Effect of social interaction negative affect on within-person mentalizing network connectivity

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Social Psychology
• Affective Science

Background:

• The mentalizing network supports social cognition, but research often uses artificial settings.
• Understanding individual differences in social interactions requires naturalistic approaches.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the link between real-world affective expressions, social anxiety, and mentalizing network connectivity.
• To investigate how different perspectives during social interactions affect mentalizing network function.

Main Methods:

• A naturalistic study involving friend pairs during social interactions.
• fMRI scanning while participants viewed their own and their friend's perspective of the interaction.
• Analysis of affective expressions and social anxiety symptoms in relation to brain activity.

Main Results:

• Negative affect, not positive affect, correlated with mentalizing network connectivity variations.
• Individuals with higher social anxiety showed stable mentalizing network connectivity during high negative affect, particularly when it came from their friend.

Conclusions:

• Mentalizing network connectivity dynamically responds to negative affect in social settings.
• Heightened social anxiety may increase sensitivity to negative affect from peers during social interactions.