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Updated: May 16, 2026
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The Joint Effect of Social Comparison and Social Distance on Evaluation of Intertemporal Choice Outcomes in Event-related Potential Studies
Published on: August 25, 2023
Positively biased processing of self-relevant social feedback.
Christoph W Korn1, Kristin Prehn, Soyoung Q Park
1Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany. christoph.w.korn@gmail.com
Summary
People tend to view positive social feedback more favorably than negative feedback, influencing self-concept. Brain activity in reward and mentalizing networks explains this positively biased self-perception.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Social Psychology
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Social feedback is crucial for self-concept formation.
- Humans exhibit a positive bias when integrating social feedback.
- Mechanisms of self-relevant feedback processing remain unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the neural mechanisms underlying positively biased social feedback processing.
- To explore how reward and comparison components of feedback are integrated.
- To identify brain regions predicting the self-related positive updating bias.
Main Methods:
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to observe brain activity.
- Participants received real-life peer feedback on character traits.
- Analysis focused on reward-related and comparison-related feedback components.
Main Results:
- Positive feedback led to greater self-evaluation changes than negative feedback.
- Reward-related feedback correlated with ventral striatum and ACC/MPFC activity.
- Comparison-related feedback correlated with mentalizing network activity (MPFC, TPJ, STS, temporal pole, IFG).
- Medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) activity integrated both components and predicted the positive updating bias.
Conclusions:
- Positively biased feedback processing is explained by integrated reward and comparison mechanisms.
- The mentalizing network and reward system play key roles in self-concept updating.
- Understanding these neural processes is vital for social cognition research.
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