Hormonal and neural correlates of prosocial conformity in adolescents

Expanding understanding of adolescent neural sensitivity to peers: Using social information processing theory to generate new lines of research

Adolescence is a period of normative heightened sensitivity to peer influence. Individual differences in susceptibility to peers is related to individual differences in neural sensitivity, particularly in brain regions that support an increasingly greater orientation toward peers. Despite these empirically-established patterns, the more specific psychosocial and socio-cognitive factors associated with individual differences in neural sensitivity to peer influence are just beginning to gain research attention. Specific features of the factors that contribute to how adolescents process social information can inform understanding of the psychological and neurobiological processes involved in what renders adolescents to be more or less susceptible to peer influences. In this paper, we (1) review the literature about peer, family, and broader contextual influences on sensitivity to peers' positive and negative behaviors, (2) outline components of social information processing theories, and (3) discuss features of these models from the perspectives and social cognitive development and social neuroscience. We identify gaps in the current literature that need to be addressed in order to gain a more comprehensive view of adolescent neural sensitivity to peer influence. We conclude by suggesting how future neuroimaging studies can adopt components of this social information processing model to generate new lines of research.

Age-related changes in ventrolateral prefrontal cortex activation are associated with daily prosocial behaviors two years later

As adolescents acquire agency and become contributing members of society, it is necessary to understand how they help their community. Yet, it is unknown how prosocial behavior develops in the context of community-based prosocial behaviors that are relevant to adolescents, such as donating time to charities. In this longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging study, adolescents (N=172; mean age at wave 1=12.8) completed a prosocial task annually for three years (N=422 and 375 total behavioral and neural data points, respectively), and 14 days of daily diaries reporting on their prosocial behaviors two years later. During the task, adolescents decided how many minutes they would donate to a variety of local charities. We found that adolescents donated less time to charities from early to mid adolescence. Longitudinal whole-brain analyses revealed declines in ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) activation, as well as inverted U-shaped changes in precuneus activation when adolescents donated their time from early to mid adolescence. A less steep decrease in vlPFC activation predicted greater real-life prosocial behaviors in youth's daily lives two years later. Our study elucidates the neurodevelopmental mechanisms of prosocial behavior from early to mid adolescence that have enduring effects on daily prosocial behaviors in late adolescence.

Neurophysiological correlates of interpersonal discrepancy and social adjustment in an interactive decision-making task in dyads

Introduction

The pursuit of convergence and the social behavioral adjustment of conformity are fundamental cooperative behaviors that help people adjust their mental frameworks to reach a common goal. However, while social psychology has extensively studied conformity by its influence context, there is still plenty to investigate about the neural cognitive mechanisms involved in this behavior.

Methods

We proposed a paradigm with two phases, a pre-activation phase to enhance cooperative tendencies and, later, a social decision-making phase in which dyads had to make a perceptual estimation in three consecutive trials and could converge in their decisions without an explicit request or reward to do so. In Study 1, 80 participants were divided in two conditions. In one condition participants did the pre-activation phase alone, while in the other condition the two participants did it with their partners and could interact freely. In Study 2, we registered the electroencephalographical (EEG) activity of 36 participants in the social decision-making phase.

Results

Study 1 showed behavioral evidence of higher spontaneous convergence in participants who interacted in the pre-activation phase. Event related Potentials (ERP) recorded in Study 2 revealed signal differences in response divergence in different time intervals. Time-frequency analysis showed theta, alpha, and beta evidence related to cognitive control, attention, and reward processing associated with social convergence.

Discussion

Current results support the spontaneous convergence of behavior in dyads, with increased behavioral adjustment in those participants who have previously cooperated. In addition, neurophysiological components were associated with discrepancy levels between participants, and supported the validity of the experimental paradigm to study spontaneous social behavioral adaptation in experimental settings.

Associations of psychoactive substances and steroid hormones in hair: Findings relevant to stress research from a large cohort of young adults

OBJECTIVE

Epidemiological studies increasingly use hair samples to assess people's cumulative exposure to steroid hormones, but how the use of different psychoactive substances may affect steroid hormone levels in hair is, so far, largely unknown. The current study addresses this gap by establishing the substance exposure correlates of cortisol, cortisone, and testosterone in hair, while also accounting for a number of relevant covariates.

METHOD

Data came from a large urban community-sample of young adults with a high prevalence of substance use (N = 1002, mean age=20.6 years, 50.2% female), who provided 3 cm of hair samples. Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) quantified cortisol, cortisone, and testosterone, as well as delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, "Ecstasy"), cocaine, several opioids, and their respective metabolites. Multiple linear regression models with covariates were used to predict steroid hormone levels from substance exposure in a four-step approach: In the full sample, low and high substance hair concentrations (median split) were first tested against no use for each substance individually (step 1) and for all substances together (step 2). Then, within the participants with any substance in hair only, the continuous hair concentration of each substance in pg/mg (step 3) and finally of all substances together, were regressed (step 4).

RESULTS

Low, high, and continuous levels of THC in hair were robustly associated with higher levels of cortisol (sig. in step 1 low THC: β = 0.29, p = .021; high THC: β = 0.42, p = .001; step 2: low THC: β = 0.27, p = 0.036, and high THC: β = 0.40, p = .004, and step 4: β = 0.12, p = .041). Participants with high MDMA levels had higher levels of cortisone without adjusting for other substances (step 1: β = 0.34, p = .026), but this effect was not significant in the other models. While high THC levels were associated with lower levels of testosterone in step 2 (β = -0.35, p = .018), MDMA concentration was positively related to testosterone concentration with and without adjusting for other substances (step 3: β = 0.24, p = .041; step 4: β = 0.17, 95%, p = .015) in male participants.

CONCLUSION

The use of psychoactive substances, especially of cannabis and ecstasy, should be considered in studies investigating steroid hormones in hair.

Testosterone facilitates nonreproductive, context-appropriate pro- and anti-social behavior in female and male Mongolian gerbils

A growing body of literature suggests that testosterone (T) rapidly modulates behavior in a context-specific manner. However, the timescales in which T can rapidly mediate distinct types of behavior, such as pro- vs. anti- social responses, has not been studied. Thus, here we examined acute T influences on social behavior in male and female Mongolian gerbils in nonreproductive contexts. Females and males received an injection of either saline or T and were first tested in a social interaction test with a same-sex, familiar peer. 5 min after the peer interaction, subjects then underwent a resident-intruder test with a novel, same-sex conspecific. After another 5 min, gerbils were tested in a novel object task to test context-specificity (i.e., social vs. nonsocial) of T effects on behavior. Within 1 h, males and females injected with T exhibited more huddling with a peer but more active avoidance of and less time spent in proximity of an intruder than did animals injected with saline. T effects on behavior were specific to social contexts, such that T did not influence investigation of the novel object. Together these findings show that T rapidly promotes pro-social responses to a familiar peer and anti-social responses to an intruder in the same individuals within 5 min of experiencing these disparate social contexts. This demonstrates that T rapidly facilitates behavior in a context-appropriate manner outside the context of reproduction and reveals that rapid effects of T on behavior are not restricted to males.

Adolescents' neural sensitivity to high and low popularity: Longitudinal links to risk-taking and prosocial behavior

Adolescents are particularly attuned to popularity within peer groups, which impacts behaviors such as risk-taking and prosocial behavior. Neurodevelopmental changes orient adolescents toward salient social cues in their environment. We examined whether neural regions that track popularity are associated with longitudinal changes in risk-taking and prosocial behavior. During an fMRI scan, adolescents (n = 109, Mage=13.59, SD=0.59) viewed pictures of their popular and unpopular classmates based on sociometric nominations from their social networks. Neural tracking of high popularity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex was associated with increases in risk-taking behavior, whereas tracking of low popularity in the right insula was associated with increases in prosocial behavior. Results suggest that individual differences in neural tracking of popularity relate to longitudinal changes in adolescents' social behaviors.

Neural Representation of Donating Time and Money

Volunteering and charitable donations are two common forms of prosocial behavior, yet it is unclear whether these other-benefitting behaviors are supported by the same or different neurobiological mechanisms. During an fMRI task, 40 participants (20 female-identifying; age: mean = 18.92 years, range = 18.32-19.92 years) contributed their time (in minutes) and money (in dollars) to a variety of local charities. With the maximum amount of time and money that participants could spend on these charities, they did not differentially donate their time and money. At the neural level, donating time and money both showed activations in brain regions involved in cognitive control (e.g., dorsolateral PFC) and affective processing (e.g., dorsal anterior cingulate cortex), but donating time recruited regions involved in reward valuation (e.g., ventral striatum) and mentalizing (e.g., temporal pole) to a greater extent than donating money. Further, the precuneus, which is also a region involved in mentalizing, more strongly tracked the varying amount of money than time donated, suggesting that the precuneus may be more sensitive to the increasing magnitude of a nonsocial exchange (e.g., donating money is a financial exchange) than a social exchange (e.g., donating time is an interpersonal exchange). Our findings elucidate shared as well as distinct neurobiological properties of two prosocial behaviors, which have implications for how humans share different resources to positively impact their community.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Prosocial behaviors broadly characterize how humans act to benefit others. Various prosocial behaviors, such as volunteering and charitable donations, share the goal of positively contributing to community. Our study identifies brain regions that may serve as ubiquitous neurobiological markers of community-based prosocial behaviors. Despite this shared goal, our study also shows that the human brain responds to donating time and money in diverging ways, such that brain regions associated with processing emotional reward and thinking about others are more strongly recruited for donating time than for money. Therefore, our study sheds light on how different personal resources, such as one's time and money, within a prosocial context are represented in the brain.

No Compelling Evidence that Self-Reported Personality Traits Explain Basal Testosterone and Cortisol’s Associations with Status-Relevant Behavior

Objective

A goal of behavioral neuroendocrinology is to understand how basal hormone levels relate to behavior. Studies of human participants sometimes measure self-reported personality traits, in addition to or instead of direct behavioral observation. Although personality traits often predict their respective behaviors, whether personality explains hormone-behavior relationships remains unclear.

Methods

We obtained data from eight previous studies (total N = 985) that examined baseline testosterone and cortisol as predictors of status-relevant behavior (competitiveness, dominance, risk-taking, aggression, affiliation, and social status). We tested whether the previously reported hormone-behavior relationships are mediated by self-reported personality traits (e.g., trait dominance, prestige, extraversion). As a secondary research question, we also tested whether trait dominance moderated the testosterone-behavior relationships.

Results

As expected, self-reported personality traits often predicted status-relevant behaviors, but there was little evidence that traits also correlated with basal testosterone or the testosterone × cortisol interaction. Across all eight studies, personality traits did not significantly mediate hormone-behavior relationships. Indeed, the effect sizes of the hormone-behavior relationships were robust to the inclusion of personality traits as covariates. Further, we did not find strong or consistent evidence that trait dominance moderates the testosterone-behavior association.

Conclusion

Results suggest that basal testosterone and cortisol predict status-related behavior independent of self-reported personality. We discuss how these results may have broader implications for the physiological mechanisms by which testosterone and cortisol influence behavior, a process that could be unconscious and automatic. We also discuss alternative explanations, limitations, and future directions.

Cortisol awakening response and testosterone jointly affect adolescents' theory of mind

Adolescence is a critical period for the maturation of neurobiological processes and hormone secretion. Recent studies on the dual-hormone hypothesis have indicated that basal cortisol and testosterone jointly affect dominant and aggressive behavior among adolescents and adults. Whether this hypothesis applies to prosocial-related understanding of others' mental states remains unclear. The present study investigated associations between basal testosterone, basal cortisol (and cortisol awakening response [CAR]), and the cognitive/affective theory of mind (ToM) in 243 adolescents (67.9 % male, aged 14 to 17 years, M_age = 16.09, standard deviation = 0.62). Cognitive ToM (cToM) and affective ToM (aToM) were assessed with a cartoon story reasoning task: In the cToM condition, participants viewed a comic strip story and needed to predict what would happen based on a character's intentions, and in the aToM condition, they viewed a comic strip of two characters interacting and needed to think about what would make the protagonist feel better. The results showed that basal testosterone and basal cortisol did not interact with each other to affect the performance of ToM, either in terms of ToM accuracy or response speed. However, under the condition of low CAR, testosterone is associated with the fast performance of cToM, although the interaction of testosterone and CAR occurred only in female adolescents. Overall, our data provide new evidence for the dual-hormone hypothesis and further extend the hypothesis to social understanding.

Resting state brain subnetwork relates to prosociality and compassion in adolescents

Adolescence is a crucial time for social development, especially for helping (prosocial) and compassionate behaviors; yet brain networks involved in adolescent prosociality and compassion currently remain underexplored. Here, we sought to evaluate a recently proposed domain-general developmental (Do-GooD) network model of prosocial cognition by relating adolescent functional and structural brain networks with prosocial and compassionate disposition. We acquired resting state fMRI and diffusion MRI from 95 adolescents (ages 14–19  years; 46 males; 49 females) along with self-report questionnaires assessing prosociality and compassion. We then applied the Network-Based Statistic (NBS) to inductively investigate whether there is a significant subnetwork related to prosociality and compassion while controlling for age and sex. Based on the Do-GooD model, we expected that this subnetwork would involve connectivity to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) from three domain-general networks, the default mode network (DMN), the salience network, and the control network, as well as from the DMN to the mirror neuron systems. NBS revealed a significant functional (but not structural) subnetwork related to prosociality and compassion connecting 31 regions (p = 0.02), showing DMN and DLPFC connectivity to the VMPFC; DMN connectivity to mirror neuron systems; and connectivity between the DMN and cerebellum. These findings largely support and extend the Do-GooD model of prosocial cognition in adolescents by further illuminating network-based relationships that have the potential to advance our understanding of brain mechanisms of prosociality.

