Overgaauw Sandy, Jansen Myrthe, Korbee Naomi J, de Bruijn Ellen R A
Department of Clinical Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands.
Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC), Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2019 Jul 16;13:160. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00160. eCollection 2019.
Aligning behavior in favor of group norms, i.e., social conformity, can help to successfully adapt to uncertain environments and may result in social approval. This may lead to enhanced feelings of belongingness and is found to be associated with reward-related activations in the brain. Individuals high on psychopathic traits violate group norms regularly. Yet, it is unclear how psychopathic traits are related to neural mechanisms involved in social conformity. This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study includes 42 healthy females scoring low or high on the Psychopathic Personality Inventory questionnaire (PPI). Participants were asked to rate the trustworthiness of 120 faces while lying in the scanner. After rating each face, participants were presented with the group rating of European students. In an unanticipated second part participants rated all faces again, allowing us to focus on two main contrasts: (1) "Social conflict": group opinion in conflict with the participant's rating vs. group opinion aligned with participant rating; and (2) "Conformity": conflict trials followed by conformity vs. conflict trials followed by non-conformity. Behaviorally, the two groups showed similar conformity behavior. fMRI results showed that both groups activated the nucleus accumbens (NAc) following alignment, suggesting the central role of prediction errors and reward. The data also showed a significant interaction between group and conformity in the amygdala. Following conflicts, females scoring low on psychopathic traits showed a trend in enhanced amygdala activation for conformity relative to non-conformity. Additionally, results showed a trend significant group effect for non-conformity. Females scoring high on psychopathic traits showed more activation for non-conformity compared to females scoring low on psychopathic traits, suggesting altered emotional salience of experiencing conflict depending on psychopathic traits. Taken together, these results support the importance of investigating the role of relevant traits in adaptive behavior when facing uncertain social situations and the neural mechanisms involved in this process.
使行为符合群体规范，即社会从众，有助于成功适应不确定的环境，并可能带来社会认可。这可能会增强归属感，并被发现与大脑中与奖励相关的激活有关。具有精神病态特质的个体经常违反群体规范。然而，尚不清楚精神病态特质与社会从众所涉及的神经机制之间有何关系。这项功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究纳入了42名在精神病态人格问卷（PPI）上得分低或高的健康女性。参与者躺在扫描仪中时，被要求对120张面孔的可信度进行评分。在对每张面孔进行评分后，向参与者展示欧洲学生的群体评分。在一个未预料到的第二部分中，参与者再次对所有面孔进行评分，这使我们能够关注两个主要对比：（1）“社会冲突”：群体意见与参与者评分冲突与群体意见与参与者评分一致；以及（2）“从众”：冲突试验后从众与冲突试验后不从众。在行为上，两组表现出相似的从众行为。fMRI结果显示，两组在意见一致后均激活了伏隔核（NAc），表明预测误差和奖励的核心作用。数据还显示杏仁核中群体和从众之间存在显著交互作用。在冲突之后，精神病态特质得分低的女性相对于不从众表现出杏仁核激活增强的趋势。此外，结果显示在不从众方面存在显著的群体效应趋势。与精神病态特质得分低的女性相比，精神病态特质得分高的女性在不从众时表现出更多激活，这表明根据精神病态特质，经历冲突时情绪显著性发生了改变。综上所述，这些结果支持了在面对不确定的社会情况时研究相关特质在适应性行为中的作用以及这一过程中所涉及的神经机制的重要性。
