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How do humans learn, through social interaction, whom to depend on in different situations? We compared the extent to which inferred trait attributes—as opposed to learned reward associations previously examined in feedback-based learning contexts—could adaptively inform cross-context social decision making. In four experiments, participants completed a novel task in which they chose to “hire” other players to solve math and verbal questions for money. These players varied in their trait-level competence across these contexts, and, independently, in the monetary rewards they offered to participants across contexts. Results revealed that participants chose partners primarily based on context-specific traits, as opposed to either global (e.g., cross-context) trait impressions or material rewards. When making choices in novel contexts—including determining who to choose for social and emotional support—participants generalized trait knowledge from past contexts that required similar traits. Reward-based learning, by contrast, demonstrated significantly weaker context-sensitivity and generalization. These findings suggest that people form context-dependent trait impressions from interactive feedback and use this knowledge to make flexible social decisions. These results support a novel theoretical account of how interaction-based social learning can support context-specific impression formation and adaptive decision making.

Recent work in psychology and neuroscience has revealed differences in impression updating across social distance and group membership. Observers tend to maintain prior impressions of close (vs. distant) and ingroup (vs. outgroup) others in light of new information, and this belief maintenance is at times accompanied by increased activity in Theory of Mind regions. It remains an open question whether differences in the strength of prior beliefs, in a context absent social motivation, contribute to neural differences during belief updating. We devised a functional magnetic resonance imaging study to isolate the impact of experimentally induced prior beliefs on mentalizing activity. Participants learned about targets who performed 2 or 4 same-valenced behaviors (leading to the formation of weak or strong priors), before performing 2 counter-valenced behaviors. We found a greater change in activity in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) and right temporo-parietal junction following the violation of strong versus weak priors, and a greater change in activity in DMPFC and left temporo-parietal junction following the violation of positive versus negative priors. These results indicate that differences in neural responses to unexpected behaviors from close versus distant others, and ingroup versus outgroup members, may be driven in part by differences in the strength of prior beliefs.

Humans are highly attuned to perceptual cues about their values. A growing body of evidence suggests that people selectively attend to moral stimuli. However, it is unknown whether morality is prioritized early in perception or much later in cognitive processing. We use a combination of behavioral methods and electroencephalography to investigate how early in perception moral words are prioritized relative to non-moral words. The behavioral data replicate previous research indicating that people are more likely to correctly identify moral than non-moral words in a modified lexical decision task. The electroencephalography data reveal that words are distinguished from non-words as early as 200 ms after onset over frontal brain areas and moral words are distinguished from non-moral words 100 ms later over left-posterior cortex. Further analyses reveal that differences in brain activity to moral vs non-moral words cannot be explained by differences in arousal associated with the words. These results suggest that moral content might be prioritized in conscious awareness after an initial perceptual encoding but before subsequent memory processing or action preparation. This work offers a more precise theoretical framework for understanding how morality impacts vision and behavior.

Research has demonstrated racial disparities in pain care such that Black patients often receive poorer pain care than White patients. Little is known about mechanisms accounting for the emergence of such disparities. The present study had 2 aims. First, we examined whether White observers' attentional processing of pain (using a visual search task [VST] indexing attentional engagement to and attentional disengagement from pain) and estimation of pain experience differed between White vs Black faces. Second, we examined whether these differences were moderated by (1) racially biased beliefs about pain experience and (2) the level of pain expressed by Black vs White faces. Participants consisted of 102 observers (87 females) who performed a VST assessing pain-related attention to White vs Black avatar pain faces. Participants also reported on racially biased beliefs about White vs Black individuals' pain experience and rated the pain intensities expressed by White and Black avatar faces. Results indicated facilitated attentional engagement towards Black (vs White) pain faces. Furthermore, observers who more strongly endorsed the belief that White individuals experience pain more easily than Black individuals had less difficulty disengaging from Black (vs White) pain faces. Regarding pain estimations, observers gave higher pain ratings to Black (vs White) faces expressing high pain and White (vs Black) faces expressing no pain. The current findings attest to the importance of future research into the role of observer attentional processing of sufferers' pain in understanding racial disparities in pain care. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed, and future research directions are outlined.

Although pain care decisions unfold as a negotiation between patients and surgeons, previous research has identified patient-level and provider-level factors contributing to racial disparities in surgical pain care in isolation. We call for changes in the investigations of such racial disparities at the levels of conceptualization, research design, analysis, and research team composition.

