Moving the self and others to do good: The emotional underpinnings of prosocial behavior.

The functioning of social collectives hinges on the willingness of their members to cooperate with one another and to help those who are in need. Here, we consider how such prosocial behavior is shaped by emotions. We offer an integrative review of theoretical arguments and empirical findings concerning how the experience of emotions influences people's own prosocial behavior (intrapersonal effects) and how the expression of emotions influences the prosocial behavior of others (interpersonal effects). We identified research on five broad clusters of emotions associated with opportunity and affiliation (happiness, contentment, hope), appreciation and self-transcendence (gratitude, awe, elevation, compassion), distress and supplication (sadness, disappointment, fear, anxiety), dominance and status assertion (anger, disgust, contempt, envy, pride), and appeasement and social repair (guilt, regret, shame, embarrassment). Our review reveals notable differences between emotion clusters and between intrapersonal and interpersonal effects. Although some emotions promote prosocial behavior in the self and others, most emotions promote prosocial behavior either in the self (via their intrapersonal effects) or in others (via their interpersonal effects), suggesting trade-offs between the functionality of emotional experience and emotional expression. Moreover, interpersonal effects are modulated by the cooperative versus competitive nature of the situation. We discuss the emerging patterns from a social-functional perspective and conclude that understanding the role of emotion in prosociality requires joint attention to intrapersonal and interpersonal effects.

The interpersonal effects of distinct emotions in online reviews.

Emotional expressions in online reviews affect reviews' informative value. By comparing high and low arousal emotions with a negative and positive valence, the current research demonstrates that the effects of emotional expressions in online reviews are determined not by the level of arousal, but by the perceived rationality of the reviewer and the perceived appropriateness of the emotional expression. In a lab experiment (N = 242) among university students, and an online experiment (N = 252) on Prolific Academic involving native English speakers, participants read an online restaurant review with the negative emotions anger, disappointment, or disgust, or with the positive emotions happiness, excitement, or contentment. Results showed that readers of online reviews considered expressions of anger more inappropriate than expressions of disappointment or disgust; this led them to judge the reviewer as more irrational, which decreased the informative value of the review. As a consequence, angry reviews led to less negative restaurant evaluations and stronger intentions to visit the restaurant than reviews expressing disappointment or disgust. We found no differences between contentment and happiness (Study 1), or between contentment and excitement (Study 2). Our findings underscore the importance of studying the effects of discrete emotions in online reviews.

Jumping on the 'bad'wagon? How group membership influences responses to the social exclusion of others.

In four studies, we addressed whether group membership influences behavioral and neural responses to the social exclusion of others. Participants played a modified three-player Cyberball game (Studies 1-3) or a team-selection task (Study 4) in the absence or presence of a minimal group setting. In the absence of a minimal group, when one player excluded another player, participants actively included the excluded target. When the excluder was from the in-group and the excluded player from the out-group, participants were less likely to intervene (Studies 1-3) and also more often went along with the exclusion (Study 4). Functional magnetic resonance imaging results (Study 3) showed that greater exclusion in the minimal group setting concurred with increased activation in the dorsolateral pre-frontal cortex, a region associated with overriding cognitive conflict. Self-reports from Study 4 supported these results by showing that participants' responses to the target's exclusion were motivated by group membership as well as participants' general aversion to exclude others. Together, the findings suggest that when people witness social exclusion, group membership triggers a motivational conflict between favoring the in-group and including the out-group target. This underscores the importance of group composition for understanding the dynamics of social exclusion.

From the Brain to the Field: The Applications of Social Neuroscience to Economics, Health and Law.

Social neuroscience aims to understand the biological systems that underlie people's thoughts, feelings and actions in light of the social context in which they operate. Over the past few decades, social neuroscience has captured the interest of scholars, practitioners, and experts in other disciplines, as well as the general public who more and more draw upon the insights and methods of social neuroscience to explain, predict and change behavior. With the popularity of the field growing, it has become increasingly important to consider the validity of social neuroscience findings as well as what questions it can and cannot address. In the present review article, we examine the contribution of social neuroscience to economics, health, and law, three domains with clear societal relevance. We address the concerns that the extrapolation of neuroscientific results to applied social issues raises within each of these domains, and we suggest guidelines and good practices to circumvent these concerns.

