus was associated with greater certainty for self-beliefs given the relevance of prior feedback. We propose that neural computations that selectively enhance or attenuate social feedback and retrieve past relevant experiences to guide ongoing selfevaluations may support an overall positive and coherent self-concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning to control behavior when receiving feedback underlies social adaptation in childhood and adolescence, and is potentially strengthened by environmental support factors, such as parents. This study examined the neural development of responding to social feedback from childhood to adolescence, and effects of parental sensitivity on this development. We studied these questions in a 3-wave longitudinal fMRI sample (ages 7–13 years, n = 512). We measured responses to feedback using the fMRI Social Network Aggression Task through noise blasts following peer feedback and associated neural activity, and parental sensitivity using observations of parent-child interactions during Etch-a-Sketch. Results revealed largest reductions in noise blasts following positive feedback between middle and late childhood and following negative feedback between late childhood and early adolescence. Additionally, brain-behavior associations between dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation and noise blast durations became more differentiated across development. Parental sensitivity was only associated with noise blast duration following positive feedback in childhood, but not in adolescence. There was no relation between parental sensitivity and neural activity. Our findings contribute to our understanding of neural development and individual differences in responding to social feedback, and the role of parenting in supporting children’s adaption to social feedback.

During adolescence, youth may experience heightened attention bias to socially relevant stimuli; however, it is unclear if attention bias toward social threat may be exacerbated for adolescents with a history of anxiety. This study evaluated attentional bias during the Chatroom-Interact task with 25 adolescents with a history of anxiety (18F, Mage = 13.6) and 22 healthy adolescents (13F, Mage = 13.8). In this task, participants received feedback from fictional, virtual peers who either chose them (acceptance) or rejected them (rejection). Overall, participants were faster to orient toward and spent longer time dwelling on their own picture after both rejection and acceptance compared to non-feedback cues. Social feedback was associated with greater pupillary reactivity, an index of cognitive and emotional neural processing, compared to non-feedback cues. During acceptance feedback (but not during rejection feedback), anxious youth displayed greater pupil response compared to healthy youth, suggesting that positive feedback from peers may differentially influence youth with a history of an anxiety disorder.

Implicit learning refers to the process of unconsciously learning complex knowledge through feedback. Previous studies investigated the influences of different types of feedback (e.g., social and non-social feedback) on implicit learning. This study focused on the social information presented in the learning situation and tried to explore the effects of different social feedback on implicit rule learning. We assigned participants randomly into an encouraging facial feedback group (happy expression for correct answer, neutral but not negative expression for incorrect answer) and a discouraging facial feedback group (neutral but not happy expression for correct answer, negative expression for incorrect answer). The implicit learning task included four difficulty levels, and social feedback was presented in the learning phase but not the testing phase in two experiments. The only difference between the two experiments was that the sad face used as negative feedback in Experiment 1 was replaced with an angry face in Experiment 2 to enhance the ecological validity of the discouraging facial feedback group. These two experiments yielded consistent results: the performances in the encouraging facial feedback group were more accurate in both the learning and the testing phases at all difficulty levels. These findings indicated that the influence of encouraging social feedback for a better implicit learning achievement was stable and established a new groundwork for future research on incentive-based education, making it critical to investigate the impact of various forms of encouraging-based education on learning.

Implicit learning refers to the fact that people acquire new knowledge (structures or rules) without conscious awareness. Previous studies have shown that implicit learning is affected by feedback. However, few studies have investigated the role of social feedback in implicit learning concretely. Here, we conducted two experiments to explore how in-group and out-group facial feedback impact different difficulty levels of implicit rule learning. In Experiment 1, the Chinese participants in each group could only see one type of facial feedback, i.e., either in-group (East Asian) or out-group (Western) faces, and learned the implicit rule through happy and sad facial expressions. The only difference between Experiment 2 and Experiment 1 was that the participants saw both the in-group and out-group faces before group assignment to strengthen the contrast between the two group identities. The results showed that only in Experiment 2 but not Experiment 1 was there a significant interaction effect in the accuracy of tasks between the difficulty levels and groups. For the lowest difficulty level, the learning accuracy of the in-group facial feedback group was significantly higher than that of the out-group facial feedback group, whereas this did not happen at the two highest levels of difficulty. In conclusion, when the contrast of group identities was highlighted, out-group feedback reduced the accuracy of the least difficult task; on the contrary, there was no accuracy difference between out-group and in-group feedback conditions. These findings have extensively important implications for our understanding of implicit learning and improving teaching achievement in the context of educational internationalization.

