Social Rejection affects Self-Evaluation of Incompetence: an fMRI Study

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Abstract Submission 

Yi Ding^1,2,3, Kentaro Oba¹, Ryo Ishibashi^1,4, Shinsuke Suzuki⁵, Motoaki Sugiura^1,6

¹Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, ²Graduate School of Medicine, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, ³Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Sendai, Japan, ⁴Center for Information and Neural Networks, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Osaka, Japan, ⁵Department of Finance, Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, ⁶International Research Institute of Disaster Science, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan

Yi Ding  
Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, Tohoku University|Graduate School of Medicine, Tohoku University|Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Sendai, Japan|Sendai, Japan|Sendai, Japan

Kentaro Oba  
Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, Tohoku University
Sendai, Japan

Ryo Ishibashi  
Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, Tohoku University|Center for Information and Neural Networks, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
Sendai, Japan|Osaka, Japan

Shinsuke Suzuki  
Department of Finance, Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Melbourne
Melbourne, Australia

Motoaki Sugiura  
Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, Tohoku University|International Research Institute of Disaster Science, Tohoku University
Sendai, Japan|Sendai, Japan

Although people tend to perceive themselves in a positive light, previous research has found that people evaluate their morality positively and their competence negatively [1, 2]. Furthermore, negative self-evaluation occurs in both positive and negative conditions, which are associated with different motivations. Positive valence is linked to the self-enhancement motive and negative valence is linked to the self-protection motive. According to sociometric theory [3], social rejection drives people to alter their behavior to avoid being excluded by others. Thus, negative self-evaluation may derive from different interpersonal strategies aimed at avoiding social rejection. Neuroimaging findings revealed activation in the lateral prefrontal cortex including the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), a region associated with cognitive control, during the self-referential process [4]. These findings may indicate that people may control their evaluation of competence and it is potentially linked to sense of social rejection. However, the relationship between brain activation during the self-referential process in different domains and the sense of rejection remains unclear. In this study, we aimed to investigate the relationships between the neural mechanism of the self-referential process in different domains and the sense of rejection. We hypothesized that during the self-referential process, activation of IFG in the competence condition instead of moral conditions would be associated with sense of social rejection, as a previous study found negative self-evaluation in competence domains [1]. We also expected that these associations may vary across positive and negative conditions.

We recruited forty-five healthy young adults (32 males; mean age = 21.60 ± 1.79). Participants were asked to complete both self- and other-evaluation using the same 80 adjectives. The adjectives were from four domains encompassing social values (morality and competence) and valences (positive and negative) [1]. To measure individual differences in social rejection, participants completed the Sense of Rejection scale after scanning.
We used SPM12 in MATLAB to implement the preprocessing and 2-level analysis. In the first-level analysis, we modeled events of interest for the self and other evaluations as "Moral-Positive", "Moral-Negative", "Competent-Positive", and "Competent-Negative", respectively. The missing trials were modeled as events of no interest, and six estimated motion regressors were added to the model. For each modeled event of interest, we created the self > other contrast for each participant and entered it into a second-level group analysis. We performed four whole-brain correlations to identify brain regions involved in the self-referential process in the four conditions associated with sense of rejection. We used P < 0.001 as the initial uncorrected threshold and set the threshold to FWE-corrected P < 0.05 using cluster size.

The results showed that sense of rejection was positively correlated with brain activation in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) during self-referential processing ([self>other]) when evaluating negative competence words. A previous study suggested that IFG might indicate an inhibition response to undesirable information [5]. Thus, those who felt more social rejection were more likely to inhibit their evaluation response during the self-referential process of negative competence words.

These results suggest that, in the context of self-protective motives, people may inhibit their intuitive responses when evaluating competence, and that such inhibited responses may be influenced by social exclusion. These findings contribute to our understanding of the cognitive control process, which is associated with social rejection, occurring in negative self-evaluation. Moreover, it may imply the function of negative self-evaluation in interpersonal relationships.

Self Processes ¹

Social Cognition ²

FUNCTIONAL MRI

Perception

Social Interactions

Other - Self-evaluation