A growing body of evidence demonstrates that perceivers recognize painful expressions less readily on Black (compared to white) faces. However, it is unclear whether this bias occurs independent of controlled processing (for example, the deliberate engagement of racial stereotypes) and whether this bias is still observed when other diagnostic information (e.g., self-reported pain experience) is available. Across five experiments we examined the speed, spontaneity, and robustness of racial bias in pain perception. First, we observed that racial bias in pain perception was still evident under minimal presentation conditions (as brief as 33ms) and was most apparent for ambiguous (versus high intensity) pain expressions (Exp. 1). Next, we manipulated the amount of cognitive load participants were under while viewing and rating Black and white faces in varying degrees of pain (Exps. 2A-B). Here, we observed that perceivers had more stringent thresholds for seeing pain on Black (versus white) faces regardless of whether participants were under high (versus low) load. Finally, we examined whether this bias would persist when participants were also provided with other information regarding targets’ pain – specifically, self-reported pain experience (Exps. 3A-B). While self-report information reduced perceivers’ thresholds for seeing pain overall, racial bias in pain perception was not reliably moderated by self-reported pain experience. Together, these data demonstrate that racial bias in pain perception occurs automatically, based on minimal visual input, and above and beyond other diagnostic information.

Over the past few decades, two-factor models of social cognition have emerged as the dominant framework for understanding impression formation. Despite the differences in the labels, there is wide agreement that one dimension reflects sociability potential, and the other, competence. One way in which the various two-factor models do clearly differ, however, is in the way the dimensions incorporate or produce evaluations of morality. Aristotle saw morality as the most important basis on which to form positive evaluations, because competence and sociability could only be virtuous, sincere, and trustworthy if expressed through a moral character. This chapter highlights research demonstrating the unique and possibly primary role of morality in social cognition. We clarify the dynamic, interactive, and conjoint effects of morality on social perception, and argue morality, competence, and sociability are three influential and interactive dimensions of social perception.

Racial disparities in pain care may stem, in part, from a perceptual source. While perceptual disruptions in recognizing painful expressions on Black faces have been demonstrated under tightly-controlled conditions (e.g., controlling for low-level stimulus differences in luminance and facial structure, using all male stimuli), these effects may be exacerbated by cues to racial prototypicality. Indeed, both bottom-up (e.g., skin tone, facial structure) and top-down (e.g., stereotype associations between race and gender) factors related to racial prototypicality moderate social perception, with some evidence pointing towards deleterious consequences in the domain of health. Here, we assessed whether these factors shape racial bias in pain perception: we examined the effect of racially prototypical features in Experiments 1 and 2 and target gender in a meta-analysis across five additional experiments. Overall, darker skin tones were associated with more stringent pain perception and more conservative treatment, while racially prototypic structural features exacerbated racial bias in pain outcomes. Moreover, target gender reliably moderated the effect of race on pain outcomes: racial biases in both pain perception and treatment were larger for male (versus female) targets. Taken together, these data demonstrate the overall robustness of racial bias in pain perception and its facilitation of gaps in treatment, but also the extent to which these biases are moderated by both bottom-up and top-down factors related to racial prototypicality.

Racial disparities in pain care may be linked to a perceptual source: perceivers see pain less readily on Black (versus white) faces. We conducted an internal meta-analysis (40 studies; N=6252) to assess the generalizability, robustness, and psychological bases of this phenomenon. Meta-analysis strongly confirmed race-based gaps in pain perception and treatment. Moreover, bias in perception consistently facilitated bias in treatment. These effects were robust to differences in stimuli, samples, and perceiver gender and race. Notably, both Black and white perceivers showed a tendency to see pain less readily on Black faces, suggesting this bias is not merely a consequence of group membership. Further, increased dehumanization of and decreased intergroup contact with Black individuals was associated with racial bias in pain perception and treatment, though these effects were small. These results demonstrate the robustness of perceptual contributions to racial pain disparities and shed light on potential targets for future intervention.

Social science researchers are predominantly liberal, and critics have argued this representation may reduce the robustness of research by embedding liberal values into the research process. In an adversarial collaboration, we examined whether the political slant of research findings in psychology is associated with lower rates of scientific replicability. We analyzed 194 original psychology articles reporting studies that had been subject to a later replication attempt ( N = 1,331,413 participants across replications) by having psychology doctoral students (Study 1) and an online sample of U.S. residents (Study 2) from across the political spectrum code the political slant (liberal vs. conservative) of the original research abstracts. The methods and analyses were preregistered. In both studies, the liberal or conservative slant of the original research was not associated with whether the results were successfully replicated. The results remained consistent regardless of the ideology of the coder. Political slant was unrelated to both subsequent citation patterns and the original study’s effect size and not consistently related to the original study’s sample size. However, we found modest evidence that research with greater political slant—whether liberal or conservative—was less replicable, whereas statistical robustness consistently predicted replication success. We discuss the implications for social science, politics, and replicability.

