Neural mechanisms of social influence in adolescence

Welborn, B. Locke, Lieberman, Matthew D., Goldenberg, Diane, Fuligni, Andrew J., Galvan, Adriana and Telzer, Eva H. (2016) Neural mechanisms of social influence in adolescence. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11 (1). 100–109. ISSN 1749-5016

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Abstract

During the transformative period of adolescence, social influence plays a prominent role in shaping young people’s emerging social identities, and can impact their propensity to engage in prosocial or risky behaviors. In this study, we examine the neural correlates of social influence from both parents and peers, two important sources of influence. Nineteen adolescents (age 16–18 years) completed a social influence task during a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan. Social influence from both sources evoked activity in brain regions implicated in mentalizing (medial prefrontal cortex, left temporoparietal junction, right temporoparietal junction), reward (ventromedial prefrontal cortex), and self-control (right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex). These results suggest that mental state reasoning, social reward and self-control processes may help adolescents to evaluate others’ perspectives and overcome the prepotent force of their own antecedent attitudes to shift their attitudes toward those of others. Findings suggest common neural networks involved in social influence from both parents and peers.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	social influence,adolescence,functional mri,mentalizing,self-control,reward
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Cognition, Action and Perception Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Social Cognition Research Group
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	31 Jan 2019 16:30
Last Modified:	22 Oct 2022 04:27
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/69784
DOI:	10.1093/scan/nsv095

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