Overgaauw Sandy, Jansen Myrthe, de Bruijn Ellen R A
Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, the Netherlands; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC), Leiden, the Netherlands.
Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, the Netherlands; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC), Leiden, the Netherlands.
Cortex. 2020 Aug;129:199-210. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.01.030. Epub 2020 May 7.
Performing in a social context can result in negative feelings when our actions harm another person, but it can also lead to positive feelings when observing an opponent fail. The extent to which individuals scoring high on psychopathic traits, often characterized as self-centered with reduced concern for others' welfare, are sensitive to own and others' success and failure is yet unknown. However, knowledge about these processes is crucial for comprehending how these traits are involved in understanding ourselves and others during social interactions. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, healthy females scoring low or high on psychopathic traits performed a cannon-shooting game in non-social, cooperative, and competitive contexts. We hypothesized group differences regarding: (1) monitoring of own actions in a non-social context (errors that only negatively affect oneself) versus cooperative context (errors that also harm others), (2) successfully performing with either positive (shared gain) or negative consequences (selfish gain) for the co-player, and (3) observing other's performance leading to shared or selfish gain for oneself. Decreased performance-monitoring-related activations were found in posterior medial frontal cortex for females scoring high on psychopathic traits in the social versus non-social context. When observing others, striatal activations were stronger for selfish gains for high scorers and for shared gains for low scorers. The current outcomes demonstrate that performance-monitoring and reward-related brain activations importantly depend on the interplay between psychopathic traits and social context. We propose that these neural mechanisms may underlie the more self-centered behavior of individuals scoring high on psychopathic traits. As such, the current findings may open up new research avenues, which could advance our understanding of how personality traits impact performance monitoring in a wide variety of social contexts and could possibly lead to the development of interventions aimed at normalizing reduced concern for others.
在社交情境中表现时，如果我们的行为伤害了他人，可能会产生负面情绪，但当看到对手失败时也可能产生积极情绪。具有精神病态特质的个体往往以自我为中心，对他人福祉的关注减少，他们对自己和他人的成功与失败的敏感程度尚不清楚。然而，了解这些过程对于理解这些特质在社交互动中如何参与理解自己和他人至关重要。在这项功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究中，具有低或高精神病态特质得分的健康女性在非社交、合作和竞争情境中进行了打炮游戏。我们假设存在以下组间差异：（1）在非社交情境（仅对自己产生负面影响的错误）与合作情境（也会伤害他人的错误）中对自己行为的监测，（2）与共同玩家一起成功执行时产生积极（共同收益）或消极后果（自私收益），以及（3）观察他人的表现给自己带来共同或自私收益。在社交与非社交情境中，具有高精神病态特质得分的女性在额叶内侧后皮质中发现与表现监测相关的激活减少。在观察他人时，得分高者对自私收益的纹状体激活更强，得分低者对共同收益的纹状体激活更强。当前结果表明，与表现监测和奖励相关的大脑激活重要地取决于精神病态特质与社会情境之间的相互作用。我们提出，这些神经机制可能是具有高精神病态特质得分的个体更以自我为中心行为的基础。因此，当前发现可能开辟新的研究途径，这可能会推进我们对人格特质如何在各种社交情境中影响表现监测的理解，并可能导致旨在使对他人关注减少正常化的干预措施的发展。
