Activation of the default network during a theory of mind task predicts individual differences in agreeableness and social cognitive ability

Constructs across a hierarchical, dimensional model of psychopathology show differential associations with social and general cognitive ability

Many psychiatric disorders and associated psychopathology dimensions are related to social cognitive deficits and reduced general cognitive ability. The current study applied a hierarchical, dimensional approach to better understand associations among psychopathology, social cognition, and general cognitive ability. Data were collected from two samples (n = 653), including psychosis-spectrum patients, their first-degree relatives, and individuals from community sources. Participants completed dimensional psychopathology measures and social cognition tasks (e.g., emotion perception and mentalizing). Data were analyzed using bi-factor exploratory structural equation modeling. Detachment-a psychopathology dimension conceptually linked to social functioning-was associated with worse social cognition, independent of general cognitive ability. Eccentricity and Machiavellianism were associated with better social cognition and general cognitive ability. Findings-and the hierarchical, dimensional approach employed-will be useful in informing future research on and interventions for social dysfunction.

Establishing construct validity for dynamic measures of behavior using naturalistic study designs

There has been a recent surge of naturalistic methodology to assess complex topics in psychology and neuroscience. Such methods are lauded for their increased ecological validity, aiming to bridge a gap between highly controlled experimental design and purely observational studies. However, these measures present challenges in establishing construct validity. One domain in which this has emerged is research on theory of mind: the ability to infer others' thoughts and emotions. Traditional measures utilize rigid methodology which suffer from ceiling effects and may fail to fully capture how individuals engage theory of mind in everyday interactions. In the present study, we validate and test a novel approach utilizing a naturalistic task to assess theory of mind. Participants watched a mockumentary-style show while using a joystick to provide continuous, real-time theory of mind judgments. A baseline sample's ratings were used to establish a "ground truth" for the judgments. Ratings from separate young and older adult samples were compared against the ground truth to create similarity scores. This similarity score was compared against two independent tasks to assess construct validity: an explicit judgment performance-based paradigm, and a neuroimaging paradigm assessing response to a static measure of theory of mind. The similarity metric did not have ceiling effects and was significantly positively related to both the performance-based and neural measures. It also replicated age effects that other theory of mind measures demonstrate. Together, our multimodal approach provided convergent evidence that dynamic measures of behavior can yield robust and rigorous assessments of complex psychological processes.

Personality traits vary in their association with brain activity across situations

Human cognition supports complex behaviour across a range of situations, and traits (e.g. personality) influence how we react in these different contexts. Although viewing traits as situationally grounded is common in social sciences, often studies attempting to link brain activity to human traits examine brain-trait associations in a single task, or, under passive conditions like wakeful rest. These studies, often referred to as brain wide association studies (BWAS) have recently become the subject of controversy because results are often unreliable even with large sample sizes. Although there are important statistical reasons why BWAS yield inconsistent results, we hypothesised that the situation in which brain activity is measured will impact the power in detecting a reliable link to specific traits. We performed a state-space analysis where tasks from the Human Connectome Project (HCP) were organized into a low-dimensional space based on how they activated different large-scale neural systems. We examined how individuals' observed brain activity across these different contexts related to their personality. We found that for multiple personality traits, stronger associations with brain activity emerge in some tasks than others. These data highlight the importance of context-bound views for understanding how brain activity links to trait variation in human behaviour.

The role of personality in social interaction perception: an ERP and source imaging study

Agreeableness, one of the five personality traits, is associated with socio-cognitive abilities. This study investigates how agreeableness impacts the perception of social interactions, while considering sex that might moderate this effect. Sixty-two young adults, preselected to ensure a wide range of agreeableness scores, underwent EEG recording while viewing images depicting real-world scenes of two people either engaged in a social interaction or acting independently. Behavioral results suggested a trend where higher agreeableness scores predicted better ability to detect social interactions primarily in males. ERP analysis showed that individuals with higher agreeableness exhibited stronger neural differentiation between social and non-social stimuli, observed in both females and males, and in the whole sample. This neural differentiation, occurring early in the processing timeline, was particularly extensive in males, and predictive of their performance. Three independent source analyses, conducted for the whole sample and for each sex, identified the engagement of right fronto-parietal regions for the ERP-agreeableness association. These findings enhance our understanding of how agreeableness shapes the neural mechanisms underlying social interaction detection and emphasize sex as an important factor in this dynamic. They also highlight the need for tailored approaches that consider personality traits and sex in clinical interventions targeting social impairments.

