title: Criticism hurts everybody, praise only some: Common and specific neural responses to approving and disapproving social-evaluative videos.
abstract: Social evaluation is a ubiquitous feature of daily interpersonal interactions and can produce strong positive or negative emotional reactions. While previous research has highlighted neural correlates of static or dynamic facial expressions, little is known about neural processing of more naturalistic social interaction simulations or the modulating role of inter-individual differences such as trait fear of negative/positive evaluation. The present fMRI study investigated neural activity of 37 (21 female) healthy participants while watching videos of posers expressing a range of positive, negative, and neutral statements tapping into several basic and social emotions. Unpleasantness ratings linearly increased in response to positive to neutral to negative videos whereas arousal ratings were elevated in both emotional video conditions. At the whole brain level, medial prefrontal and rostral anterior cingulate cortex activated strongly in both emotional conditions which may be attributed to the cognitive processing demands of responding to complex social evaluation. Region of interest analysis for basic emotion processing areas revealed enhanced amygdala activation in both emotional conditions, whereas anterior and posterior insula showed stronger activity during negative evaluations only. Individuals with high fear of positive evaluation were characterized by increased posterior insula activity during positive videos, suggesting heightened interoception. Taken together, these results replicate and extend studies that used facial expression stimuli and reveal neurobiological systems involved in processing of more complex social-evaluative videos. Results also point to vulnerability factors for social-interaction related psychopathologies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Division of Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Health Psychology, & Clinical Stress and Emotion Lab, University of Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Stephan F
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Miedl
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Division of Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Health Psychology, & Clinical Stress and Emotion Lab, University of Salzburg, Austria; Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg, Austria. Electronic address: jens.blechert@sbg.ac.at.
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Blechert
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Division of Social Psychology, University of Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Johannes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Klackl
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Division of Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Health Psychology, & Clinical Stress and Emotion Lab, University of Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Wiggert
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Division of Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Health Psychology, & Clinical Stress and Emotion Lab, University of Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Reichenberger
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University of Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Birgit
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Derntl
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Division of Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Health Psychology, & Clinical Stress and Emotion Lab, University of Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Frank H
authors.initials: FH
authors.lastname: Wilhelm
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000679:Amygdala / Q000502:physiology; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D012938:Social Perception; D055815:Young Adult