Social-affective mimicry task (SAMT, Experiment 1 and 2), Simon-task (Experiment 2) and SAMT with vignettes (Experiment 3).

<p>Bars represent the mean reaction time (RT) differences on incongruent and congruent trials of the social-affective mimcry task (Experiment <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0161064#sec008" target="_blank">1</a> and <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0161064#sec019" target="_blank">2</a>) and Simon Task (<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0161064#sec019" target="_blank">Experiment 2</a>); RT units are in ms; error bars represent standard error of the mean <i>(SE)</i>; * <i>p</i> ≤ .05, ** <i>p</i> ≤ .01, NPT = No Personal Threat, PT = Personal Threat.</p

The Modulation of Mimicry by Ethnic Group-Membership and Emotional Expressions

<div><p>Mimicry has been ascribed affiliative functions. In three experiments, we used a newly developed social-affective mimicry task (SAMT) to investigate mimicry´s modulation by emotional facial expressions (happy, angry) and ethnic group-membership (White in-group, Black out-group). Experiment 1 established the main consistent effect across experiments, which was enhanced mimicry to angry out-group faces compared to angry in-group faces. Hence the SAMT was useful for experimentally investigating the modulation of mimicry. Experiment 2 demonstrated that these effects were not confounded by general aspects of response conflict, as a Simon task resulted in different response patterns than the SAMT. Experiment 2 and pooled analysis of Experiments 1 and 2 also corroborated the finding of enhanced mimicry to angry out-group faces. Experiment 3 tested whether this effect was related to perceptions of threat, by framing angry persons as physically threatening, or not. Selective enhancement of mimicry to out-group persons framed as physically threatening confirmed this hypothesis. Further support for the role of threat was derived from implicit measures showing, in all experiments, that black persons were more strongly associated with threat. Furthermore, enhanced mimicry was consistently related to response facilitation in the execution of congruent movements. This suggests that mimicry acted as a social congruency signal. Our findings suggest that mimicry may serve as an appeasement signal in response to negative affiliative intent. This extends previous models of mimicry, which have predominantly focused on its role in reciprocating affiliation. It suggests that mimicry might not only be used to maintain and establish affiliative bonds, but also to ameliorate a negative social situation.</p></div

Scores on the Implicit Association Task across all three experiments.

<p>Scores on the Implicit Association Task across all three experiments.</p

sj-docx-1-pss-10.1177_09567976221119727 – Supplemental material for Placebo Analgesia Reduces Costly Prosocial Helping to Lower Another Person’s Pain

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-pss-10.1177_09567976221119727 for Placebo Analgesia Reduces Costly Prosocial Helping to Lower Another Person’s Pain by Helena Hartmann, Paul A. G. Forbes, Markus Rütgen and Claus Lamm in Psychological Science</p

Data_Sheet_1_Social exclusion evokes different psychophysiological responses in individuals high on the psychopathy facets fearless dominance and self-centered impulsivity.docx

Individuals with psychopathic personality traits are generally thought to have difficulties in processing and experiencing emotions. These difficulties could also translate to emotionally charged social situations such as social exclusion. Being socially excluded is often experienced as stressful and unpleasant, potentially even leading to selfish or aggressive behavior–both of which are linked to certain aspects of psychopathy. The current study investigated self-report and physiological responses to social exclusion in the cyberball paradigm in a carefully selected community sample of individuals either scoring high on primary (N = 24) or secondary psychopathy traits (N = 17). Across the sample, the cyberball paradigm decreased experiences of joy and approach motivation, increased subjective anger reports, and induced changes in heart rate. In contrast, individuals scoring high on secondary psychopathy traits (Self-Centered Impulsivity group) displayed stronger physiological reactivity during a habituation phase of prolonged social exclusion than individuals scoring high on primary psychopathy traits (Fearless Dominance group), indexed by changes in skin conductance level. Moreover, a potential mismatch between self-reported and physiological arousal seemed to be only observable in individuals with high secondary psychopathy traits. Overall, the current results suggest diverging patterns of emotional processing and regulation in a social exclusion situation when comparing well-functioning individuals with varying psychopathy traits. It seemed as if individuals high on primary psychopathy traits were insensitive to contextual social cues, while individuals high on secondary psychopathy traits were more affected by the potentially threatening social situation. Cautiously transferring the current findings to forensic samples, they support the idea of moving from a behavioral understanding of the psychopathy construct to a more clinical picture with distinct cognitive and emotional processing patterns in individuals high on either primary or secondary psychopathy traits.</p

