Neural Tracking of Perceived Parent, but Not Peer, Norms Is Associated with Longitudinal Changes in Adolescent Attitudes about Externalizing Behaviors.

Adolescents' perceptions of parent and peer norms about externalizing behaviors influence the extent to which they adopt similar attitudes, yet little is known about how the trajectories of perceived parent and peer norms are related to trajectories of personal attitudes across adolescence. Neural development of midline regions implicated in self-other processing may underlie developmental changes in parent and peer influence. Here, we examined whether neural processing of perceived parent and peer norms in midline regions during self-evaluations would be associated with trajectories of personal attitudes about externalizing behaviors. Trajectories of adolescents' perceived parent and peer norms were examined longitudinally with functional neuroimaging (n = 165; ages 11-16 years across three waves; 86 girls, 79 boys; 29.7% White, 21.8% Black, 35.8% Latinx, 12.7% other/multiracial). Behavioral results showed perceived parent norms were less permissive than adolescents' own attitudes about externalizing behaviors, whereas perceived peer norms were more permissive than adolescents' own attitudes, effects that increased from early to middle adolescence. Although younger adolescents reported less permissive attitudes when they spontaneously tracked perceived parent norms in the ventromedial and medial pFCs during self-evaluations, this effect weakened as they aged. No brain-behavior effects were found when tracking perceived peer norms. These findings elucidate how perceived parent and peer norms change in parallel with personal attitudes about externalizing behaviors from early to middle adolescence and underscore the importance of spontaneous neural tracking of perceived parent norms during self-evaluations for buffering permissive personal attitudes, particularly in early adolescence.

Developmental changes in brain function linked with addiction-like social media use two years later.

Addiction-like social media use (ASMU) is widely reported among adolescents and is associated with depression and other negative health outcomes. We aimed to identify developmental trajectories of neural social feedback processing that are linked to higher levels of ASMU in later adolescence. Within a longitudinal design, 103 adolescents completed a social incentive delay task during 1-3 fMRI scans (6-9th grade), and a 4th self-report assessment of ASMU and depressive symptoms ∼2 years later (10-11th grade). We assessed ASMU effects on brain responsivity to positive social feedback across puberty and relationships between brain responsivity development, ASMU symptoms, and depressive symptoms while considering gender effects. Findings demonstrate decreasing responsivity, across puberty, in the ventral media prefrontal cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and right inferior frontal gyrus associated with higher ASMU symptoms over 2 years later. Significant moderated mediation models suggest that these pubertal decreases in brain responsivity are associated with increased ASMU symptoms which, among adolescent girls (but not boys), is in turn associated with increased depressive symptoms. Results suggest initial hyperresponsivity to positive social feedback, before puberty onset, and decreases in this response across development, may be risk factors for ASMU in later adolescence.

Neurobiological sensitivity to popular peers moderates daily links between social media use and affect.

Social media behaviors increase during adolescence, and quantifiable feedback metrics (e.g., likes, followers) may amplify the value of social status for teens. Social media's impact on adolescents' daily affect may be exacerbated given the neurodevelopmental changes that increase youths' sensitivity to socio-emotional information. This study examines whether neurobiological sensitivity to popularity moderates daily links between social media use and affect. Adolescents (N = 91, Mage=13.6 years, SDage=0.6 years) completed an fMRI task in which they viewed faces of their high (>1 SD above the mean) and low (<1 SD below the mean) popular peers based on peer-nominated sociometric ratings from their school social networks. Two years later, adolescents reported their time spent on social media and affect daily for two weeks. Neural tracking of popularity in the ventromedial and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex moderated the association between time on social media and affect. Specifically, adolescents who tracked high popular peers in the vmPFC reported more positive affect on days when they used social media more. Adolescents who tracked low popular peers in the vmPFC and dmPFC reported more negative affect on days when they used social media more. Results suggest that links between social media and affect depend on individual differences in neural sensitivity to popularity.

Friendship changes differentially predict neural correlates of decision-making for friends across adolescence.