Differential Fairness Decisions and Brain Responses After Expressed Emotions of Others in Boys with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Little is known about how emotions expressed by others influence social decisions and associated brain responses in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We investigated the neural mechanisms underlying fairness decisions in response to explicitly expressed emotions of others in boys with ASD and typically developing (TD) boys. Participants with ASD adjusted their allocation behavior in response to the emotions but reacted less unfair than TD controls in response to happiness. We also found reduced brain responses in the precental gyrus in the ASD versus TD group when receiving happy versus angry reactions and autistic traits were positively associated with activity in the postcentral gyrus. These results provide indications for a role of precentral and postcentral gyrus in social-affective difficulties in ASD.

The Prosocial Cyberball Game: Compensating for social exclusion and its associations with empathic concern and bullying in adolescents.

In this study we examined prosocial compensating behavior towards socially excluded ingroup and outgroup members by using a 'Prosocial Cyberball Game' in 9-17 year old Dutch adolescents (N = 133). Results showed that adolescents compensated for the social exclusion of an unknown peer in a virtual ball tossing game, by tossing the ball more often to that player in compensation conditions compared to the fair play condition. The proportion of tosses towards the excluded player did not significantly differ as a function of the group status of that player. Although compensating behavior towards ingroup versus outgroup members did not differ, the underlying motivation for this behavior may vary. More empathic concern was associated with more prosocial tosses towards an ingroup member, while more self-reported bullying behavior was associated with less compensating behavior in the outgroup condition. These findings may have practical implications for programs intending to change bystander behavior in bullying situations.

Lies that feel honest: Dissociating between incentive and deviance processing when evaluating dishonesty.

This study investigated neural responses to evaluations of lies made by others. Participants learned about other individuals who were instructed to privately roll a die twice and report the outcome of the first roll to determine their pay (with higher rolls leading to higher pay). Participants evaluated three types of outcomes: honest reports, justifiable lies (reporting the second outcome instead of the first), or unjustifiable lies (reporting a different outcome than both die rolls). Evaluating lies relative to honest reports was associated with increased activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), insula and lateral prefrontal cortex. Moreover, justifiable lies were associated with even stronger activity in the dorsal ACC and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex compared to unjustifiable lies. These activities were more pronounced for justifiable lies where the deviance from the real outcome was larger. Together, these findings have implications for understanding how humans judge misconduct behavior of others.

Fairness decisions in response to emotions: a functional MRI study among criminal justice-involved boys with conduct disorder.

Research suggests that individuals with conduct disorder (CD) are marked by social impairments, such as difficulties in processing the affective reactions of others. Little is known, though, about how they make decisions during social interactions in response to emotional expressions of others. In this study, we therefore investigated the neural mechanisms underlying fairness decisions in response to communicated emotions of others in aggressive, criminal justice-involved boys with CD (N = 32) compared with typically developing (TD) boys (N = 33), aged 15-19 years. Participants received written emotional responses (angry, disappointed or happy) from peers in response to a previous offer and then had to make fairness decisions in a version of the Dictator Game. Behavioral results showed that CD boys did not make differential fairness decisions in response to the emotions, whereas the TD boys did show a differentiation and also responded more unfair to happy reactions than the CD boys. Neuroimaging results revealed that when receiving happy vs disappointed and angry reactions, the CD boys showed less activation than the TD boys in the temporoparietal junction and supramarginal gyrus, regions involved in perspective taking and attention. These results suggest that boys with CD have difficulties with processing explicit emotional cues from others on behavioral and neural levels.

Evaluating ambivalence: social-cognitive and affective brain regions associated with ambivalent decision-making.

Ambivalence is a state of inconsistency that is often experienced as affectively aversive. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we investigated the role of cognitive and social-affective processes in the experience of ambivalence and coping with its negative consequences. We examined participants' brain activity during the dichotomous evaluation (pro vs contra) of pretested ambivalent (e.g. alcohol), positive (e.g. happiness) and negative (e.g. genocide) word stimuli. We manipulated evaluation relevance by varying the probability of evaluation consequences, under the hypothesis that ambivalence is experienced as more negative when outcomes are relevant. When making ambivalent evaluations, more activity was found in the anterior cingulate cortex, the insula, the temporal parietal junction (TPJ) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)/precuneus, for both high and low evaluation relevance. After statistically conservative corrections, activity in the TPJ and PCC/precuneus was negatively correlated with experienced ambivalence after scanning, as measured by Priester and Petty's felt ambivalence scale (1996). The findings show that cognitive and social-affective brain areas are involved in the experience of ambivalence. However, these networks are differently associated with subsequent reduction of ambivalence, thus highlighting the importance of understanding both cognitive and affective processes involved in ambivalent decision-making.

Emotional reactions of peers influence decisions about fairness in adolescence.