Racial disparities in pain care may stem, in part, from perceptual roots. It remains unresolved, however, whether this perceptual gap is driven by general deficits in intergroup emotion recognition, endorsement of specific racial stereotypes, or an interaction between the two. We conducted four experiments (total N = 635) assessing relationships between biases in pain perception and treatment and biases in the perception of anger, happiness, fear, and sadness. Participants saw Black and White male targets making increasingly painful and angry (Experiment 1), happy (Experiment 2), fearful (Experiment 3), or sad expressions (Experiment 4). The effect of target race consistently varied based on the emotion displayed. Participants repeatedly saw pain more readily on White (vs. Black) male faces. However, while participants also saw sadness less readily on Black faces, perception of anger, fear, and happiness did not vary by target race. Moreover, the tendency to see pain less readily on Black faces predicted similar differences in recognizing (particularly negative) expressions, though only racial bias in pain perception facilitated similar biases in treatment. Finally, while endorsement of racialized threat stereotypes facilitated recognition of angry expressions and was marginally associated with impeded recognition of happy expressions on Black faces, gaps in pain perception were not reliably related to stereotype endorsement. These data suggest that while racial bias in pain perception is associated with a general bias in recognizing negative emotion on Black male faces, the effects of target race on pain perception are particularly robust and have distinct consequences for gaps in treatment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Humans are highly attuned to perceptual cues about their values. A growing body of evidence suggests that people selectively attend to moral stimuli. However, it is unknown whether morality is prioritized early in perception or much later in cognitive processing. We use a combination of behavioral methods and electroencephalography to investigate how early in perception moral words are prioritized relative to non-moral words. The behavioral data replicate previous research indicating that people are more likely to correctly identify moral than non-moral words in a modified lexical decision task. The electroencephalography data reveal that words are distinguished from non-words as early as 200 milliseconds after onset over frontal brain areas, and moral words are distinguished from non-moral words 100 milliseconds later over left-posterior cortex. Further analyses reveal that differences in brain activity to moral vs. non-moral words cannot be explained by differences in arousal associated with the words. These results suggest that moral content might be prioritized in conscious awareness after an initial perceptual encoding but before subsequent memory processing or action preparation. This work offers a more precise theoretical framework for understanding how morality impacts vision and behavior.

While a great deal of initial work in social neuroscience addressed the functional bases of our first impressions, our social evaluations of other people are anything but static. Just as our impressions can change, so too has our understanding of the neural underpinnings supporting this dynamic form of social learning. First, I review initial neuroimaging work on behavior-based impression updating, which observed that a distributed network of regions works in concert to revise trait representations in light of new behavioral information. Next, I discuss more recent research detailing how the updating process may be influenced by both bottom-up (e.g. experience) and top-down factors (e.g. motivation). Finally, I explore the contributions of more computational work studying similar processes via tasks that model social learning through repeated interactions and feedback-based reinforcement. Taken together, this work illustrates the expansion of our understanding of social impression formation, beyond static initial snapshots and towards a more dynamic process in which our representations of other people are continuously revised and reinterpreted in light of new information.

Over the past few decades, two-factor models of social cognition have emerged as the dominant framework for understanding impression formation. Despite the differences in the labels, there is wide agreement that one dimension reflects sociability potential, and the other, competence. One way in which the various two-factor models do clearly differ, however, is in the way the dimensions incorporate or produce evaluations of morality. Aristotle saw morality as the most important basis on which to form positive evaluations, because competence and sociability could only be virtuous, sincere, and trustworthy if expressed through a moral character. This chapter highlights research demonstrating the unique and possibly primary role of morality in social cognition. We clarify the dynamic, interactive, and conjoint effects of morality on social perception, and argue morality, competence, and sociability are three influential and interactive dimensions of social perception.

