Jennifer S. Beer - US grants

Although we often think of emotion as the foe of reason, scientists have recently discovered that emotions are sometimes helpful for decision-making. For example, if the car in front of you suddenly brakes, you may feel a jolt of fear. The feeling of fear signals that something must be done quickly to avoid harm. On the other hand, unwarranted fear may motivate the decision to avoid an otherwise rewarding situation. For example, a shy student may not benefit from a class discussion because they are too afraid to speak up. How does the brain compute which emotions are helpful for decision-making and when the influence of emotion should be suppressed or integrated? The goals of this project are to understand how the brain represents (a) helpful and hurtful emotions and (b) the incorporation and inhibition of emotional influences on decision-making. With support from the National Science Foundation, Jennifer Beer at the University of Texas and Robert Knight at the University of California, Berkeley will address these questions by conducting parallel neuroimaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging) studies of healthy individuals and behavioral studies of patients with brain damage in regions that are hypothesized to be involved in emotion and inhibition (i.e., specific subregions of the frontal lobes). The studies will present human volunteers with emotional stimuli that are designated as helpful or hurtful for a subsequent decision. The studies systematically assess the influence of emotions on a number of computations that support decision-making: perceptions of risk, attention, and how deeply the decision is considered. The neuroimaging studies will test for brain regions that represent (a) helpful and hurtful emotion and (b) the incorporation and inhibition of emotional influences on decision-making. The studies of patients with brain damage will test whether the damaged region is necessary for these processes.

This work will result in a more comprehensive understanding of how the human brain represents emotional information and its role in decision-making. This research may lead to new models of decision-making which would have significant implications for disciplines beyond cognitive neuroscience such as economics and psychology. The funding from this research will be used to support research training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate trainees in social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and brain imaging. The project results will be disseminated through publications and presentations to scientific and lay audiences.

This project investigates why people so consistently view themselves through rose-colored glasses. What exactly are people thinking when they claim that their personalities are more desirable then they actually are -- or that they've achieved more than they actually have? Some researchers claim that these rosy views come about because people simply want to feel good. Instead of acknowledging their negative aspects, people focus more on their good qualities when evaluating themselves. Other researchers claim that consistently rosy self-views have less to do with the goal of feeling good and more to do with evaluating one's self in the quickest and easiest manner possible. Many of people's decisions and judgments are based on the first thing that comes to mind. Further, many times, the first thing that comes to mind happens to flatter the self -- which makes it appear as though people are striving to make themselves look good.

The proposed project attempts to integrate the "hot" (motivational) perspective and the "cold" ("what's on your mind?") perspectives on overly favorable self-views -- by suggesting that both are correct under different conditions. The key may be that people approach an evaluation of themselves differently depending on whether there is a recent challenge to their positive feelings about themselves. For example, people faced with recent criticism may restore their positive feelings by emphasizing their positive qualities when describing themselves. However, when those same people find themselves in situations that do not challenge their positive feelings, they may use the first thing that comes to mind to describe themselves. If that happens to be self-flattering, they will make the same rosy claims but for very different reasons.

The proposed studies will investigate (a) how criticism shapes how deeply people have to think to make rosy claims about themselves, (b) how criticism affects people's willingness to consider information beyond that which comes to mind easily, and (c) exactly which brain regions support people's rosy views of the self. The results will help reconcile the competing views on why people so often make rosy claims about themselves. Additionally, the results may point out an exception to current theories about how people's emotions influence their thoughts (e.g., fear may not always make people think harder) and will expand the psychological understanding of how the brain supports the human sense of self.

As shown in past research, the common tendency for people to see themselves through rose-colored glasses has long-term costs for health, education, and workplace performance. For example, people who fail to acknowledge health problems and health risks do not seek appropriate treatment. Further, many clinical disorders involve unrealistic beliefs about the self -- such as substance abusers' beliefs that they can use "just this once" without relapsing or narcissists' beliefs that they are superior to others. People who are overconfident about their academic ability or work skills also perform poorly in school and at work. By identifying exactly when and why people are most likely to view themselves accurately, versus through rosy lenses, this research can inform interventions that will help people better decide when they should seek treatment, study harder, or allow more time to complete an important task.