Adolescents' peer world is highly dynamic with constant dissolution of old friendships and formation of new ones. Though many of adolescents' risky decisions involve their peers, little is known about how adolescents' ever-changing friendships shape their ability to make these peer-involving risky decisions, particularly adaptive ones, and whether this association shifts over time. In a 5-wave longitudinal fMRI study, 173 adolescents (at wave 1: Mage = 12.8, SDage = 0.52; range = 11.9-14.5) made risky choices to win money for their best friend. We assessed whether participants nominated the same or different best friend as their previous participation year (a total of 340 data points of friendship maintenance / change). In early adolescence, adolescents with the same best friend took more adaptive risks for that best friend than those with a different best friend. In late adolescence, however, adolescents with a different best friend took more adaptive risks for the new best friend than those with the same best friend. Further, the amygdala was differentially sensitive to friendship maintenance / change during these peer-involving adaptive risks across time. This study has implications for how stable and flexible peer landscapes differentially modulate social motivation and social decision-making over the course of adolescence.

Interoceptive beliefs moderate the link between physiological and emotional arousal during an acute stressor.

Growing work suggests that interoception, that is, representations of one's internal bodily changes, plays a role in shaping emotional experiences. Past studies primarily examine how behavioral accuracy in detecting interoceptive signals (interoceptive ability) relates to emotional states, with less work examining self-reported interoceptive facets such as the characterizations of one's interoceptive abilities (interoceptive sensibility) or evaluative beliefs about the value versus danger of interoceptive signals (interoceptive beliefs). However, existing studies rarely examine physiological reactivity, behavioral, and self-reported dimensions of interoception together in the same sample. As such, it remains unclear whether and how much individual differences in interoceptive facets uniquely and in interaction with physiological reactivity may matter for emotional experience. Herein, 250 healthy young adults completed a heartbeat detection task assessing interoceptive ability and questionnaire measures of interoceptive sensibility and beliefs during an initial laboratory visit. At a follow-up session, 227 participants returned to undergo an acute psychosocial stressor. Measures of physiological arousal such as preejection period (PEP) and heart rate variability were acquired throughout the stressor with self-reported emotions acquired immediately after. Linear regressions revealed that greater sympathetic nervous system reactivity (i.e., PEP), poorer interoceptive ability (i.e., accuracy), and less positive interoceptive beliefs were related to more intense high arousal emotions during the stressor. Importantly, across models, interoceptive beliefs was the only interoceptive facet to moderate the concordance between physiological and emotional arousal. Implications for psychological theories of emotion, stress, and interoception are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Neural tracking of social hierarchies in adolescents' real-world social networks.

In the current study, we combined sociometric nominations and neuroimaging techniques to examine adolescents' neural tracking of peers from their real-world social network that varied in social preferences and popularity. Adolescent participants from an entire school district (N = 873) completed peer sociometric nominations of their grade at school, and a subset of participants (N = 117, Mage = 13.59 years) completed a neuroimaging task in which they viewed peer faces from their social networks. We revealed two neural processes by which adolescents track social preference: (1) the fusiform face area, an important region for early visual perception and social categorization, simultaneously represented both peers high in social preference and low in social preference; (2) the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which was differentially engaged in tracking peers high and low in social preference. No regions specifically tracked peers high in popularity and only the inferior parietal lobe, temporoparietal junction, midcingulate cortex and insula were involved in tracking unpopular peers. This is the first study to examine the neural circuits that support adolescents' perception of peer-based social networks. These findings identify the neural processes that allow youths to spontaneously keep track of peers' social value within their social network.

Adolescents' neural sensitivity to high and low popularity: Longitudinal links to risk-taking and prosocial behavior.

Adolescents are particularly attuned to popularity within peer groups, which impacts behaviors such as risk-taking and prosocial behavior. Neurodevelopmental changes orient adolescents toward salient social cues in their environment. We examined whether neural regions that track popularity are associated with longitudinal changes in risk-taking and prosocial behavior. During an fMRI scan, adolescents (n = 109, Mage=13.59, SD=0.59) viewed pictures of their popular and unpopular classmates based on sociometric nominations from their social networks. Neural tracking of high popularity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex was associated with increases in risk-taking behavior, whereas tracking of low popularity in the right insula was associated with increases in prosocial behavior. Results suggest that individual differences in neural tracking of popularity relate to longitudinal changes in adolescents' social behaviors.

The roles of inflammation, affect, and interoception in predicting social perception.

