Neurosociety Lab, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, Psychology Building (PC), Room 102, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4K1, Canada.
Exp Brain Res. 2020 Apr;238(4):833-841. doi: 10.1007/s00221-020-05761-7. Epub 2020 Mar 4.
High-status individuals have been found to be less attuned to the behaviour of others in the social environment, at least in the absence of any specific instructions to pay attention to them. Previous work using neural measures has shown that socioeconomic status (SES) influences the degree to which people are attuned to the actions of others. In particular, individuals from low-SES backgrounds were found to exhibit more mu-suppression, which has been suggested to reflect greater levels of sensorimotor resonance, compared to their high-SES counterparts. However, it is unclear whether such effects on brain activity translate into behaviour. Here, we examined differences in automatic imitation between high-SES and low-SES individuals. The automatic imitation task involves participants making actions in response to a numerical cue, while simultaneously being exposed to an action that is incongruent or congruent with the cued response. Patterns of interference effect reveal the extent to which the congruence of the observed action affects performance of the cued response. Interference thus indexes self-other processing, where high levels of interference suggest an increased susceptibility to the actions of others. Our results show that individuals from low-SES backgrounds exhibit more interference than individuals from high-SES backgrounds. Regression analyses revealed a negative relationship between SES and the degree of interference. Overall, our findings suggest that differences in SES are linked to differences in self-other processing, which could be relevant for broader behavioural tendencies exhibited by individuals at varying levels of a social structure.
高社会地位的个体在社会环境中对他人行为的敏感性较低，至少在没有特定关注他人行为的指示的情况下是如此。先前使用神经测量的研究表明，社会经济地位（SES）会影响人们对他人行为的敏感性程度。特别是，来自低 SES 背景的个体表现出更强的 mu 抑制，这被认为反映了更高水平的感觉运动共鸣，与高 SES 个体相比。然而，目前尚不清楚这种对大脑活动的影响是否会转化为行为。在这里，我们研究了高 SES 和低 SES 个体之间自动模仿的差异。自动模仿任务涉及参与者根据数字提示做出动作，同时同时暴露于与提示反应不一致或一致的动作。干扰效应的模式揭示了观察到的动作的一致性对提示反应的影响程度。因此，干扰指数反映了自我与他人处理的程度，其中高水平的干扰表明对他人行为的敏感性增加。我们的研究结果表明，来自低 SES 背景的个体比来自高 SES 背景的个体表现出更多的干扰。回归分析显示 SES 与干扰程度之间存在负相关关系。总的来说，我们的研究结果表明，SES 差异与自我与他人处理的差异有关，这可能与处于不同社会结构层次的个体表现出的更广泛的行为倾向有关。
