Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Department of Psychology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er-Sheva 84105, Israel.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2021 Dec 30;16(12):1276-1287. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsab081.
People want to interact successfully with other individuals, and they invest significant efforts in attempting to do so. Decades of research have demonstrated that to simplify the dauntingly complex task of interpersonal communication, perceivers predict the responses of individuals in their environment using stereotypes and other sources of prior knowledge. Here, we show that these top-down expectations can also shape the subjective value of expectation-consistent and expectation-violating targets. Specifically, in two neuroimaging experiments (n = 58), we observed increased activation in brain regions associated with reward processing-including the nucleus accumbens-when perceivers observed information consistent with their social expectations. In two additional behavioral experiments (n = 704), we observed that perceivers were willing to forgo money to encounter an expectation-consistent target and avoid an expectation-violating target. Together, these findings suggest that perceivers value having their social expectations confirmed, much like food or monetary rewards.
人们希望与他人成功互动，并为此投入大量努力。数十年来的研究表明，为了简化人际沟通这一令人望而生畏的复杂任务，感知者会使用刻板印象和其他先前知识来源来预测环境中个体的反应。在这里，我们表明这些自上而下的期望也可以塑造期望一致和期望违反目标的主观价值。具体来说，在两项神经影像学实验（n=58）中，我们观察到当感知者观察到与他们的社会期望一致的信息时，与奖励处理相关的大脑区域（包括伏隔核）的活动增加。在另外两项行为实验（n=704）中，我们观察到感知者愿意放弃金钱来遇到期望一致的目标，并避免遇到期望违反的目标。总的来说，这些发现表明，感知者重视自己的社会期望得到证实，就像食物或金钱奖励一样。