"Sickness behavior" is an orchestrated suite of symptoms that commonly occur in the context of inflammation, and is characterized by changes in affect, social experience, and behavior. However, recent evidence suggests that inflammation may not always produce the same set of sickness behavior (e.g., fatigue, anhedonia, and social withdrawal). Rather, inflammation may be linked with different behavior across contexts and/or across individuals, though research in this area is under-developed to-date. In the present study (n = 30), we evaluated the influence of affective context and individual differences in difficulty detecting bodily sensations (i.e., interoceptive difficulty) on social perception following an inflammatory challenge. Inflammation was induced using the influenza vaccine and inflammatory reactivity was operationalized as changes in circulating levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6) before the vaccine and approximately 24 h later. Twenty-four hours after administration of the influenza vaccine, we manipulated affective context using a well-validated affect misattribution task in which participants made trustworthiness judgments of individuals with neutral facial expressions following the rapid presentation of "prime" images that were positive or negative in affective content. Interoceptive difficulty was measured at baseline using a validated self-report measure. Results revealed significant interactions between inflammatory reactivity to the influenza vaccine and affective context on social perception. Specifically, individuals with greater inflammatory reactivity were more biased by affective context when judging the trustworthiness of neutral faces. In addition, interoceptive difficulty and affective context interacted to predict social perception such that individuals with greater interoceptive difficulty were more biased by affective context in these judgments. In sum, we provide some of the first evidence that inflammation may amplify the saliency of affective cues during social decision making. Our findings also replicate prior work linking interoceptive ability to the use of affect-as-information during social perception, but in the novel context of inflammation.

Examining the Role of Emotion Differentiation on Emotion and Cardiovascular Physiological Activity During Acute Stress.

Emotion differentiation (ED) - the tendency to experience one's emotions with specificity - is a well-established predictor of adaptive responses to daily life stress. Yet, there is little research testing the role of ED in self-reported and physiological responses to an acute stressor. In the current study, we investigate the effects of negative emotion differentiation (NED) and positive emotion differentiation (PED) on participants' self-reported emotions and cardiac-mediated sympathetic nervous system reactivity (i.e., pre-ejection period) in response to a stressful task. Healthy young adults enrolled in a two-session study. At an initial session, participants completed a modified experience sampling procedure (i.e., the Day Reconstruction Method). At session 2, 195 completed the Trier Social Stress Test while cardiac impedance was acquired throughout. Linear regressions demonstrated that higher NED, but not PED, was associated with experiencing less intense self-reported negative, high arousal emotions (e.g., irritated, panicky) during the stressor (ß = - .15, p < .05) although people with higher NED also exhibited greater sympathetic reactivity (ß = .16, p < .05). In exploratory analyses, we tested whether the effect of NED on self-reported stress was mediated by the tendency to make internally focus (or self-focused) attributions about performance on the task but did not find a significant indirect effect (p = .085). These results both complement prior work and provide a more complex picture of the role of NED in adaptive responses to stressful life events, suggesting that people with higher NED may experience their emotions as more manageable regardless of their level of physiological arousal. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-023-00189-y.

Neural similarity in nucleus accumbens during decision-making for the self and a best friend: Links to adolescents' self-reported susceptibility to peer influence and risk taking.

Adolescence is marked by increased peer influence on risk taking; however, recent literature suggests enormous individual variation in peer influence susceptibility to risk-taking behaviors. The current study uses representation similarity analysis to test whether neural similarity between decision-making for self and peers (i.e., best friends) in a risky context is associated with individual differences in self-reported peer influence susceptibility and risky behaviors in adolescents. Adolescent participants (N = 166, Mage = 12.89) completed a neuroimaging task in which they made risky decisions to receive rewards for themselves, their best friend, and their parents. Adolescent participants self-reported peer influence susceptibility and engagement in risk-taking behaviors. We found that adolescents with greater similarity in nucleus accumbens (NACC) response patterns between the self and their best friend reported greater susceptibility to peer influence and increased risk-taking behaviors. However, neural similarity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) was not significantly associated with adolescents' peer influence susceptibility and risk-taking behaviors. Further, when examining neural similarity between adolescents' self and their parent in the NACC and vmPFC, we did not find links to peer influence susceptibility and risk-taking behaviors. Together, our results suggest that greater similarity for self and friend in the NACC is associated with individual differences in adolescents' peer influence susceptibility and risk-taking behaviors.

Developmental Changes in Habenular and Striatal Social Reinforcement Responsivity Across Adolescence Linked With Substance Use.