This project will also advance the scientific training of students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. In addition, the results will be broadly disseminated because the lab interfaces with psychologists, neuroscientists, economists, and professionals in the fields of medicine and law through publications, academic presentations, Continuing Education (CE) presentations, and training programs.

This project explores the neural mechanisms that permit us to evaluate ourselves in the way we would like. Self-evaluation is a core social-cognitive process that affects healthcare decisions, emotional well-being, interpersonal relations, and productivity at school and work. If we deny a problem exists or view our abilities through rose-colored glasses, we are not likely to seek help or allow adequate time to perform a task. Disordered self-evaluation is a feature of many mental health issues such as depression, schizophrenia, and autism. Currently little is know about how self-evaluation is affected by neurobiological development in the general population or the neurobiological impairments associated with disorders. Our lack of knowledge stems from the fact that neural models of self-evaluation trail far behind psychological models. Thus, there is a great need to develop neurobiological models of self-evaluation.

The proposed project will use a combination of fMRI, psychological theory, and computational modeling to address two critical bottlenecks that impede development of neural models of self-processing. First, the studies will illuminate the neural architecture of motivational influences on self-evaluation. Motivational influences on self-evaluation play a fundamental role in psychological models yet are currently ignored by neuroscience. Additionally, the studies will disentangle a critical confound present in most of the existing research on self-evaluation. Specifically, the project will examine whether the medial prefrontal cortex, the region most consistently associated with self-evaluation, serves to support socioemotional processing or cognitive properties of social evaluation. Results will transform our conceptualization of the neural basis of disorders such as depression, schizophrenia, and autism which feature disordered self-evaluation but are currently only understood through neural models of other processes. The results will bridge gaps between psychological and neurocognitive models to inform the next generation of self-evaluation research as well as inform related inquiries into reward-processing, selective attention, and decision-making.

A wealth of research indicates that high quality romantic relationships allow individuals to thrive both emotionally and physically. In fact, the impact of close relationships on health has been shown to be larger than the impact of a variety of negative health behaviors, such as smoking, excessive drinking, and obesity. Unfortunately, longer life expectancies and high divorce rates have contributed to a new social reality in which older adults (i.e., age 60+) increasingly find themselves unpartnered and searching for companionship. Despite these societal trends, research on how older adults form and maintain satisfying new romantic relationships is scarce. Although the close relationships research has much to say regarding the relationship processes that create a happier, healthier relationship, this literature has focused overwhelmingly on relationship formation in young adults, leaving open questions regarding the generalizability of these findings to an older population. Similarly, although the aging literature has developed influential theories about age-related changes in interpersonal skills, applications of these ideas to the romantic domain have focused on older adults in longstanding marriages (e.g., 20+ years), and thus may not extrapolate to newly-formed romantic relationships. Thus, the proposed research is designed to fill this gap, and will test if there are potential age-related changes in the way individuals navigate the inevitable ups and downs of a new romantic relationship.

Specifically, the goal of the current proposal is to examine whether the life experience that comes with age facilitates positive and constructive responses when relationship conflicts arise. Integrating insights from both the aging and the close relationships literatures suggests that the answer to this question may depend on the relational context. Although the increases in socioemotional expertise that come with age should equip older adults with enhanced ability to successfully manage relationship challenges in longstanding relationships, older adults' advantage over younger adults may diminish in the context of newly-formed dating relationships. Efforts to minimize relationship conflict often prove more difficult in the early stages of relationship development; unfortunately, when relationship conflicts are not effectively averted, older adults tend to be more vulnerable than younger adults to the emotional and physical costs such challenges can bring. Thus, the current project aims to provide a more comprehensive understanding of relationship maintenance efforts across the lifespan through a multi-method study comparing the maintenance strategies of older adults in longstanding marriages, older adults in newly-formed romantic relationships, younger adults in longstanding relationships, and younger adults in newly-formed romantic relationships, as well as the implications of these strategies for emotional and physical well-being. Results from this study will be informative for improving happiness and health throughout the lifespan.