Evidence increasingly suggests that neural structures that respond to primary and secondary rewards are also implicated in the processing of social rewards. The 'Like'-a popular feature on social media-shares features with both monetary and social rewards as a means of feedback that shapes reinforcement learning. Despite the ubiquity of the Like, little is known about the neural correlates of providing this feedback to others. In this study, we mapped the neural correlates of providing Likes to others on social media. Fifty-eight adolescents and young adults completed a task in the MRI scanner designed to mimic the social photo-sharing app Instagram. We examined neural responses when participants provided positive feedback to others. The experience of providing Likes to others on social media related to activation in brain circuity implicated in reward, including the striatum and ventral tegmental area, regions also implicated in the experience of receiving Likes from others. Providing Likes was also associated with activation in brain regions involved in salience processing and executive function. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of the neural processing of social rewards, as well as the neural processes underlying social media use.

Recently, several studies have found a recognition advantage for facial expressions, particularly angry expressions, when they appear on high-status faces rather than low-status faces. In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore the influence of social status on the neural responses to others' facial expressions in a context of performance monitoring. Specifically, we used an interactive rank-inducing task (i.e., time estimation task) to manipulate social partners' status (high versus low) and then told participants that they would receive social feedback (i.e., happy, neutral, or angry) from social partners with high or low status after completing the task. ERP results revealed the preferential processing of high-status targets at both early (P1/N170/FRN) and late (P3) temporal stages of facial expression processing. Notably, larger FRN amplitudes elicited by feedback from high-status partners were observed in happy, neutral, and angry expression contexts, whereas larger P3 amplitudes elicited by feedback from high-status partners were only evident in both neutral and angry expression contexts but not in happy expression context. Together, the present study extended previous studies by showing that the perception of facial expressions could be modulated by target status at multiple stages. • This study aimed to examine how social status affected expression feedback process. • Social status modulates the P1 responses to happy-expression feedback. • The FRN and P3 response to expression was enhanced by high-status partners. • Expression feedback process could be modulated by social status at multiple stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Curiosity is a powerful motivator of information-seeking behavior. People seek not only positive, but also aversive social information about others. However, whether people also seek unfavorable social information about themselves, as well as the neural mechanisms that may drive such seemingly counterintuitive behavior remain unclear. To address this gap, we developed a novel electroencephalography-compatible Social Incentive Delay (SID) task, which was implemented in 30 healthy young adults as they responded as fast as possible to a target to receive positive or avoid negative comments about their own or about others' Instagram photos. Reaction times were slower for negative vs positive comments' conditions, but only for participants' own photos, revealing less motivation to avoid negative rather than seek positive self-relevant social feedback. Coherently, receiving negative feedback, as opposed to avoiding it, evoked larger amplitudes in the Reward Positivity (RewP) and FB-P3 time-range, especially for participants' own photos, indicating that receiving a negative comment was more rewarding and more salient than not receiving any comment at all. Our findings challenge prior evidence suggesting that humans instinctively avoid aversive stimuli, and they shed light on the neurophysiological mechanisms that may underlie this counterintuitive behavior., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article., (Copyright © 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

