Being the Gatekeeper: How Thinking about Sharing Affects Neural Encoding of Information

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Social Psychology
• Information Science

Background:

• Societal information flow relies on individual sharing decisions.
• The neural impact of acting as an information gatekeeper is not well understood.
• Understanding how gatekeeping influences information processing is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how considering information sharing affects neural encoding.
• To determine if social network position moderates this effect.
• To explore the brain mechanisms underlying information gatekeeping.

Main Methods:

• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study.
• Participants rated news abstracts for personal interest, narrowcasting, or broadcasting.
• Analysis of blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) patterns in response to information.

Main Results:

• Consistent neural encoding observed across participants for perceptual and language processing.
• Thinking about sharing reduced encoding consistency in higher-order brain regions (e.g., default mode network).
• Individuals with high real-life social network centrality (ego-betweenness) showed more individualized encoding during broadcasting.

Conclusions:

• The gatekeeper role promotes more individualized, person- and context-specific information processing.
• Social network position influences the neural effects of information gatekeeping.
• Gatekeeping significantly shapes the brain's processing of incoming information.