BACKGROUND: Habenula (HB) function is implicated in substance use disorders and is involved in inhibiting dopamine release in the ventral striatum (VS). While blunted VS reward responsivity is implicated in risk for later substance use, links between HB reinforcement processing and progression of use have not, to our knowledge, been examined among adolescents. In the present study, we longitudinally assessed HB and VS responsivity to social rewards and punishments across adolescence and examined associations with substance use. METHODS: Within a longitudinal design, 170 adolescents (53.5% female) completed 1 to 3 functional magnetic resonance imaging scans across 6th to 9th grade and reported yearly substance use across 6th to 11th grade. We examined VS and HB responsivity to social reinforcement during a social incentive delay task in which adolescents received social rewards (smiling faces) and punishments (scowling faces). RESULTS: We observed increased VS responsivity to social rewards (vs. reward omissions) and increased VS, but decreased HB, responsivity to social punishment avoidance versus receipt. However, contrary to hypotheses, the HB displayed increased responsivity to social rewards (vs. reward omissions). Further, adolescents reporting regular substance use displayed longitudinally declining HB responsivity to social rewards (vs. reward omissions), whereas adolescents reporting no substance use displayed longitudinally increasing HB responsivity. In contrast, whereas VS responsivity to punishment avoidance versus receipt increased longitudinally among regular substance users, it stayed relatively stable among nonusers. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that differential HB and VS social reinforcement processing trajectories across adolescence are associated with substance use.

Interoceptive ability moderates the effect of physiological reactivity on social judgment.

Social judgments-that others are kind or cruel, well intentioned, or conniving-can ease or disrupt social interactions. And yet a person's internal state can alter these judgments-a phenomenon known as affective realism. We examined the factors that contribute to, and mitigate, affective realism during a stressful interview. Using data collected between 2015 and 2019, we hypothesized and found that individuals' ability (N = 161; 57.6% female; 57.6% European American, 13.6% African American, 13.6% Asian American, 6.4% Latinx, 6.0% biracial, and 2.8% that identified with none or 1 + of the races presented; Mage = 19.20 years) to accurately perceive their own internal sensations (i.e., heartbeats) influenced whether they attributed their own heightened stress reactions (i.e., sympathetic nervous system reactivity) to the behavior of two impassive interviewers. Participants who were poor heartbeat detectors perceived their interviewers as less helpful, polite, or professional, and more apathetic, judgmental, and aggressive when experiencing heightened levels of cardiovascular sympathetic nervous system reactivity during their interview. Being aware of one's internal state may be one pathway to reducing bias in social perceptions in circumstances where such biases may lead us astray. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Detecting Changes in Correlation Networks with Application to Functional Connectivity of fMRI Data.

Research questions in the human sciences often seek to answer if and when a process changes across time. In functional MRI studies, for instance, researchers may seek to assess the onset of a shift in brain state. For daily diary studies, the researcher may seek to identify when a person's psychological process shifts following treatment. The timing and presence of such a change may be meaningful in terms of understanding state changes. Currently, dynamic processes are typically quantified as static networks where edges indicate temporal relations among nodes, which may be variables reflecting emotions, behaviors, or brain activity. Here we describe three methods for detecting changes in such correlation networks from a data-driven perspective. Networks here are quantified using the lag-0 pair-wise correlation (or covariance) estimates as the representation of the dynamic relations among variables. We present three methods for change point detection: dynamic connectivity regression, max-type method, and a PCA-based method. The change point detection methods each include different ways to test if two given correlation network patterns from different segments in time are significantly different. These tests can also be used outside of the change point detection approaches to test any two given blocks of data. We compare the three methods for change point detection as well as the complementary significance testing approaches on simulated and empirical functional connectivity fMRI data examples.

Behavioral and Neural Trajectories of Risk Taking for Peer and Parent in Adolescence.

One feature of adolescence is a rise in risk-taking behaviors, whereby the consequences of adolescents' risky action often impact their immediate surrounding such as their peers and parents (vicarious risk taking). Yet, little is known about how vicarious risk taking develops, particularly depending on who the risk affects and the type of risky behavior. In a 3-wave longitudinal fMRI study, 173 adolescents completed 1-3 years of a risky decision-making task where they took risks to win money for their best friend and parent (n with behavioral and fMRI data ranges from 139-144 and 100-116 participants, respectively, per wave). Results of this preregistered study suggest that adolescents did not differentially take adaptive (sensitivity to the expected value of reward during risk taking) and general (decision-making when the expected values of risk taking and staying safe are equivalent) risks for their best friend and parent from sixth to ninth grade. At the neural level, preregistered ROI analyses revealed no differences in the ventral striatum and ventromedial pFC during general nor adaptive risk taking for best friend versus parent over time. Furthermore, exploratory longitudinal whole-brain analyses revealed subthreshold differences between best friend and parent trajectories within regulatory regions during general vicarious risk taking and social-cognitive regions during adaptive vicarious risk taking. Our findings demonstrate that brain regions implicated in cognitive control and social-cognitive processes may distinguish behaviors involving peers and parents over time.