What are the mechanisms by which groups with certain opinions gain public voice and force others holding a different view into silence? Furthermore, how does social media play into this? Drawing on neuroscientific insights into the processing of social feedback, we develop a theoretical model that allows us to address these questions. In repeated interactions, individuals learn whether their opinion meets public approval and refrain from expressing their standpoint if it is socially sanctioned. In a social network sorted around opinions, an agent forms a distorted impression of public opinion enforced by the communicative activity of the different camps. Even strong majorities can be forced into silence if a minority acts as a cohesive whole. On the other hand, the strong social organisation around opinions enabled by digital platforms favours collective regimes in which opposing voices are expressed and compete for primacy in public. This paper highlights the role that the basic mechanisms of social information processing play in massive computer-mediated interactions on opinions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bivalent fear of evaluation (BFOE) model posits that both fear of negative evaluation (FNE) and fear of positive evaluation (FPE) maintain social anxiety disorder (SAD). This study extends past research by using a face-to-face social interaction task to examine emotional and cognitive responses to positive, negative, and neutral feedback in people with SAD (n = 47) or a nonclinical control group (n = 49). Compared to the nonclinical control group, the SAD group reported significantly higher distress in response to negative and positive feedback over and above pre-task distress, which supports the BFOE model. Both groups rated negative feedback as significantly more distressing than positive and neutral feedback. Level of distress was the highest following the social interaction task, prior to receiving feedback. Unexpectedly, there were no significant group differences in the proportion of negative or positive thoughts in response to the feedback. Study limitations and clinical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Older adults consistently report young subjective age and provide high ratings of their subjective health. The current research examined which social comparisons older adults make when they assess their subjective age and health, as well as the effects of experimentally manipulated social comparisons on these assessments. In Study 1, 146 participants (aged 60 and over) reported to whom they compared themselves when assessing their subjective age or health. In Study 2, 100 participants (aged 60 and over) reported their subjective age and health after receiving feedback that compared them to younger adults or to their peers. Study 1 shows that participants compared themselves primarily to their peer group. Yet, individuals who selected a younger comparison group when assessing subjective age reported a younger subjective age, better self-rated health and more positive expectations regarding ageing relative to those who selected their peers as a comparison group. No equivalent differences emerged in any of the measures when participants were divided by their selection of comparison group after providing their self-rated health ratings. In Study 2, feedback that emphasised the performance of younger people led to reports of younger subjective age relative to feedback that emphasised peer performance, with no equivalent difference for self-rated health. These findings help explain why older adults feel younger and healthier than they actually are. We suggest that older adults use social comparisons as a strategy that protects them from the negative effects of ageing on self-perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Abnormal processing of social feedback is an important contributor to social dysfunction in depression, however the exact mechanisms remain unclear. One important factor may be the extent to which social processing depends on expectations, in particular whether social feedback confirms or violates expectations. Methods: To answer this question, we studied behavioral and brain responses during the evaluative processing of social feedback in 25 individuals with subthreshold depression (SD) and 25 healthy controls (HCs). Participants completed a Social Judgment Task in which they first indicated expectation about whether a peer would like them or not, and then received peer's feedback indicating acceptance or rejection. Results: Individuals with SD who reported greater depressive symptoms gave fewer positive expectations. Compared to HCs, individuals with SD showed reduced activation in the medial prefrontal cortex when expecting positive feedback. They also exhibited increased dorsal anterior cingulate cortex after receipt of unexpected social rejection, and reduced ventral striatum activity after receipt of unexpected social acceptance. Conclusions: The observed alternations are specific to unexpected social feedback processing and highlight an important role of expectancy violation in the brain dysfunction of social feedback perception and evaluation in individuals at risk for depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sleep loss may lead to negative bias during social interaction. In the current study, we conducted a revised social evaluation task experiment to investigate how sleep deprivation influences the self-referential and cognitive processes of social feedback. The experiment consisted of a first impression task and a social feedback task. Seventy-eight participants completed the first impression task and were divided into normal and poor sleep groups. The results of an independent samples t-test showed that participants who slept worse were less likely to socialize with others but did not evaluate others as less attractive. Afterward, 22 of the participants from the first impression task were recruited to complete the social feedback task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on the mornings following two different sleep conditions at night: one night of normal sleep and one night of sleep deprivation. The results of this within-subject design study showed that participants who experienced the latter condition showed increased activation within the default mode network (i.e. superior parietal lobule, precuneus, inferior parietal lobule, inferior temporal gyrus, and medial frontal gyrus) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and stronger negative insula functional connectivity (FC) with the precuneus to negative feedback than positive feedback. The altered activation and behavioral pattern may indicate a negative bias for social cues. However, stronger negative coupling may indicate stronger cognitive control, which may protect against potential damage to self-concept. Our study suggested that sleep impairs most social functions, but may protect against impairment of important ones, such as self-concept.