Humans are highly attuned to perceptual cues about their values. A growing body of evidence suggests that people selectively attend to moral stimuli. However, it is unknown whether morality is prioritized early in perception or much later in cognitive processing. We use a combination of behavioral methods and electroencephalography to investigate how early in perception moral words are prioritized relative to non-moral words. The behavioral data replicate previous research indicating that people are more likely to correctly identify moral than non-moral words in a modified lexical decision task. The electroencephalography data reveal that words are distinguished from non-words as early as 200 milliseconds after onset over frontal brain areas, and moral words are distinguished from non-moral words 100 milliseconds later over left-posterior cortex. Further analyses reveal that differences in brain activity to moral vs. non-moral words cannot be explained by differences in arousal associated with the words. These results suggest that moral content might be prioritized in conscious awareness after an initial perceptual encoding but before subsequent memory processing or action preparation. This work offers a more precise theoretical framework for understanding how morality impacts vision and behavior.

Social science is a field predominantly composed of liberals, and critics have argued that this liberal representation may reduce the robustness of research by embedding liberal values into the research and peer-review process. In an adversarial collaboration, we examined whether the ideological slant of research findings in psychology is associated with lower rates of scientific replicability. We analyzed 194 original psychology articles that had been subject to a later replication attempt (with a total sample of 1,331,413 participants across replications) by having psychology doctoral students (Study 1) and an online sample of U.S. residents (Study 2), from across the political spectrum, code the ideological slant (liberal vs. conservative) of the original research abstracts. The methods and analyses for both studies were pre-registered. In both studies, the liberal or conservative slant of the original research was not associated with whether or not the results successfully replicated: less than 2% of the variance in replication success was explained by ideological slant. The results remained consistent regardless of the ideology of the coder. Further, ideological slant was unrelated to both subsequent citation patterns and the original study effect size, and not consistently related to the original study sample size. However, we found weak evidence that more ideological research (regardless of ideology) was less replicable, and strong evidence that variables related to statistical robustness were consistent predictors of replication success. We discuss the implications for social science, politics, and replicability.

People learn about the world by making choices and experiencing feedback—a process characterized by models of reinforcement learning in which people learn to associate their actions with rewarding outcomes. Although reinforcement models provide compelling accounts of feedback-based learning in nonsocial contexts, social interactions typically involve inferences of others' trait characteristics, which may be independent of their reward value. As a result, people may learn differently about humans and nonhumans through reinforcement. In two experiments (and a pilot study), participants interacted with human partners or slot machines that shared money. Computational modeling of behavior revealed different patterns of learning for humans and non-humans: participants relied more on feedback indicating trait generosity (relative to monetary reward) when learning about humans but relied more on monetary reward (relative to generosity) when learning about slots. Furthermore, this pattern of learning had implications for attitudes: whereas participants preferred generous humans, they preferred rewarding slot machines, relative to their respective counterparts. These findings reveal a distinct role for reinforcement learning in social cognition, showing that humans preferentially form abstract trait inferences about other people through feedback in addition to reward associations.

Prominent theories of morality have integrated philosophy with psychology and biology. Although this approach has been highly generative, we argue that it does not fully capture the rich and dynamic nature of moral cognition. We review research from the dual-process tradition, in which moral intuitions are automatically elicited and reasoning is subsequently deployed to correct these initial intuitions. We then describe how the computations underlying moral cognition are diverse and widely distributed throughout the brain. Finally, we illustrate how social context modulates these computations, recruiting different systems for real (vs. hypothetical) moral judgments, examining the dynamic process by which moral judgments are updated. In sum, we advocate for a shift from dual-process to dynamic system models of moral cognition.

Several neuroimaging studies point to a key role of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) in the formation of socially relevant impressions. In 3 different experiments, participants were required to form socially relevant impressions about other individuals on the basis of text descriptions of their social ehaviors, and to decide whether a face alone, a trait adjective (e.g.,“ selfish”), or a face presented with a trait adjective was consistent or inconsistent with the impression they had formed. Before deciding whether the target stimulus matched the impression they had previously formed, participants received transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the dmPFC, the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG, also implicated in social impression formation), or over a control site (vertex). Results from the 3 experiments converged in showing that interfering with dmPFC activity significantly delayed participants in responding whether a face-adjective pair was consistent with the impression they had formed.No effects of TMS were observed following stimulation of the IFG or when evaluations had to be made on faces or trait adjectives presented alone. Ourfindings critically extend previous neuroimaging evidence by indicating a causal role of the dmPFC in creating coherent impressions based on the integration of face and verbal description of social behaviors.