During adolescence, peers take on increasing importance, while social skills are still developing. However, how emotions of peers influence social decisions during that age period is insufficiently known. We therefore examined the effects of three different emotional responses (anger, disappointment, happiness) on decisions about fairness in a sample of 156 adolescents aged 12-17 years. Participants received written emotional responses from peers in a version of the Dictator Game to a previous unfair offer. Adolescents reacted with more generous offers after disappointed reactions compared to angry and happy reactions. Furthermore, we found preliminary evidence for developmental differences over adolescence, since older adolescents differentiated more between the three emotions than younger adolescents. In addition, individual differences in social value orientation played a role in decisions after happy reactions of peers to a previous unfair offer, such that participants with a "proself" orientation made more unfair offers to happy peers than "prosocial" participants. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that adolescents take emotions of peers into account when making social decisions, while individual differences in social value orientation affect these decisions, and age seems to influence the nature of the reaction.

The neural correlates of in-group and self-face perception: is there overlap for high identifiers?

Social identity, the part of the self-concept derived from group membership, is a key explanatory construct for a wide variety of behaviors, ranging from organizational commitment to discrimination toward out-groups. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined the neural basis of social identity through a comparison with the neural correlates of self-face perception. Participants viewed a series of pictures, one at a time, of themselves, a familiar other, in-group members, and out-group members. We created a contrast for self-face perception by subtracting brain activation in response to the familiar other from brain activation in response to the self face, and a contrast for social identity by subtracting brain activation in response to out-group faces from brain activation in response to in-group faces. In line with previous research, for the self-familiar other contrast we found activation in several right-hemisphere regions (inferior frontal gyrus, inferior and superior parietal lobules). In addition, we found activation in closely-adjacent brain areas for the social identity contrast. Importantly, significant clusters of activation in this in-group-out-group contrast only emerged to the extent that participants reported high identification with the in-group. These results suggest that self-perception and social identity depend on partly similar neural processes.

Does communicating disappointment in negotiations help or hurt? Solving an apparent inconsistency in the social-functional approach to emotions.

On the basis of a social-functional approach to emotion, scholars have argued that expressing disappointment in negotiations communicates weakness, which may evoke exploitation. Yet, it is also argued that communicating disappointment serves as a call for help, which may elicit generous offers. Our goal was to resolve this apparent inconsistency. We develop the argument that communicating disappointment elicits generous offers when it evokes guilt in the target, but elicits low offers when it does not. In 4 experiments using both verbal (Experiments 1-3) and nonverbal (Experiment 4) emotion manipulations, we demonstrate that the interpersonal effects of disappointment depend on (a) the opponent's group membership and (b) the type of negotiation. When the expresser was an outgroup member and in representative negotiations (i.e., when disappointment did not evoke guilt), the weakness that disappointment communicated elicited lower offers. When the expresser was an ingroup member and in individual negotiations (i.e., when disappointment did evoke guilt), the weakness that disappointment communicated elicited generous offers from participants. Thus, in contrast to the common belief that weakness is a liability in negotiations, expressing disappointment can be effective under particular circumstances. We discuss implications for theorizing about the social functions of emotions.

Behavioral and neural reactions to emotions of others in the distribution of resources.

This study investigated the neural mechanisms involved in the interpersonal effects of emotions--i.e., how people are influenced by other people's emotions. Participants were allocators in a version of the dictator game and made a choice between two offers after receiving written emotional expressions of the recipients. The results showed that participants more often made a self-serving offer when dealing with an angry recipient than when dealing with a happy or disappointed recipient. Compared to disappointment, expressions of anger increased activation in regions associated with self-referential thinking (anterior medial prefrontal cortex, aMPFC) and (emotional) conflict (anterior cingulate cortex). We found increased activation in temporoparietal junction for receiving happy reactions in comparison with receiving angry or disappointed reactions. This study thus emphasizes that distinct emotions have distinct effects on people in terms of behavior and underlying neurological mechanisms.

Why anger and disappointment affect other's bargaining behavior differently: the moderating role of power and the mediating role of reciprocal and complementary emotions.

In two experiments, the authors investigated the interpersonal effects of anger and disappointment in negotiations. Whereas previous research focused on the informational inferences that bargainers make based on others' emotions, this article emphasizes the importance of affective reactions. The findings of this study show that anger evoked a complementary emotion (fear) in targets when reported by a high-power bargainer but evoked a reciprocal emotion (anger) when reported by a low-power bargainer. This reciprocal anger led participants to offer less to low-power counterparts who reported anger. Disappointed bargainers, however, evoked a complementary emotion (guilt) in participants and increased offers, regardless of the bargainer's power position.