title: When your friends make you cringe: social closeness modulates vicarious embarrassment-related neural activity.
abstract: Social closeness is a potent moderator of vicarious affect and specifically vicarious embarrassment. The neural pathways of how social closeness to another person affects our experience of vicarious embarrassment for the other's public flaws, failures and norm violations are yet unknown. To bridge this gap, we examined the neural response of participants while witnessing threats to either a friend's or a stranger's social integrity. The results show consistent responses of the anterior insula (AI) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), shared circuits of the aversive quality of affect, as well as the medial prefrontal cortex and temporal pole, central structures of the mentalizing network. However, the ACC/AI network activation was increased during vicarious embarrassment in response to a friend's failures. At the same time, the precuneus, a brain region associated with self-related thoughts, showed a specific activation and an increase in functional connectivity with the shared circuits in the frontal lobe while observing friends. This might indicate a neural systems mechanism for greater affective sharing and self-involvement while people interact with close others that are relevant to oneself.
authors.affiliation: Social Neuroscience Lab, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Lübeck, Ratzeburger Allee 160, D-23538 Lübeck, Germany; Frieder M. Paulus and Sören Krach contributed equally to this work.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Müller-Pinzler
authors.affiliation: Social Neuroscience Lab, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Lübeck, Ratzeburger Allee 160, D-23538 Lübeck, Germany; Frieder M. Paulus and Sören Krach contributed equally to this work.
authors.forename: Lena
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rademacher
authors.affiliation: Social Neuroscience Lab, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Lübeck, Ratzeburger Allee 160, D-23538 Lübeck, Germany; Frieder M. Paulus and Sören Krach contributed equally to this work.
authors.forename: Frieder M
authors.initials: FM
authors.lastname: Paulus
authors.affiliation: Social Neuroscience Lab, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Lübeck, Ratzeburger Allee 160, D-23538 Lübeck, Germany; Frieder M. Paulus and Sören Krach contributed equally to this work. krach@snl.uni-luebeck.de paulus@snl.uni-luebeck.de.
authors.forename: Sören
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Krach
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D033062:Friends / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D059906:Neuroimaging; D012919:Social Behavior; D056345:Theory of Mind; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: fMRI; mentalizing; shared circuits; social closeness; social emotions; vicarious embarrassment