We find that contextual sensitivity correlates with the reproducibility of 100 psychology studies from the Reproducibility Project (1). This relationship remains after adjusting for several methodological factors believed to account for reproducibility (e.g., sample size, effect size) and does not differ across subdisciplines (social vs. cognitive psychology). We also report a strong relationship between subdiscipline and context (1): social psychology studies are more likely to examine contextually sensitive topics than cognitive psychology studies. We conclude that context might play a role in reproducibility across (rather than within) subdisciplines. Inbar (2) notes that the reproducibility rate of social psychology (28%) is lower than cognitive psychology (53%). He also … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: jay.vanbavel{at}nyu.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

In recent years, scientists have paid increasing attention to reproducibility. For example, the Reproducibility Project, a large-scale replication attempt of 100 studies published in top psychology journals found that only 39% could be unambiguously reproduced. There is a growing consensus among scientists that the lack of reproducibility in psychology and other fields stems from various methodological factors, including low statistical power, researcher's degrees of freedom, and an emphasis on publishing surprising positive results. However, there is a contentious debate about the extent to which failures to reproduce certain results might also reflect contextual differences (often termed "hidden moderators") between the original research and the replication attempt. Although psychologists have found extensive evidence that contextual factors alter behavior, some have argued that context is unlikely to influence the results of direct replications precisely because these studies use the same methods as those used in the original research. To help resolve this debate, we recoded the 100 original studies from the Reproducibility Project on the extent to which the research topic of each study was contextually sensitive. Results suggested that the contextual sensitivity of the research topic was associated with replication success, even after statistically adjusting for several methodological characteristics (e.g., statistical power, effect size). The association between contextual sensitivity and replication success did not differ across psychological subdisciplines. These results suggest that researchers, replicators, and consumers should be mindful of contextual factors that might influence a psychological process. We offer several guidelines for dealing with contextual sensitivity in reproducibility.

Human neuroimaging offers a powerful way to connect animal and human research on emotion, with profound implications for psychological science. However, the gulf between animal and human studies remains a formidable obstacle: human studies typically focus on the cortex and a few subcortical regions such as the amygdala, whereas deeper structures such as the brainstem periaqueductal gray (PAG) play a key role in animal models. Here, we directly assessed the role of PAG in human affect by interleaving in a single fMRI session two conditions known to elicit strong emotional responses--physical pain and negative image viewing. Negative affect and PAG activity increased in both conditions. We next examined eight independent data sets, half featuring pain stimulation and half negative image viewing. In sum, these data sets comprised 198 additional participants. We found increased activity in PAG in all eight studies. Taken together, these findings suggest PAG is a key component of human affective responses.

The ability to control craving for substances that offer immediate rewards but whose long-term consumption may pose serious risks lies at the root of substance use disorders and is critical for mental and physical health. Despite its importance, the neural systems supporting this ability remain unclear. Here, we investigated this issue using functional imaging to examine neural activity in cigarette smokers, the most prevalent substance-dependent population in the United States, as they used cognitive strategies to regulate craving for cigarettes and food. We found that the cognitive down-regulation of craving was associated with ( i ) activity in regions previously associated with regulating emotion in particular and cognitive control in general, including dorsomedial, dorsolateral, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortices, and ( ii ) decreased activity in regions previously associated with craving, including the ventral striatum, subgenual cingulate, amygdala, and ventral tegmental area. Decreases in craving correlated with decreases in ventral striatum activity and increases in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activity, with ventral striatal activity fully mediating the relationship between lateral prefrontal cortex and reported craving. These results provide insight into the mechanisms that enable cognitive strategies to effectively regulate craving, suggesting that it involves neural dynamics parallel to those involved in regulating other emotions. In so doing, this study provides a methodological tool and conceptual foundation for studying this ability across substance using populations and developing more effective treatments for substance use disorders.

Recent neuroimaging work has identified a network of regions that work in concert to update impressions of other people, particularly in response to inconsistent behavior. However, the specific functional contributions of these regions to the updating process remain unclear. Using fMRI, we tested whether increases in activity triggered by inconsistent behavior reflect changes in the stored representations of other people in response to behavioral inconsistency, or merely a response to the inconsistency itself. Participants encountered a series of individuals whose behavior either changed in an attributionally meaningful fashion or was merely inconsistent with the immediately preceding behavior. We observed that left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) and left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) were preferentially recruited in response to unexpected, immoral behavior, whereas a separate set of regions (including dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, posterior cingulate cortex and temporoparietal junction/inferior parietal lobule) was preferentially recruited in response to more mundane inconsistencies in behavior. These results shed light on the distributed systems supporting impression updating. Specifically, while many regions supporting updating may primarily respond to moment-to-moment changes in behavior, a subset of regions (e.g. vlPFC and IFG) may contribute to updating person representations in response to trait-relevant changes in behavior.

