Elsevier

NeuroImage

Volume 60, Issue 3, 15 April 2012, Pages 1771-1777
NeuroImage

Full Length Article
Social status modulates neural activity in the mentalizing network

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.01.080Get rights and content

Abstract

The current research explored the neural mechanisms linking social status to perceptions of the social world. Two fMRI studies provide converging evidence that individuals lower in social status are more likely to engage neural circuitry often involved in ‘mentalizing’ or thinking about others' thoughts and feelings. Study 1 found that college students' perception of their social status in the university community was related to neural activity in the mentalizing network (e.g., DMPFC, MPFC, precuneus/PCC) while encoding social information, with lower social status predicting greater neural activity in this network. Study 2 demonstrated that socioeconomic status, an objective indicator of global standing, predicted adolescents' neural activity during the processing of threatening faces, with individuals lower in social status displaying greater activity in the DMPFC, previously associated with mentalizing, and the amygdala, previously associated with emotion/salience processing. These studies demonstrate that social status is fundamentally and neurocognitively linked to how people process and navigate their social worlds.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 16 undergraduate students (8 males) who were between the ages of 18 and 24 (M age = 19.81 years, SD = 1.8). All participants were Caucasian, right-handed, and reported no history of neurological disorder.

Procedure

Participants underwent an fMRI scan while they viewed pictures and read social and non-social passages describing people and objects. Following the scan, participants completed a measure of subjective social status.

Social status measure

To measure social status, participants completed a modified version

Study 2

Study 1 focused on university students' subjective perceptions of their social status. In Study 2, we wanted to examine whether a more objective indicator of social status, SES, related to neural activity in the mentalizing network. We also wanted to extend these findings to a sample of adolescents. Given that SES in childhood and adolescence is a better predictor of health outcomes than adult SES (Kittleson et al., 2006), understanding the neurocognitive correlates of social information

Results and discussion

To examine neural activity while viewing angry faces (regardless of SES), we compared neural activity during the viewing of the angry facial expressions to neural activity during fixation. Results showed greater activity in visual and fusiform regions (BA 17/18) during the processing of faces, compared to fixation baseline (x =  22, y =  84, z =  12, t = 7.42, k = 3980). Results from ROI analyses of the amygdala revealed a significantly active cluster in left amygdala (x =  18, y =  8, z =  17, t = 3.01, k = 11)

General discussion

The present studies investigated how social status relates to neural activity during tasks that may be related to the tendency to think about the thoughts and feelings of others. Across two studies, social status was associated with neural activity in a region of the mentalizing network (DMPFC), such that individuals who were lower in social status showed greater activity in this brain region. In Study 1, college students who reported having lower status in their university showed greater

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Larissa Borofsky, Natalie Colich, Austin Grinberg, Kristin McNealy, and Meghan Meyer for their help with data collection, Will Moore and the University of Oregon Developmental Social Neuroscience Laboratory for providing some of the ROIs used in the analyses, Bob Spunt for help with data analysis, and members of the UCLA Social and Affective Neuroscience Lab, and George Slavich, for comments on a previous version. For generous support, we thank the Santa Fe Institute

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