Neural responses to social rejection reflect dissociable learning about relational value and reward.

ABSTRACT: Social rejection hurts, but it can also be informative: Through experiences of acceptance and rejection, people identify partners interested in connecting with them and choose which ties to cement or to sever. What is it that people actually learn from rejection? In social interactions, people can learn from two kinds of information. First, people generally learn from rewarding outcomes, which may include concrete opportunities for interaction. Second, people track the "relational value" others ascribe to them-an internal model of how much others value them. Here, we used computational neuroimaging to dissociate these forms of learning. Participants repeatedly tried to match with others in a social game. Feedback revealed whether they successfully matched (a rewarding outcome) and how much

SUBMITTER: Babur BG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11626180 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature