Universiteit Utrecht
Samenvatting
Identiteit en de
Diverse Mens
2023-2024
,Table of Contents
Kedia et al. – From the Brain to the Field: The Applications of Social Neuroscience to Economics,
Health and Law.......................................................................................................................................4
Introduction........................................................................................................................................4
Economics...........................................................................................................................................4
Health.................................................................................................................................................5
Law.....................................................................................................................................................5
Conclusions.........................................................................................................................................5
Hankin et al. – Depression From Childhood Into Late Adolescence: Influence of Gender, Development,
Genetic Susceptibility, and Peer Stress...................................................................................................6
Method...............................................................................................................................................6
Results................................................................................................................................................6
Discussion...........................................................................................................................................7
McAdams and Pals – A New Big Five: Fundamental Principles for an Integrative Science of Personality
................................................................................................................................................................7
Principle 1: evolution and human nature...........................................................................................7
Principle 2: the dispositional signature...............................................................................................8
Principle 3: characteristic adaptations................................................................................................8
Principle 4: life narratives and the challenge of modern identity.......................................................8
Principle 5: the differential role of culture..........................................................................................9
Conclusion..........................................................................................................................................9
Zittoun et al. – Fragmentation or Differentiation: Questioning the Crisis in Psychology.........................9
What is a crisis?..................................................................................................................................9
Is there a crisis in psychology?............................................................................................................9
First narrative: the diagnostic of a fragmented field...........................................................................9
Second narrative: a complex developmental process.......................................................................10
The development of psychology.......................................................................................................10
Moving forward through collaborative work....................................................................................10
An optimistic view on the future of psychology................................................................................10
Thomaes and Brummelman - How Children Construct Views of Themselves: A Social-Developmental
Perspective...........................................................................................................................................11
The self-concept...............................................................................................................................11
A social-developmental approach....................................................................................................11
How social relationships shape the self-concept..............................................................................11
Usborne and De La Sablonnière – Understanding My Culture Means Understanding Myself: The
Function of Cultural Identity Clarity for Personal Identity Clarity and Personal Psychological Well-Being
,..............................................................................................................................................................12
Personal identity clarity....................................................................................................................12
Cultural identity clarity.....................................................................................................................13
The function of cultural identity clarity for personal identity clarity.................................................13
Implications of the model of personal and cultural identity clarity..................................................14
Future directions..............................................................................................................................14
Lockwood and Wittmann – Ventral anterior cingulate cortex and social decision-making...................14
1. Ventral anterior cingulate cortex during social interactions..........................................................14
2. Social prediction error signals in subgenual anterior cingulate cortex..........................................15
3. Self-efficacy related computations in perigenual anterior cingulate cortex..................................15
4. Implications for atypical social decision-making...........................................................................15
Barreto - Experiencing and Coping with Social Stigma.........................................................................15
Effects of social stigmatization on individual targets.........................................................................16
Social interactions between the stigmatized and the nonstigmatized..............................................16
Coping with social stigma.............................................................................................................16
Avoiding intergroup interactions..................................................................................................17
Compensating during intergroup interactions..............................................................................17
Reducing the impact of negative feedback...................................................................................17
Valuing domains strategically........................................................................................................18
Resisting stigma............................................................................................................................18
Salemink et al. – Look at the Bright Side of Life: Computergestuurde Training bij Angst......................19
Causale rol van aandachts- en interpretatiebias bij angst.................................................................19
Hertrainen van aandachts- en interpretatiebias: cognitieve bias modificatie...............................19
Ervaringen van de patiënten.............................................................................................................19
Conclusies en een blik op de toekomst.............................................................................................19
Lonsdorf and Merz – More than Just Noise: Inter-Individual Differences in Fear Acquisition, Extinction
and Return of Rear in Humans - Biological, Experiential, Temperamental Factors, and Methodological
Pitfalls...................................................................................................................................................20
1. Fear acquisition, extinction and return of fear as experimental models.......................................20
1.1 Signals in the noise: a paradigm shift from average responding to a focus on inter-individual
differences....................................................................................................................................20
3. Biological and experiential variables.............................................................................................21
3.1 Age and development.............................................................................................................21
3.2. Sex differences and sex hormones.........................................................................................21
3.3 Brain morphology and volumetry...........................................................................................21
3.4 Genetic polymorphisms..........................................................................................................21
, 3.5 The stress hormone cortisol....................................................................................................21
3.6 Life events and previous encounters.......................................................................................21
3.7 Interim summary: biological and experiential variables..........................................................22
4. Temperamental variables and cognitive biases.............................................................................22
4.1 State and trait anxiety.............................................................................................................22
4.2 Neuroticism............................................................................................................................22
4.3 Intolerance of uncertainty......................................................................................................22
4.4 Interim summary: trait variables.............................................................................................22
5. The story of noise evolving into a meaningful tune: inter-individual differences..........................23
Sippel et al. - How does social support enhance resilience in the trauma-exposed individual?...........23
Introduction......................................................................................................................................23
Defining social support.....................................................................................................................23
The association between social support and individual health........................................................23
Mechanisms for the link between social support and individual resilience......................................23
Family and community resilience and the transactional model of resilience...................................24
Implications for intervention............................................................................................................24
Conclusions.......................................................................................................................................24
,Kedia et al. – From the Brain to the Field: The
Applications of Social Neuroscience to Economics,
Health and Law
Introduction
Social neuroscience: aims to investigate how biological systems implement social behaviour, and to
understand social processes by examining their biological underpinnings.
This article provides examples of the contribution of social neuroscience to the domains of
economics, health and law, address the concerns raised by the extrapolation of neuroscientific results
to applied disciplines, and suggest guidelines and good practices to circumvent these concerns.
Reverse inference: the engagement of a certain mental process can be inferred from the observed
activity of a biological system.
Brain responses to social stimuli are affected by the format in which these stimuli are presented
(videos vs. pictures) as well as by the level of expertise of the participants, their expectations, their
personality or the social environment in which they perceive these stimuli.
Problems with generalizability and reproducibilityof neuroscience experiments:
- Most methods impose heavy constraints on participants that prevent them from reacting
naturally as may occur in real-world settings;
- Most methods require numerous trials consisting of the same task, which is exhausting and
results in biases and cognitive processes that differ from real-world situations;
- In most studies the social context is artificial and not comparable to the real world;
- Most studies are from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD)
countries;
- File drawer problem and other biases (replication crisis).
Economics
Neuroeconomics: integrates ideas and methods from psychology, economics and cognitive
neuroscience with the goal of producing more robust models of economic decision-making (game
theory, Ultimatum Game).
Neuroimaging studies have shown that the brain reward system reacts to social rewards in similar
ways as to monetary rewards.
Reward and feedback coming from other people engage social contribution brain systems and striatal
regions to a greater extent than reward and feedback from a computer.
Thus: social context affects reward and economic decision-making.
Reactions to unfairness in adults are not only affected by the offer itself in the UG but also by the
ascribed intentionality of the person making the offer.
Unintentional unfair offers leads to increased acceptance rates. Younger adolescents were
less affected by intentions.
Deception is a common practice in experiments, but if participants know this, they may stop believing
the cover stories experimenters tell them. This can be resolved by generating new experimental
paradigms where using deception is avoided.
, There exists a strong relationship between reward processes and nucleus accumbens activity and this
legitimates the use of reverse inferences in this context.
Disadvantage: in social neuroscience most conclusions are based on brain data from university
students, which may not be generalizable.
Health
Our (perceived) social standing, the quality of our social interactions, and the empathy and support
we receive from others form possible sources of stress, and accordingly determine our psychological
and physical wellbeing.
Neuroscientific measures are now used, because self-reports and behavioural measurements
are often subject to strong social norms and may not always be accessible to introspection;
Social neuroscience may thus provide unique insights in how social stressors affect individual
wellbeing.
Examples: stigmatized groups experience higher stress levels which lead to higher morbidity, people
with low SES are more likely to develop physical and psychological illnesses and die prematurely.
Besides social stressors influencing psychological and physical wellbeing directly, they may also do so
through the behaviours they evoke (overeating, substance abuse, risky decision-making).
People (and healthcare providers also) display less neural resonance with the pain of an outgroup
member, which can lead them to treat some patients differently than others.
Limitation of social neuroscience research in the health domain: reliance on anatomical overlap in
activation patterns as evidence for shared neural networks.
Law
Lie detection isn’t accurate, because a person can be conveying false information that they believe to
be true, thereby misrepresenting the truth.
The usefulness of social neuroscience for law lies with illuminating the complex psychological
constructs central to legal decision-making.