The causal effect of testosterone on men's competitive behavior is moderated by basal cortisol and cues to an opponent's status: Evidence for a context-dependent dual-hormone hypothesis

Testosterone has been theorized to direct status-seeking behaviors, including competitive behavior. However, most human studies to date have adopted correlational designs, and findings across studies are inconsistent. This experiment (n = 115) pharmacologically manipulated men's testosterone levels prior to a mixed-gender math competition and examined basal cortisol (a hormone implicated in stress and social avoidance) and context cues related to an opponent's perceived status (an opponent's gender or a win/loss in a prior competition) as factors that may moderate testosterone's impact on competitive behavior. We test and find support for the hypothesis that testosterone given to low-cortisol men evokes status-seeking behavior, whereas testosterone given to high-cortisol men evokes status-loss avoidance. In the initial rounds of competition, testosterone's influence on competitive decisions depended on basal cortisol and opponent gender. After providing opponent-specific win-lose feedback, testosterone's influence on decisions to reenter competitions depended on basal cortisol and this objective cue to status, not gender. Compared to placebo, men given exogenous testosterone who were low in basal cortisol showed an increased tendency to compete against male and high-status opponents relative to female and low-status opponents (status-seeking). Men given exogenous testosterone who were high in basal cortisol showed the opposite pattern-an increased tendency to compete against female and low-status opponents relative to male and high-status opponents (status-loss avoidance). These results provide support for a context-dependent dual-hormone hypothesis: Testosterone flexibly directs men's competitive behavior contingent on basal cortisol levels and cues that signal an opponent's status. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Beyond sex and aggression: testosterone rapidly matches behavioural responses to social context and tries to predict the future

Although androgens are widely studied in the context of aggression, androgenic influences on prosocial behaviours have been less explored. We examined testosterone's (T) influence on prosocial and aggressive responses in a positively valenced social context (interacting with a pairbond partner) and a negatively valenced context (interacting with an intruder) in socially monogamous Mongolian gerbils. T increased and decreased prosocial responses in the same individuals towards a pairbond partner and an intruder, respectively, both within 30 min, but did not affect aggression. T also had persistent effects on prosocial behaviour; males in which T initially increased prosocial responses towards a partner continued to exhibit elevated prosocial responses towards an intruder male days later until a second T injection rapidly eliminated those responses. Thus, T surges can rapidly match behaviour to current social context, as well as prime animals for positive social interactions in the future. Neuroanatomically, T rapidly increased hypothalamic oxytocin, but not vasopressin, cellular responses during interactions with a partner. Together, our results indicate that T can facilitate and inhibit prosocial behaviours depending on social context, that it can influence prosocial responses across rapid and prolonged time scales, and that it affects oxytocin signalling mechanisms that could mediate its context-dependent behavioural influences.

A Domain-General Developmental "Do-GooD" Network Model of Prosocial Cognition in Adolescence: A Systematic Review

Adolescence is a period of substantial neural and social development, and prosocial decisions are beneficial to personal well-being, the well-being of others, and the functioning of society. Advances in network neuroscience call for a systematic synthesis and reappraisal of prosocial neural correlates during adolescent development. In this systematic review, we aim to outline the progress made in this field, identify the similarities between study results, and propose a model for prosocial cognition in adolescents to young adults. A total of 25 articles were included in this review. After reviewing and synthesizing the literature, we propose a DOmain-General Developmental "Do-GooD" network model of prosocial cognition that aligns with the reviewed literature, accounts for development, and combines elements of the value-based decision-making model with distinct value contributions from the default mode network, salience network, and control network. We offer predictions to test the "Do-GooD" model and propose new future directions for studying prosocial behavior and its development during adolescence, which in turn may lead to improving education and the development of better health interventions for adolescents.

Adolescent Brain Development and Contextual Influences: A Decade in Review

Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by substantial psychological, biological, and neurobiological changes. This review discusses the past decade of research on the adolescent brain, as based on the overarching framework that development is a dynamic process both within the individual and between the individual and external inputs. As such, this review focuses on research showing that the development of the brain is influenced by multiple ongoing and dynamic elements. It highlights the implications this body of work on behavioral development and offers areas of opportunity for future research in the coming decade.