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Sievers B, Welker C, Hasson U, Kleinbaum AM, Wheatley T. Consensus-building conversation leads to neural alignment. Nat Commun 2024; 15:3936. [PMID: 38729961 PMCID: PMC11087652 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43253-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/04/2020] [Accepted: 11/03/2023] [Indexed: 05/12/2024] Open
Abstract
Conversation is a primary means of social influence, but its effects on brain activity remain unknown. Previous work on conversation and social influence has emphasized public compliance, largely setting private beliefs aside. Here, we show that consensus-building conversation aligns future brain activity within groups, with alignment persisting through novel experiences participants did not discuss. Participants watched ambiguous movie clips during fMRI scanning, then conversed in groups with the goal of coming to a consensus about each clip's narrative. After conversation, participants' brains were scanned while viewing the clips again, along with novel clips from the same movies. Groups that reached consensus showed greater similarity of brain activity after conversation. Participants perceived as having high social status spoke more and signaled disbelief in others, and their groups had unequal turn-taking and lower neural alignment. By contrast, participants with central positions in their real-world social networks encouraged others to speak, facilitating greater group neural alignment. Socially central participants were also more likely to become neurally aligned to others in their groups.
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Affiliation(s)
- Beau Sievers
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA.
- Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA.
| | - Christopher Welker
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA
| | - Uri Hasson
- Princeton Neuroscience Institute and Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA
| | - Adam M Kleinbaum
- Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA
| | - Thalia Wheatley
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA
- Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, 87501, USA
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Banisch S, Gaisbauer F, Olbrich E. Modelling Spirals of Silence and Echo Chambers by Learning from the Feedback of Others. ENTROPY (BASEL, SWITZERLAND) 2022; 24:1484. [PMID: 37420504 DOI: 10.3390/e24101484] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/26/2022] [Revised: 10/10/2022] [Accepted: 10/12/2022] [Indexed: 07/09/2023]
Abstract
What are the mechanisms by which groups with certain opinions gain public voice and force others holding a different view into silence? Furthermore, how does social media play into this? Drawing on neuroscientific insights into the processing of social feedback, we develop a theoretical model that allows us to address these questions. In repeated interactions, individuals learn whether their opinion meets public approval and refrain from expressing their standpoint if it is socially sanctioned. In a social network sorted around opinions, an agent forms a distorted impression of public opinion enforced by the communicative activity of the different camps. Even strong majorities can be forced into silence if a minority acts as a cohesive whole. On the other hand, the strong social organisation around opinions enabled by digital platforms favours collective regimes in which opposing voices are expressed and compete for primacy in public. This paper highlights the role that the basic mechanisms of social information processing play in massive computer-mediated interactions on opinions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sven Banisch
- Institute of Technology Futures, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
- Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
| | - Felix Gaisbauer
- Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
| | - Eckehard Olbrich
- Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
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3
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Bianchi F, Stivala A, Lomi A. Multiple clocks in network evolution. METHODOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS 2022. [DOI: 10.1177/20597991221077877] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
Abstract
Relational event models shift the analytical focus away from network ties defined in terms of transitions between mutually exclusive states of connectivity, to bonding processes emerging from observable flows linking senders and receivers of action. In this framework, the possibility to connect social mechanisms of theoretical interest to sequences of observed relational events depends on the relative speed at which these mechanisms operate. Building on established non-parametric methods in survival analysis, in this paper we introduce a new approach to the analysis of the internal time distribution of relational mechanisms of broad theoretical interest in research on the evolutionary dynamics of social and other kinds of networks. We propose general algorithms that may be adopted to study the time structure of theoretically relevant network mechanisms. We illustrate the practical value of our proposal in an analysis of a large sample of high-frequency financial transactions observed over a period of 11 years. We show how the internal time structure of the social mechanisms that control flows of market transactions is sensitive to institutional change in transaction regimes induced by successive financial crises. The results we report invite reflection on a new notion of network “structure” incorporating change as one of its constitutive elements. The study suggests a number of conjectures that provide broad conceptual bases for the development of testable hypotheses about the forces that shape the evolutionary dynamics of network structure.