The Human Factor: Behavioral and Neural Correlates of Humanized Perception in Moral Decision Making

<div><p>The extent to which people regard others as full-blown individuals with mental states (“humanization”) seems crucial for their prosocial motivation towards them. Previous research has shown that decisions about moral dilemmas in which one person can be sacrificed to save multiple others do not consistently follow utilitarian principles. We hypothesized that this behavior can be explained by the potential victim’s perceived humanness and an ensuing increase in vicarious emotions and emotional conflict during decision making. Using fMRI, we assessed neural activity underlying moral decisions that affected fictitious persons that had or had not been experimentally humanized. In implicit priming trials, participants either engaged in mentalizing about these persons (Humanized condition) or not (Neutral condition). In subsequent moral dilemmas, participants had to decide about sacrificing these persons’ lives in order to save the lives of numerous others. Humanized persons were sacrificed less often, and the activation pattern during decisions about them indicated increased negative affect, emotional conflict, vicarious emotions, and behavioral control (pgACC/mOFC, anterior insula/IFG, aMCC and precuneus/PCC). Besides, we found enhanced effective connectivity between aMCC and anterior insula, which suggests increased emotion regulation during decisions affecting humanized victims. These findings highlight the importance of others’ perceived humanness for prosocial behavior - with aversive affect and other-related concern when imagining harming more “human-like” persons acting against purely utilitarian decisions.</p> </div

MNI stereotactic coordinates of the local maxima of the activation clusters resulting from the PPI analysis testing for increased coupling with aMCC/RCZ during dilemma decisions about Humanized versus Neutral persons.

<p>IFG = inferior frontal gyrus; S1 = primary somatosensory cortex; TPJ = temporo-parietal junction; aMCC = anterior midcingulate cortex; RCZ = rostral cingulate zone.</p

Dilemma decisions.

<p>Percentage of utilitarian decisions (i.e., single person is sacrificed to save numerous others threatened by imminent death or injury) in dilemmas involving Humanized or Neutral persons. Error bars denote standard errors of the mean.</p

Experimental time course.

<p>Top panel: overview of the four blocks constituting the fMRI experiment. Each block started with a Humanized (H) and a Neutral (N) priming trial (this order was pseudorandomized over experimental blocks), followed by three Humanized and three Neutral dilemmas in randomized order. Middle panel: example of a block starting with a Neutral priming trial, in which “Person A” is primed, followed by a Humanized priming trial, priming “Person B”. Each primed fictitious person featured in three of the subsequently presented dilemmas. Bottom panel left: time course of one Humanized priming trial, starting with (1) a screen showing the photo, name, and text describing the fictitious person, followed a by a button press-triggered (2) screen in which a question and two response options were additionally shown; a button response (left or right) triggered (3) a screen in which a second question and two response options replaced the first question; a button response (left or right) ended the trial. Bottom panel right: time course of one Humanized dilemma trial in which “Person B” is included. Each dilemma trial started with (1) a screen showing the photo and the name of the person. After a button press (2) a text describing the emergency situation was added to the screen. A second button press triggered (3) a screen in which the first text was replaced by a second text, describing the respondent’s options to act and the associated consequences for the persons. A new button press added (4) a decision question of the type “will you (perform the action)?” to the screen, along with the response options (“yes” or “no”). A right or left button press ended the dilemma trial. Trials were separated by a variable delay of 3.7–6.9 seconds.</p

Statistical parametric maps (SPMs) showing increased activity during the question phase of Humanized (H) as compared to Neutral (N) priming trials, requiring either mentalizing (H) or not (N).

<p>(A) bilateral precuneus/PCC and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (PFC) (B) right middle temporal gyrus (MTG)/temporal pole; a cluster of comparable size was also present in the left hemisphere (C) bilateral temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). SPMs are displayed in neurological convention on the high-resolution structural MRI template brain provided in SPM8, threshold P = 0.05, corrected for multiple comparisons at the cluster-level.</p