Illegal wildlife trade enforcement is a cornerstone conservation strategy worldwide, yet we have a limited understanding on its social impacts. Using Chinese online wildlife seizure news (2003–2018), we evaluated the interactions among enforcement operations, news frequency, and social engagement (i.e., whistle-blowing) frequency. Our results showed that intensive enforcement operations, which commenced after 2012, have social impacts by increasing the frequency of all seizure news significantly by 28% [95% Confidence Interval (CI): 5%, 51%] and those via whistle-blowing by 24% [95% CI: 2%, 45%], when compared to counterfactual models where possible confounding factors were accounted for. Furthermore, we revealed the potential interaction between enforcement seizure news with and without social engagement, and the consequential social feedback process. Of the species identified from 'whistle-blowing' news, up to 28% are considered as high conservation priorities. Overall, we expanded our understanding of the enforcement impacts to social dimensions, which could contribute to improving the cost-effectiveness of such conservation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous works have shown that social rejection influences self-relevant processing. However, it remains unclear how romantic rejection influences self-relevant processing. In addition, men and women show different mate preferences, and facial attractiveness plays an important role in mate selection. The current study investigated how romantic feedbacks influence self-relevant processing and how sex difference and facial attractiveness moderate this process. After receiving social feedback of rejection or acceptance from 30 opposite-sex individuals, 51 men and 54 women completed the label–shape pair trials in which they judged whether shapes (triangle, circle, square) and labels ("self," "friend," "stranger") were matched or mismatched. The results showed that romantic rejection inhibited women's self-processing advantage by improving their response accuracy for matching the friend-label, which was positively associated with their score for perceived social support. By contrast, men rejected by women with high facial attractiveness improved their response accuracy for matching the self-label. Women improved their response accuracy for matching the friend-label not only when rejected by men with high facial attractiveness but also when accepted by men with low facial attractiveness. The results indicate that sex difference and facial attractiveness together moderate the influence of romantic feedback on self-relevant processing, which may be associated with sex differences in mating preferences and response to social threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interpersonal stress in adolescence has been associated with alterations in neural responses to peer feedback, and increased vulnerability to psychopathology. However, it is unclear whether the associations of interpersonal problems with neural responses are global across event‐related potentials (ERPs) or might result in alterations only in specific ERPs. We examined associations between multiple informants of peer stress (self‐reported, parent‐reported, and peer‐reported) and multiple ERPs (N1, P2, RewP, and LPP) to social feedback in a sample of 46 early adolescents (aged 12–13 years). Reports of peer stress were only moderately correlated with one another, indicating different informants capture different aspects of peer stress. Regressions using informant reports to predict ERPs revealed greater parent‐reported peer stress was associated with a smaller RewP, whereas self‐reported stress was associated with a smaller P2, to acceptance. In contrast, greater peer‐reported stress was associated with larger P2, RewP, and LPP to acceptance. Findings suggest that different sources of stress measurement are differentially associated with ERPs. Future research using social feedback‐related ERPs should consider multiple sources of information as well as multiple ERP components across the time‐course of feedback processing, to gain a clearer understanding of the effects of peer stress on neural responses to feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ventrolateral prefrontal cortices (VLPFC) are crucial regions involved in voluntary emotion regulation. However, the lateralization of the VLPFC in downregulating negative emotions remains unclear; and whether the causal role of the VLPFC is generalizable to upregulating positive emotions is unexplored. This study used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to examine the causal relationship between the left/right VLPFC and social emotion reappraisal. One hundred and twenty participants were randomly assigned to either active (left and right VLPFC groups, n = 40/40) or sham (vertex, n = 40) TMS groups. Participants were instructed to passively receive social feedback or use reappraisal strategies to positively regulate their emotions. While the subjective emotional rating showed that the bilateral VLPFC facilitated the reappraisal success, the electrophysiological measure of the late positive potential (LPP) demonstrated a more critical role of the right VLPFC on social pain relief (decreased LPP amplitudes) and social reward magnification (enhanced LPP amplitudes). In addition, the influence of emotion regulation on social evaluation was found to be mediated by the memory of social feedback, indicating the importance of memory in social behavioral shaping. These findings suggest clinical protocols for the rehabilitation of emotion‐regulatory function in patients with affective and social disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Romantic love involves an evaluative process in which couples weigh similarities and differences that facilitates pair bonding. We investigated neural attentive processes (P3) during evaluative relationship feedback within existing romantic couples using the Relationship Match Game. This paradigm included participant-driven expectations about relationship matching and relationship feedback from an expert panel of fictive peers and their romantic partner. In total, 49 couples participated who had dated less than one year. Participants showed significantly larger P3s in anticipation of feedback when they expected a mismatch, especially when supported by panel feedback. P3 amplitudes were also greater when participants received feedback from their partner congruent with their own assessment of compatibility. This was moderated by relational ambiguity, or one's preference to keep the relationship's status vague. We discuss how insecurity about the relationship is costly in terms of attentional resources contributing to over-alertness to cues of relationship evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]