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Affiliation(s)
- Federica Bianchi
- Institute of Computing, Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland
| | - Alex Stivala
- Institute of Computational Science, Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland
| | - Alessandro Lomi
- Institute of Computational Science, Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland
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Small ML. On Mobilization. PERSONAL NETWORKS 2021:573-595. [DOI: 10.1017/9781108878296.042] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 09/02/2023]
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Barth DM, Mattan BD, Dang TP, Cloutier J. Regional and network neural activity reflect men's preference for greater socioeconomic status during impression formation. Sci Rep 2020; 10:20302. [PMID: 33219303 PMCID: PMC7679381 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-76847-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/26/2020] [Accepted: 10/15/2020] [Indexed: 12/04/2022] Open
Abstract
Evidence from social psychology suggests that men compared to women more readily display and pursue control over human resources or capital. However, studying how status and gender shape deliberate impression formation is difficult due to social desirability concerns. Using univariate and multivariate fMRI analyses (n = 65), we examined how gender and socioeconomic status (SES) may influence brain responses during deliberate but private impression formation. Men more than women showed greater activity in the VMPFC and NAcc when forming impressions of high-SES (vs. low-SES) targets. Seed partial least squares (PLS) analysis showed that this SES-based increase in VMPFC activity was associated with greater co-activation across an evaluative network for the high-SES versus low-SES univariate comparison. A data-driven task PLS analysis also showed greater co-activation in an extended network consisting of regions involved in salience detection, attention, and task engagement as a function of increasing target SES. This co-activating network was most pronounced for men. These findings provide evidence that high-SES targets elicit neural responses indicative of positivity, reward, and salience during impression formation among men. Contributions to a network neuroscience understanding of status perception and implications for gender- and status-based impression formation are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Denise M Barth
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, 105 The Green, Newark, DE, 19716, USA
| | - Bradley D Mattan
- Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, 3620 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA
| | - Tzipporah P Dang
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, 105 The Green, Newark, DE, 19716, USA
| | - Jasmin Cloutier
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, 105 The Green, Newark, DE, 19716, USA.
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Ito A, Yoshida K, Takeda K, Sawamura D, Murakami Y, Hasegawa A, Sakai S, Izuma K. The role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in automatic formation of impression and reflected impression. Hum Brain Mapp 2020; 41:3045-3058. [PMID: 32301546 PMCID: PMC7336154 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.24996] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/18/2019] [Revised: 03/12/2020] [Accepted: 03/12/2020] [Indexed: 01/02/2023] Open
Abstract
Previous neuroimaging studies demonstrated that ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) activity reflects how much an individual positively views each person (impression). Here, we investigated whether the degree to which individuals think others positively view them (reflected impression) is similarly tracked by activity in the vmPFC by using fMRI and speed-dating events. We also examined whether activity of the vmPFC in response to the faces of others would predict the impression formed through direct interactions with them. The task consisted of three sessions: pre-speed-dating fMRI, speed-dating events, and post-speed-dating fMRI (not reported here). During the pre-speed-dating fMRI, each participant passively viewed the faces of others whom they would meet in the subsequent speed-dating events. After the fMRI, they rated the impression and reflected impression of each face. During the speed-dating events, the participants had 3-min conversations with partners whose faces were presented during the fMRI task, and they were asked to choose the partners whom they preferred at the end of the events. The results revealed that the value of both the impression and reflected impression were automatically represented in the vmPFC. However, the impression fully mediated the link between the reflected impression and vmPFC activity. These results highlight a close link between reflected appraisal and impression formation and provide important insights into neural and psychological models of how the reflected impression is formed in the human brain.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ayahito Ito
- Department of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom.,Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan.,Faculty of Health Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.,Research Institute for Future Design, Kochi University of Technology, Kochi, Japan
| | - Kazuki Yoshida
- Faculty of Health Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
| | - Kenta Takeda
- Faculty of Health Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.,Department of Rehabilitation for the Movement Functions, National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities, Tokorozawa, Japan
| | | | - Yui Murakami
- Faculty of Health Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.,Department of Occupational Therapy, Hokkaido Bunkyo University, Hokkaido, Japan
| | - Ai Hasegawa
- Graduate School of Health Sciences, Hokkaido University, Hokkaido, Japan
| | - Shinya Sakai
- Faculty of Health Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
| | - Keise Izuma
- Department of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom.,School of Economics and Management, Kochi University of Technology, Kochi, Japan
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