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

• 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
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0176326
• EISSN: 1932-6203

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.