While positive behavioral information is diagnostic when evaluating a person's abilities, negative information is diagnostic when evaluating morality. Although social psychology has considered these two domains as orthogonal and distinct from one another, we demonstrate that this asymmetry in diagnosticity can be explained by a single parsimonious principle—the perceived frequency of behaviors in these domains. Less frequent behaviors (e.g., high ability and low morality) are weighed more heavily in evaluations. We show that this statistical principle of frequency-derived diagnosticity is evident in human participants at both behavioral and neural levels of analysis. Specifically, activity in right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex increased preferentially when participants updated impressions based on diagnostic behaviors, and further, activity in this region covaried parametrically with the perceived frequency of behaviors. Activity in left ventrolateral PFC, left inferior frontal gyrus, and left superior temporal sulcus showed similar patterns of diagnosticity and sensitivity, though additional analyses confirmed that these regions responded primarily to updates based on immoral behaviors.

Contains fulltext : 116732.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Person perception is a dynamic, evolving process. Because other people are an endless source of social information, people need to update their impressions of others based upon new information. We devised an fMRI study to identify brain regions involved in updating impressions. Participants saw faces paired with valenced behavioral information and were asked to form impressions of these individuals. Each face was seen five times in a row, each time with a different behavioral description. Critically, for half of the faces the behaviors were evaluatively consistent, while for the other half they were inconsistent. In line with prior work, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) was associated with forming impressions of individuals based on behavioral information. More importantly, a whole-brain analysis revealed a network of other regions associated with updating impressions of individuals who exhibited evaluatively inconsistent behaviors, including rostrolateral PFC, superior temporal sulcus, right inferior parietal lobule and posterior cingulate cortex.

Contains fulltext : 116739.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Neuroscience research on the social evaluation of faces has accumulated over the last decade, yielding divergent results. We used a meta-analytic technique, multi-level kernel density analysis (MKDA), to analyze 29 neuroimaging studies on face evaluation. Across negative face evaluations, we observed the most consistent activations in bilateral amygdala. Across positive face evaluations, we observed the most consistent activations in medial prefrontal cortex, pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC), medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC), left caudate and nucleus accumbens (NAcc). Based on additional analyses comparing linear and non-linear responses, we propose a ventral/dorsal dissociation within the amygdala, wherein separate populations of neurons code for face valence and intensity, respectively. Finally, we argue that some of the differences between studies are attributable to differences in the typicality of face stimuli. Specifically, extremely attractive faces are more likely to elicit responses in NAcc/caudate and mOFC.

Item does not contain fulltext People make rapid and consequential social judgments from minimal (non-emotional) facial cues. There has been rapid progress in identifying the perceptual basis of these judgments using data-driven, computational models. In contrast, our understanding of the neural underpinnings of these judgments is rather limited. Meta-analyses of neuroimaging studies find a wide range of seemingly inconsistent responses in the amygdala that co-vary with social judgments from faces. Guided by computational models of social judgments, these responses can be accounted by positing that the amygdala (and posterior face selective regions) tracks face typicality. Atypical faces, whether positively or negatively evaluated, elicit stronger responses in the amygdala. We conclude with the promise of data-driven methods for modeling neural responses to social judgments from faces.

This study explored how the effectiveness of specific emotion regulation strategies might be influenced by aging and by time of day, given that in older age the circadian peak in cognitive performance is earlier in the day. We compared the benefit gained by 40 older (60-78 years; 20 women) and 40 younger (18-30 years; 20 women) adults during either on-peak or off-peak circadian times on 2 specific types of cognitive emotion regulation strategies: distraction and reappraisal. Participants rated their negative emotional responses to negative and neutral images under 3 conditions: a baseline nonregulation condition, a distraction condition involving a working memory task, and a reappraisal condition that involved reinterpreting the situation displayed using specific preselected strategies. First, as hypothesized, there was a crossover interaction such that participants in each age group reported more negative reactivity at their off-peak time of day. Second, a double dissociation was observed as circadian rhythms affected only negative reactivity-with reactivity highest at off-peak times-and aging diminished reappraisal but not distraction ability or reactivity. These findings add to growing evidence that understanding the effects of aging on emotion and emotion regulation depends on taking both time of day and type of regulatory strategy into account.