Page 29 - Like me, or else... - Michelle Achterberg

Social evaluation in childhood
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Introduction
Social acceptance is of key importance in life. Receiving positive social feedback increases our self-esteem and gives us a sense of belonging (Thomaes et al., 2011). Receiving negative social feedback, in contrast, can induce feelings of depression, and rejected people often react with withdrawal (Nolan et al., 2003). Social rejection can, however, also trigger feelings of anger and frustration, and can lead to reactive aggressive behavior (Dodge et al., 2003; Nesdale and Lambert, 2007; Chester et al., 2014; Riva et al., 2015; Achterberg et al., 2016b). Most developmental studies have focused on the withdrawal reaction after social rejection, while relatively few have examined reactive aggression. The few studies that examined rejection-related aggression showed that early peer rejection was associated with an increase in aggression in children aged 6-8 (Dodge et al., 2003; Lansford et al., 2010). Several prior studies have also shown that rejection can lead to immediate aggression (Chester et al., 2014; Riva et al., 2015; Achterberg et al., 2016b). These immediate effects may be associated with emotional responses to rejection and a lack of impulse control. Although several studies have focused on neural processes involved in negative versus positive social feedback processing, the neural processes involved in dealing with negative or positive social feedback versus a neutral baseline in middle childhood are currently unknown.
Experimental research in adults has examined social evaluation and aggression using a peer acceptance and rejection task. Initially developed as a social feedback task (Somerville et al., 2006), a recent adaptation allowed participants to deliver noise blasts to peers who had rejected them based on a personal profile (Achterberg et al., 2016b), testing the potential expression of reactive aggression. Negative social feedback signaling rejection was associated with louder noise blasts and increased activity in bilateral anterior insula and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)/ anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) relative to neutral feedback (Achterberg et al., 2016b). This latter region is suggested to play an important role in evaluating others’ behaviors and in estimating others’ level of motivation (Flagan and Beer, 2013; Apps et al., 2016). Interestingly, these regions were also more active after positive feedback (compared to neutral feedback), suggesting that both negative and positive feedback leads to social evaluative processes in adults. Other studies also reported the involvement of subcortical regions in processing social feedback. Positive social feedback was found to result in greater activity in striatal regions (Gunther Moor et al., 2010b; Achterberg et al., 2016b), which possibly reflects the rewarding value of this type of feedback (Guyer et al., 2014). Furthermore, peer interactions have been associated with increased amygdala activity, indicating their affective salience (Guyer et al., 2008; Masten et al., 2009; Silk et al., 2014).
Several studies examined the neural correlates of social evaluation in children and adolescents. These studies reported increased neural activity to
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