The interactive effect of social pain and executive functioning on aggression: an fMRI experiment

Social rejection often increases aggression, but the neural mechanisms underlying this effect remain unclear. This experiment tested whether neural activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula in response to social rejection predicted greater subsequent aggression. Add...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social cognitive and affective neuroscience 2014-05, Vol.9 (5), p.699-704
Main Authors: Chester, David S., Eisenberger, Naomi I., Pond, Richard S., Richman, Stephanie B., Bushman, Brad J., DeWall, C. Nathan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aggression - physiology
Brain Mapping
Cerebral Cortex - physiology
Emotions - physiology
Executive Function - physiology
Female
Functional Laterality
Gyrus Cinguli - physiology
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Neuropsychological Tests
Original
Social Distance
Stroop Test
Young Adult
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Summary:Social rejection often increases aggression, but the neural mechanisms underlying this effect remain unclear. This experiment tested whether neural activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula in response to social rejection predicted greater subsequent aggression. Additionally, it tested whether executive functioning moderated this relationship. Participants completed a behavioral measure of executive functioning, experienced social rejection while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging and then completed a task in which they could aggress against a person who rejected them using noise blasts . We found that dACC activation and executive functioning interacted to predict aggression. Specifically, participants with low executive functioning showed a positive association between dACC activation and aggression, whereas individuals with high executive functioning showed a negative association. Similar results were found for the left anterior insula. These findings suggest that social pain can increase or decrease aggression, depending on an individual’s regulatory capability.
ISSN:1749-5016
1749-5024
DOI:10.1093/scan/nst038