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The neural basis of aggression regulation
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Introduction
People are strongly motivated to be accepted by others and to establish a sense of belonging. Receiving negative social feedback, therefore, is a distressing experience, related to serious negative consequences such as feelings of depression and anxiety (Nolan et al., 2003). For some individuals, receiving negative social feedback can result in aggression towards people who have negatively evaluated or rejected them (Twenge et al., 2001; Leary et al., 2006; DeWall and Bushman, 2011; Chester et al., 2014; Riva et al., 2015; Chester and DeWall, 2016). However, the relation between negative social feedback and subsequent aggression is not well understood. In the current study we investigated the relation between receiving negative social feedback and subsequent aggression using neuroimaging, which allowed us to 1) examine the neural correlates of negative social feedback relative to neutral or positive feedback, 2) examine aggressive responses towards the person signaling negative social feedback, and 3) examine the association between the neural correlates of negative social feedback and behavioral aggression.
Social rejection and negative social feedback have previously been studied using a variety of experimental paradigms that manipulate social contexts. For example, the negative feelings associated with social rejection have been extensively studied using Cyberball, an online ball tossing game in which three players toss balls to each other, until at some point in the game, one of the players is excluded. It is consistently found that this type of social exclusion leads to feelings of distress, negative mood, and a decreased satisfaction of the need for a meaningful existence (Williams et al., 2000; Williams, 2007). Neuroimaging studies point to a role of the midline areas of the brain, specifically the dorsal and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), as well as the anterior insula, as important brain regions responding to social exclusion (Cacioppo et al., 2013; Rotge et al., 2015). Other studies have used a peer feedback social evaluation paradigm to study responses to both positive and negative social feedback. In such paradigms, participants believe they are socially evaluated by same-aged peers, based on first impressions of their profile picture (Somerville et al., 2006; Gunther Moor et al., 2010b; Hughes and Beer, 2013). These studies showed that dorsal ACC (dACC) activation was particularly activated in response to unexpected social feedback, irrespective of whether this was positive or negative (Somerville et al., 2006), whereas ventral mPFC and ventral striatum activation was larger for positive feedback compared to negative feedback (Guyer et al., 2009; Davey et al., 2010; Gunther Moor et al., 2010b).
More insight into the neural and behavioral correlates of social evaluation and rejection has been derived from studies testing the relation between social rejection and subsequent aggression. One study combined the Cyberball task in the scanner with a subsequent aggression index using a noise blast task outside of the scanner (Chester et al., 2014). Individuals responded more aggressively
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