The impact of sociality and affective valence on brain activation: A meta-analysis.

Thirty years of neuroimaging reveal the set of brain regions consistently associated with pleasant and unpleasant affect in humans-or the neural reference space for valence. Yet some of humans' most potent affective states occur in the context of other humans. Prior work has yet to differentiate how the neural reference space for valence varies as a product of the sociality of affective stimuli. To address this question, we meta-analyzed across 614 social and non-social affective neuroimaging contrasts, summarizing the brain regions that are consistently activated for social and non-social affective information. We demonstrate that across the literature, social and non-social affective stimuli yield overlapping activations within regions associated with visceromotor control, including the amygdala, hypothalamus, anterior cingulate cortex and insula. However, we find that social processing differs from non-social affective processing in that it involves additional cortical activations in the medial prefrontal and posterior cingulum that have been associated with mentalizing and prediction. A Bayesian classifier was able to differentiate unpleasant from pleasant affect, but not social from non-social affective states. Moreover, it was not able to classify unpleasantness from pleasantness at the highest levels of sociality. These findings suggest that highly social scenarios may be equally salient to humans, regardless of their valence.

Association of Habitual Checking Behaviors on Social Media With Longitudinal Functional Brain Development.

Importance: Social media platforms provide adolescents with unprecedented opportunities for social interactions during a critical developmental period when the brain is especially sensitive to social feedback. Objective: To explore how adolescents' frequency of checking behaviors on social media platforms is associated with longitudinal changes in functional brain development across adolescence. Design, Setting, and Participants: A 3-year longitudinal cohort study of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) among sixth- and seventh-grade students recruited from 3 public middle schools in rural North Carolina. Exposures: At wave 1, participants reported the frequency at which they checked Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Main Outcome or Measure: Neural responses to the Social Incentive Delay task when anticipating receiving social feedback, measured annually using fMRI for 3 years. Participants saw a cue that indicated whether the social feedback (adolescent faces with emotional expressions) would be a reward, punishment, or neutral; after a delay, a target appeared and students responded by pressing a button as quickly as possible; a display of social feedback depended on trial type and reaction time. Results: Of 178 participants recruited at age 12 years, 169 participants (mean [SD] age, 12.89 [0.58] years; range, 11.93-14.52 years; 91 [53.8%] female; 38 [22.5%] Black, 60 [35.5%] Latinx, 50 [29.6%] White, 15 [8.9%] multiracial) met the inclusion criteria. Participants with habitual social media checking behaviors showed lower neural sensitivity to social anticipation at age 12 years compared with those with nonhabitual checking behaviors in the left amygdala, posterior insula (PI), and ventral striatum (VS; ß, -0.22; 95% CI, -0.33 to -0.11), right amygdala (ß, -0.19; 95% CI, -0.30 to -0.08), right anterior insula (AI; ß, -0.23; 95% CI, -0.37 to -0.09), and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC; ß, -0.29; 95% CI, -0.44 to -0.14). Among those with habitual checking behaviors, there were longitudinal increases in the left amygdala/PI/VS (ß, 0.11; 95% CI, 0.04 to 0.18), right amygdala (ß, 0.09; 95% CI, 0.02 to 0.16), right AI (ß, 0.15; 95% CI, 0.02 to 0.20), and left DLPFC (ß, 0.19; 95% CI, 0.05 to 0.25) during social anticipation, whereas among those with nonhabitual checking behaviors, longitudinal decreases were seen in the left amygdala/PI/VS (ß, -0.12; 95% CI, -0.19 to -0.06), right amygdala (ß, -0.10; 95% CI, -0.17 to -0.03), right AI (ß, -0.13; 95% CI, -0.22 to -0.04), and left DLPFC (ß, -0.10, 95% CI, -0.22 to -0.03). Conclusions and Relevance: The results of this cohort study suggest that social media checking behaviors in early adolescence may be associated with changes in the brain's sensitivity to social rewards and punishments. Further research examining long-term associations between social media use, adolescent neural development, and psychological adjustment is needed to understand the effects of a ubiquitous influence on development for today's adolescents.

Adolescents' Perceptions of Social Risk and Prosocial Tendencies: Developmental Change and Individual Differences.

