Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH, USA.
Front Integr Neurosci. 2012 Jul 10;6:46. doi: 10.3389/fnint.2012.00046. eCollection 2012.
Humans have a fundamental need for social relationships. From an evolutionary standpoint, the drive to form social connections may have evolved as an adaptive mechanism to promote survival, as group membership afforded the benefits of shared resources and security. Thus, rejection from social groups is especially detrimental, rendering the ability to detect threats to social relationships and respond in adaptive ways critical. Previous research indicates that social exclusion alters cognition and behavior in specific ways that may initially appear contradictory. That is, although some studies have found that exclusionary social threats lead to withdrawal from the surrounding social world, other studies indicate that social exclusion motivates affiliative social behavior. Here, we review the existing evidence supporting accounts of avoidant and affiliative responses, and highlight the conditions under which both categories of responses may be simultaneously employed. Then, we review the neuroimaging research implicating specific brain regions underlying the ability to detect and adaptively respond to threats of social exclusion. Collectively, these findings are suggestive of neural system highly attuned to social context and capable of motivating flexible behavioral responses.
人类有建立社会关系的基本需求。从进化的角度来看，形成社会联系的动力可能是作为一种适应机制进化而来的，以促进生存，因为群体成员身份带来了共享资源和安全的好处。因此，被社会团体拒绝尤其不利，这使得能够检测到对社会关系的威胁并以适应的方式做出反应变得至关重要。先前的研究表明，社会排斥以特定的方式改变认知和行为，这些方式最初可能看起来相互矛盾。也就是说，尽管一些研究发现排斥性的社会威胁导致人们从周围的社会世界中退缩，但其他研究表明，社会排斥会激发亲和的社会行为。在这里，我们回顾了支持回避和亲和反应的现有证据，并强调了这两种反应类别可能同时被采用的条件。然后，我们回顾了神经影像学研究，这些研究涉及到检测和适应性地应对社会排斥威胁的特定大脑区域。总的来说，这些发现表明，神经系统对社会环境高度敏感，并能够激发灵活的行为反应。