Social rejection is a major cause of emotional and physical distress, and it often leads to aggressive retaliation. As one example, individuals who are responsible for school violence often have a history of being socially excluded. This project seeks to understand how best to reduce the harmful consequences of social rejection. Past research has focused considerable attention on those who have been the target or victim of social rejection. Much less attention has been paid to those who engage in social rejection. The research that has been done focuses on those who socially reject others for the purpose of causing harm. Yet, most everyday social rejection occurs by people who do not intend to hurt others. Examples range from those who turn down social invitations to those who reject job candidates for employment. In such cases, people often struggle with how best to soften the blow of their rejection. This project builds on existing research by investigating the specific language that people can use to make their rejection of others hurt less and the conditions under which they are able to use that beneficial language in the moment. Specifically, social psychology theory and research has identified that people experience feelings of elevated power, concern about their reputation, or both in the moment when they are rejecting others. This project examines how those central experiences bolster or hinder people?s ability to learn and implement language principles that make the rejection less emotionally devastating. If people can learn to reject in a way that minimizes hurt feelings, it may offer an avenue to prevent subsequent aggressive retaliation. The project draws on social psychology as well as theories and methods from communications, game design, and computational modeling. The primary aim is to reveal the mechanisms and conditions needed to train people to use the least hurtful language when socially rejecting others.

This project is organized around a set of six behavioral experiments that examine the experience of the social rejector and how that experience shapes the language and emotional impact of their rejection. The studies focus on language as a point of intervention because research has shown that people express a desire to not hurt others but feel at a loss about what to say to accomplish that goal. The project considers whether two central experiences of social rejectors, power and concerns about one?s reputation, hinder or bolster the use of language that softens the emotional blow of the rejection. One expected effect is that people who focus on their social power in the moment of social rejection will be less likely to use beneficial language in the moment and will struggle to learn the appropriate language. Another expected effect is that people who focus on how their own reputations may suffer will show enhanced ability to learn the language that softens the blow and greater success at implementing that language in the moment. The research also aims to uncover whether the emotional priorities of the social rejector may come at a cost to the rejected person. That is, do social rejectors find it emotionally draining to craft responses that draw on the beneficial language principles and decide not to put in the effort despite knowing it means the rejection will end up hurting the rejected person more? This research program provides training to a diverse group of students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The results and intervention materials are broadly disseminated to organizations focused on promoting community. Many points of contact are made with other areas of scientific inquiry, including communications, game design, and computational modeling. The project develops an accessible, empirically-supported training program that helps people know what to say to soften the blow of their social rejection as well as develop basic knowledge that could be used as further points of intervention.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

A fundamental goal of neuroscience research is to characterize brain operation in relation to both typical and atypical behavior. Prior research, however, identified operations that are specific to the well-controlled yet somewhat artificial lab environment. The goal of understanding neural operations in relation to social behavior is particularly challenging in neuroimaging environments; it is difficult to model interactions with other people as experienced in everyday life. For example, many studies have identified patterns of neural operations theorized to support socioemotional function such as empathy and prosocial behavior. The presumed goal of these studies is to understand how individuals who exhibit high levels of empathy and/or prosocial behavior differ in their neural operations from individuals who show lower levels. However, these studies have experimentally manipulated empathy, prosocial behavior, and other socioemotional functions, without interactions with other people and without contexts found outside the lab. Therefore, it remains unknown whether the neural operations observed in the experimental context can help to predict people?s personalities and behavior outside of the lab. The project will take a new approach to bridging neural patterns with behavior by investigating whether neural activation typically characterized by socioemotional function in the lab predicts the extent to which people show differences in their personalities and social behavior outside the lab.

This investigation incorporates a unique blend of cutting-edge theory and method from researchers in disciplines that do not often interact. It includes research at the forefront of measuring neural operations and rigorous measurement of everyday social behavior. This project will investigate how personalities and everyday behavior relate to neural operation, over a large sample of people who perform a diverse set of socioemotional tasks. Specifically, this project will test how variation in task-related activation and resting state connectivity mediates the relationship between individual differences in socioemotional factors (such as dispositional empathy) and real-world behavior (such as prosocial action). Measurements of real-world behavior will be drawn from long-term social media behavior. The project will provide data and training in interdisciplinary, cutting edge measurement at each level of analysis in social-personality psychology, cognitive neuroscience, computer science, and communication. The project will also generate a publicly accessible data set that bridges dispositional individual differences, multiple measures of variation in neural activity, and real-world social behavior, to facilitate multidisciplinary collaborations and to investigate relations between levels of analyses.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.