How embarrassing! The behavioral and neural correlates of processing social norm violations

Social norms are important for human social interactions, and violations of these norms are evaluated partly on the intention of the actor. Here, we describe the revised Social Norm Processing Task (SNPT-R), a paradigm enabling the study of behavioral and neural responses to intended and unintended...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	PloS one Vol. 12; no. 4; p. e0176326
Main Authors:	Bas-Hoogendam, Janna Marie, van Steenbergen, Henk, Kreuk, Tanja, van der Wee, Nic J A, Westenberg, P Michiel
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	United States Public Library of Science 25-04-2017 Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects:	Aberration Activation Adolescent Adolescents Adult Adults Age Amygdala Amygdala (Brain) Analysis Anxiety Attachment Aversion Behavior Behavioral assessment Biology and Life Sciences Brain Brain - diagnostic imaging Brain - physiology Brain mapping Brain Mapping - methods Brain research Cadmium Child Child development Cognition Cognition & reasoning Cognitive ability Correlation analysis Cortex (cingulate) Cortex (frontal) Cortex (occipital) Cortex (parietal) Decision making Emotions Emotions - physiology Empirical analysis Etiology Evaluation Fear Fear & phobias Female Functional magnetic resonance imaging Games Group dynamics Humans Intention Interpersonal relations Judgments Language Magnetic resonance Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods Male Males Medical imaging Medicine and Health Sciences Middle Aged Motivation Movement disorders Nervous system Neurodegenerative diseases Neuroimaging Neurology Norms Parkinson's disease People and Places Prefrontal cortex Psychiatry Psychology Research and Analysis Methods Resonance Sensitivity Social behavior Social interactions Social Norms Social Sciences Social values Studies Teenagers Violations World Wide Web Young Adult
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	Social norms are important for human social interactions, and violations of these norms are evaluated partly on the intention of the actor. Here, we describe the revised Social Norm Processing Task (SNPT-R), a paradigm enabling the study of behavioral and neural responses to intended and unintended social norm violations among both adults and adolescents. We investigated how participants (adolescents and adults, n = 87) rate intentional and unintentional social norm violations with respect to inappropriateness and embarrassment, and we examined the brain activation patterns underlying the processing of these transgressions in an independent sample of 21 adults using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). We hypothesized to find activation within the medial prefrontal cortex, temporo-parietal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex in response to both intentional and unintentional social norm violations, with more pronounced activation for the intentional social norm violations in these regions and in the amygdala. Participants' ratings confirmed the hypothesis that the three types of stories are evaluated differently with respect to intentionality: intentional social norm violations were rated as the most inappropriate and most embarrassing. Furthermore, fMRI results showed that reading stories on intentional and unintentional social norm violations evoked activation within the frontal pole, the paracingulate gyrus and the superior frontal gyrus. In addition, processing unintentional social norm violations was associated with activation in, among others, the orbitofrontal cortex, middle frontal gyrus and superior parietal lobule, while reading intentional social norm violations was related to activation in the left amygdala. These regions have been previously implicated in thinking about one's self, thinking about others and moral reasoning. Together, these findings indicate that the SNPT-R could serve as a useful paradigm for examining social norm processing, both at the behavioral and the neural level.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Conceptualization: JMBH PMW NJAvdW.Data curation: JMBH HvS.Formal analysis: JMBH TK HvS.Funding acquisition: PMW NJAvdW.Investigation: TK JMBH.Project administration: JMBH.Supervision: PMW NJAvdW.Visualization: JMBH.Writing – original draft: JMBH.Writing – review & editing: PMW NJAvdW TK HvS. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
ISSN:	1932-6203 1932-6203
DOI:	10.1371/journal.pone.0176326