Many prosocial behaviors involve social risks such as speaking out against a popular opinion, bias, group norm, or authority. However, little is known about whether adolescents' prosocial tendencies develop over time with their perceptions of social risks. This accelerated longitudinal study used within-subject growth-curve analyses to test the link between prosocial tendencies and social risk perceptions, in a sample of adolescents who completed self-reports annually for three years (N = 893; M age = 12.30 years, 10 - 14 years at Wave 1, and 10 - 17 years across the full study period; 50% Girls, 33% White non-Latinx, 27% Latinx, 20% African American, 20% Mixed/Other Race). The association between social risk tolerance and prosocial tendencies changed significantly across adolescence, such that at for younger adolescents, more prosocial tendencies were associated with less social risk tolerance, whereas for relatively older adolescents, more prosocial tendencies were associated marginally with more social risk tolerance. Additional individual differences by empathy (but not sensation seeking) emerged. These findings suggest that prosocial development across adolescence may be associated with an underlying ability to tolerate social risks.

Culture and gender modulate dlPFC integration in the emotional brain: evidence from dynamic causal modeling.

Past research has recognized culture and gender variation in the experience of emotion, yet this has not been examined on a level of effective connectivity. To determine culture and gender differences in effective connectivity during emotional experiences, we applied dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to electroencephalography (EEG) measures of brain activity obtained from Chinese and American participants while they watched emotion-evoking images. Relative to US participants, Chinese participants favored a model bearing a more integrated dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) during fear v. neutral experiences. Meanwhile, relative to males, females favored a model bearing a less integrated dlPFC during fear v. neutral experiences. A culture-gender interaction for winning models was also observed; only US participants showed an effect of gender, with US females favoring a model bearing a less integrated dlPFC compared to the other groups. These findings suggest that emotion and its neural correlates depend in part on the cultural background and gender of an individual. To our knowledge, this is also the first study to apply both DCM and EEG measures in examining culture-gender interaction and emotion.

Neural Reactivity to Social Punishment Predicts Future Engagement in Nonsuicidal Self-injury Among Peer-Rejected Adolescents.

BACKGROUND: Rates of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) increase dramatically in adolescence. Affective reactivity and adverse social experiences have been linked to NSSI, but less is known about whether these factors may separately or interactively predict NSSI, especially longitudinally. This study combined functional magnetic resonance imaging and a sociometric measure to test whether a combination of neural (e.g., amygdala) reactivity to social punishment and peer-nominated peer acceptance/rejection predicts NSSI longitudinally in adolescence. Amygdala reactivity was examined as a potential neural marker of affective reactivity to social punishment, which may heighten NSSI risk in contexts of social adversity. METHODS: One hundred twenty-five adolescents (63 female) completed a social incentive delay task during neuroimaging and school-based peer nominations to measure peer acceptance/rejection. NSSI engagement was assessed at baseline and 1-year follow-up. RESULTS: Greater amygdala reactivity to social punishment predicted greater NSSI engagement 1 year later among adolescents with high peer rejection. This effect for the amygdala was specific to social punishment (vs. reward) and held when controlling for biological sex and pubertal development. Exploratory analyses found that ventral striatum reactivity to social reward and punishment similarly interacted with peer rejection to predict NSSI but that amygdala connectivity with salience network regions did not. CONCLUSIONS: Amygdala reactivity to social punishment, in combination with high peer rejection, may increase NSSI risk in adolescence, possibly via heightened affective reactivity to adverse social experiences. Objective measures of neurobiological and social risk factors may improve prediction of NSSI, while therapeutic approaches that target affective reactivity and increase prosocial skills may protect against NSSI in adolescence.

Constructing Explicit Prejudice: Evidence From Large Sample Datasets.

How does implicit bias contribute to explicit prejudice? Prior experiments show that concept knowledge about fear versus sympathy determines whether negative affect (captured as implicit bias) predicts antisocial outcomes (Lee et al.). Concept knowledge (i.e., beliefs) about groups may similarly moderate the link between implicitly measured negative affect (implicit negative affect) and explicit prejudice. We tested this hypothesis using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) 2008 Time Series Study (Study 1) and Project Implicit (Study 2). In both studies, participants high in implicit negative affect reported more explicit prejudice if they possessed negative beliefs about Black Americans. Yet, participants high in implicit negative affect reported less explicit prejudice if they possessed fewer negative beliefs about Black Americans. The results are consistent with psychological constructionist and dynamic models of evaluation and offer a more ecologically valid extension of our past laboratory work.