Co-Occurring Social Reward and Social Threat Elicits Conflict-Related Neural Activation

Facial expressions often exhibit variations in social reward (happiness), social threat (anger), or social reward-threat conflict (co-occurring happiness and anger) and previous research demonstrates that core approach and avoidance motivation systems are highly sensitive to these variations. Moreover, social reward-threat conflict distinctly modulates approach and avoidance motivation compared to isolated variations in social reward or social threat, which plays a particularly pronounced role in social behavior. However, no neuroimaging research has elucidated the extent to which social reward-threat conflict may differentially modulate neural activation compared to isolated variations in social reward or social threat. To address this issue, 29 adults completed an fMRI study to directly compare neural activation patterns elicited by variations in social reward-threat conflict, social reward, or social threat. At the motivational level, social reward-threat conflict elicited opposing modulation of both approach and avoidance motivation. At the neural level, social reward-threat conflict also elicited conflict-related patterns of neural activation within regions commonly implicated in conflict monitoring including the pre-SMA, dACC, right anterior insula, and right vlPFC. Thus, co-occurring variations in social reward and social threat modulates neural regions involved in conflict processing, which may ultimately yield mechanistic insights into social behavior.