Adolescents’ neural response to social reward and real-world emotional closeness and positive affect

Five studies tested the effect of exposure to authoritarian values on positive affect (PA), negative affect (NA), and meaning in life (MIL). Study 1 (N = 1,053) showed that simply completing a measure of right-wing authoritarianism (vs. not) prior to rating MIL led to higher MIL. Preregistered Study 2 (N = 1,904) showed that reading speeches by real-world authoritarians (e.g., Adolf Hitler) led to lower PA, higher NA, and higher MIL than a control passage. In preregistered Studies 3 (N = 1,573) and 4 (N = 1,512), Americans read authoritarian, egalitarian, or control messages and rated mood, MIL, and evaluated the passages. Both studies showed that egalitarian messages led to better mood and authoritarian messages led to higher MIL. Study 5 (N = 148) directly replicated these results with Canadians. Aggregating across studies (N = 3,401), moderational analyses showed that meaning in life, post manipulation, was associated with more favorable evaluations of the authoritarian passage. In addition, PA was a stronger predictor of MIL in the egalitarian and control conditions than in the authoritarian condition. Further results showed no evidence that negative mood (or disagreement) spurred the boost in MIL. Implications and future directions are discussed.

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Faculty Opinions recommendation of Association between real-world experiential diversity and positive affect relates to hippocampal-striatal functional connectivity.

Faculty Opinions – Post-Publication Peer Review of the Biomedical Literature ◽

10.3410/f.737968900.793576116 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Gerd Kempermann

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Positive Affect ◽

Real World

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Adolescent gender differences in neural reactivity to a friend’s positive affect and real-world positive experiences in social contexts

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1016/j.dcn.2020.100779 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 43 ◽

pp. 100779

Author(s):

Gabriela Alarcón ◽

Judith K. Morgan ◽

Nicholas B. Allen ◽

Lisa Sheeber ◽

Jennifer S. Silk ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Gender Differences ◽

Positive Affect ◽

Real World ◽

Social Contexts ◽

Positive Experiences ◽

Neural Reactivity

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S.23.01 Effects of MDMA on sociability and neural response to social threat and social reward

European Neuropsychopharmacology ◽

10.1016/s0924-977x(11)70331-5 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 21 ◽

pp. S222

Author(s):

H. de Wit ◽

G. Bedi ◽

L. Phan ◽

M. Kirkpatrick

Keyword(s):

Neural Response ◽

Social Reward ◽

Social Threat

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Interpersonal context and desired emotional closeness in neural response to negative visual stimuli: Preliminary findings

Brain and Behavior ◽

10.1002/brb3.2438 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Luis E. Flores ◽

Gabriela Alarcón ◽

Kristen L. Eckstrand ◽

Morgan Lindenmuth ◽

Erika E. Forbes

Keyword(s):

Visual Stimuli ◽

Neural Response ◽

Interpersonal Context ◽

Emotional Closeness

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A New Laboratory Method for Altering Positive Affect

Psychological Reports ◽

10.2466/pr0.1995.76.3c.1103 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 76 (3_suppl) ◽

pp. 1103-1106 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

David Wiseman ◽

Irwin P. Levin

Keyword(s):

Positive Affect ◽

Real World ◽

Mood Induction ◽

Laboratory Method ◽

New Method ◽

Demand Characteristics ◽

Time Period ◽

Specific Amount

This paper reports the development with 95 undergraduates of a new method for altering Positive Affect in the laboratory. The method consists of assigning persons to complete a boring task for a specific amount of time and, shortly after beginning the task, informing them that the assigned time period has either been increased or reduced. The advantages of this method are that it is effective, relatively free of demand characteristics, ethical, fast to administer, and parallels “real world” experiences. In addition, this procedure seems to circumvent limitations of other mood-induction procedures.

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Multi-modal Assessment of Reward Functioning in Adolescent Anhedonia

10.31234/osf.io/54jk2 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Laura M. Murray ◽

Elana Israel ◽

Brianna Pastro ◽

Nathaniel Lovell-Smith ◽

Scott E. Lukas ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Real World ◽

Neural Response ◽

Self Report ◽

Learning Ability ◽

Reward Learning ◽

Neural Function ◽

Daily Lives ◽

Affective Experiences ◽

Ecological Momentary ◽

Multiple Assessment

Background: Anhedonia is a core symptom of depression that predicts worse treatment outcomes. Dysfunction in neural reward circuits is thought to contribute to anhedonia. However, it remains unclear whether laboratory-based assessments of anhedonia and reward-related neural function translate to adolescents' subjective affective experiences in real-world contexts. Methods: We recruited a sample of adolescents (ages 12-18; mean=15.83) who varied in anhedonia (N=82) and examined the relationships among clinician-rated and self-reported anhedonia, behaviorally assessed reward learning ability, fMRI-measured neural response to monetary reward and loss, and repeated ecological momentary assessment (EMA) of positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA).Results: Anhedonia was associated with lower mean PA and higher mean NA across the 5-day EMA period. Anhedonia was not associated with impaired behavioral reward learning but was consistently associated with attenuated nucleus accumbens response to reward across categorical, dimensional, and ecological assessments. Greater mean NA and NA variability were associated with increased medial prefrontal response to loss, and mean NA predicted reduced insula activity to reward. Conclusions: Traditional laboratory-based measures of anhedonia were associated with lower subjective PA and higher subjective NA in youths' daily lives. Across multiple assessment modalities, anhedonia was associated with reduced reward-related striatal functioning, whereas greater subjective NA was associated with both reward and loss-related neural response in the broader corticostriatal system. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that diagnostic and self-report measures of anhedonia translate to real-world contexts, and that subjective ratings of PA and NA may be associated with distinct patterns of neural response to reward and loss.

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