Callousness, exploitativeness, and tracking of cooperation incentives in the human default network

Human cognitive capacities that enable flexible cooperation may have evolved in parallel with the expansion of frontoparietal cortical networks, particularly the default network. Conversely, human antisocial behavior and trait antagonism are broadly associated with reduced activity, impaired connectivity, and altered structure of the default network. Yet, behaviors like interpersonal manipulation and exploitation may require intact or even superior social cognition. Using a reinforcement learning model of decision-making on a modified trust game, we examined how individuals adjusted their cooperation rate based on a counterpart's cooperation and social reputation. We observed that learning signals in the default network updated the predicted utility of cooperation or defection and scaled with reciprocal cooperation. These signals were weaker in callous (vs. compassionate) individuals but stronger in those who were more exploitative (vs. honest and humble). Further, they accounted for associations between exploitativeness, callousness, and reciprocal cooperation. Separately, behavioral sensitivity to prior reputation was reduced in callous but not exploitative individuals and selectively scaled with responses of the medial temporal subsystem of the default network. Overall, callousness was characterized by blunted behavioral and default network sensitivity to cooperation incentives. Exploitativeness predicted heightened sensitivity to others' cooperation but not social reputation. We speculate that both compassion and exploitativeness may reflect cognitive adaptations to social living, enabled by expansion of the default network in anthropogenesis.

Feelings as a currency of care: A role for agreeableness in emotional reactivity

OBJECTIVE AND BACKGROUND

The personality trait of agreeableness is linked to a number of core tendencies (e.g., empathy, warmth) that operate in a feeling-based manner. Following considerations of this type, it is proposed that the motivations and characteristics of agreeable individuals, relative to disagreeable individuals, should render them more receptive to emotional events and more responsive to them for this reason.

METHOD

Potential links between agreeableness and emotional reactivity were assessed in two studies involving four samples (total N = 517) in which participants continuously rated their feeling states in response to a variety of affective images.

RESULTS

Agreeableness did not predict the speed with which emotional reactions began, but agreeable individuals exhibited higher-magnitude peak intensities, regardless of whether stimuli were appetitive (pleasant) or aversive (unpleasant) in nature.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings provide novel insights into the personality trait of agreeableness, emotional reactivity phenomena, and the dynamic processes that link agreeableness to emotion.

Agreeableness modulates mental state decoding: Electrophysiological evidence

Agreeableness is one of the five personality traits which is associated with theory of mind (ToM) abilities. One of the critical processes involved in ToM is the decoding of emotional cues. In the present study, we investigated whether this process is modulated by agreeableness using electroencephalography (EEG) while taking into account task complexity and sex differences that are expected to moderate the relationship between emotional decoding and agreeableness. This approach allowed us to identify at which stage of the neural processing agreeableness kicks in, in order to distinguish the impact on early, perceptual processes from slower, inferential processing. Two tasks were employed and submitted to 62 participants during EEG recording: the reading the mind in the eyes (RME) task, requiring the decoding of complex mental states from eye expressions, and the biological (e)motion task, involving the perception of basic emotional actions through point-light body stimuli. Event-related potential (ERP) results showed a significant correlation between agreeableness and the contrast for emotional and non-emotional trials in a late time window only during the RME task. Specifically, higher levels of agreeableness were associated with a deeper neural processing of emotional versus non-emotional trials within the whole and male samples. In contrast, the modulation in females was negligible. The source analysis highlighted that this ERP-agreeableness association engages the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Our findings expand previous research on personality and social processing and confirm that sex modulates this relationship.

The relationship between the default mode network and the theory of mind network as revealed by psychedelics - A meta-analysis

The Default Mode Network (DMN) and the Theory of Mind (ToM) networks play a crucial role in our understanding of the neurocognition of the self. The DMN is commonly associated with introspection, while the ToM is involved in perspective-taking. There is no research investigating the overlap between the DMN and ToM in relation to causal effects such as induced by psychedelics, and their precise relationship remains therefore unknown. Psychedelics alter self-perception and modulate these networks, providing a unique opportunity to shed light on this relationship. We performed a quantitative meta-analysis of 88 studies with a total of 2122 participants to investigate the overlap between DMN and ToM and whether psychedelics affect their neural relationship. We found that the cingulate cortex (BA23 and BA31) plays a crucial role in the overlap between these networks which is substantiated by the effects of psychedelics. These compounds affect the neural basis of ToM and social cognition, which may underlie their therapeutic potential and deepen our understanding of the neural correlates of the self.

The Dark Side of Mentalizing: Learning Signals in the Default Network During Social Exchanges Support Cooperation and Exploitation

The evolution of human social cognitive capacities such as mentalizing was associated with the expansion of frontoparietal cortical networks, particularly the default network. Mentalizing supports prosocial behaviors, but recent evidence indicates it may also serve a darker side of human social behavior. Using a computational reinforcement learning model of decision-making on a social exchange task, we examined how individuals optimized their approach to social interactions based on a counterpart's behavior and prior reputation. We found that learning signals encoded in the default network scaled with reciprocal cooperation and were stronger in individuals who were more exploitative and manipulative, but weaker in those who were more callous and less empathic. These learning signals, which help to update predictions about others' behavior, accounted for associations between exploitativeness, callousness, and social reciprocity. Separately, we found that callousness, but not exploitativeness, was associated with a behavioral insensitivity to prior reputation effects. While the entire default network was involved in reciprocal cooperation, sensitivity to reputation was selectively related to the activity of the medial temporal subsystem. Overall, our findings suggest that the emergence of social cognitive capacities associated with the expansion of the default network likely enabled humans to not only cooperate effectively with others, but to exploit and manipulate others as well.