Researchers suggest that:
- Utilitarian decisions – deciding to sacrifice one life in order to save others – engages brain
systems associated with logical decision-making;
- Deontological decisions – harming is wrong, so not even one life should be sacrificed, even to
save more lives – engaged brain regions associated with emotional processing.
Is people’s behaviour driven by emotion or do people intentionally plan and execute behaviour?
Conclusions
Advantages of social neuroscience: it constitutes implicit methods that enable to investigate
unconscious processes as well as cognitions that participants may be unwilling or unable to explicitly
admit. Also, it represents powerful tools to test overlaps and differences in brain activations and their
putative underlying cognitive mechanisms
Samenvatting
Identiteit en de
Diverse Mens
2023-2024
,Table of Contents
Kedia et al. – From the Brain to the Field: The Applications of Social Neuroscience to Economics,
Health and Law.......................................................................................................................................4
Introduction........................................................................................................................................4
Economics...........................................................................................................................................4
Health.................................................................................................................................................5
Law.....................................................................................................................................................5
Conclusions.........................................................................................................................................5
Hankin et al. – Depression From Childhood Into Late Adolescence: Influence of Gender, Development,
Genetic Susceptibility, and Peer Stress...................................................................................................6
Method...............................................................................................................................................6
Results................................................................................................................................................6
Discussion...........................................................................................................................................7
McAdams and Pals – A New Big Five: Fundamental Principles for an Integrative Science of Personality
................................................................................................................................................................7
Principle 1: evolution and human nature...........................................................................................7
Principle 2: the dispositional signature...............................................................................................8
Principle 3: characteristic adaptations................................................................................................8
Principle 4: life narratives and the challenge of modern identity.......................................................8
Principle 5: the differential role of culture..........................................................................................9
Conclusion..........................................................................................................................................9
Zittoun et al. – Fragmentation or Differentiation: Questioning the Crisis in Psychology.........................9
What is a crisis?..................................................................................................................................9
Is there a crisis in psychology?............................................................................................................9
First narrative: the diagnostic of a fragmented field...........................................................................9
Second narrative: a complex developmental process.......................................................................10
The development of psychology.......................................................................................................10
Moving forward through collaborative work....................................................................................10
An optimistic view on the future of psychology................................................................................10
Thomaes and Brummelman - How Children Construct Views of Themselves: A Social-Developmental
Perspective...........................................................................................................................................11
The self-concept...............................................................................................................................11
A social-developmental approach....................................................................................................11
How social relationships shape the self-concept..............................................................................11
Usborne and De La Sablonnière – Understanding My Culture Means Understanding Myself: The
Function of Cultural Identity Clarity for Personal Identity Clarity and Personal Psychological Well-Being
,..............................................................................................................................................................12
Personal identity clarity....................................................................................................................12
Cultural identity clarity.....................................................................................................................13
The function of cultural identity clarity for personal identity clarity.................................................13
Implications of the model of personal and cultural identity clarity..................................................14
Future directions..............................................................................................................................14
Lockwood and Wittmann – Ventral anterior cingulate cortex and social decision-making...................14
1. Ventral anterior cingulate cortex during social interactions..........................................................14
2. Social prediction error signals in subgenual anterior cingulate cortex..........................................15
3. Self-efficacy related computations in perigenual anterior cingulate cortex..................................15
4. Implications for atypical social decision-making...........................................................................15
Barreto - Experiencing and Coping with Social Stigma.........................................................................15
Effects of social stigmatization on individual targets.........................................................................16
Social interactions between the stigmatized and the nonstigmatized..............................................16
Coping with social stigma.............................................................................................................16
Avoiding intergroup interactions..................................................................................................17
Compensating during intergroup interactions..............................................................................17
Reducing the impact of negative feedback...................................................................................17
Valuing domains strategically........................................................................................................18
Resisting stigma............................................................................................................................18
Salemink et al. – Look at the Bright Side of Life: Computergestuurde Training bij Angst......................19
Causale rol van aandachts- en interpretatiebias bij angst.................................................................19
Hertrainen van aandachts- en interpretatiebias: cognitieve bias modificatie...............................19
Ervaringen van de patiënten.............................................................................................................19
Conclusies en een blik op de toekomst.............................................................................................19
Lonsdorf and Merz – More than Just Noise: Inter-Individual Differences in Fear Acquisition, Extinction
and Return of Rear in Humans - Biological, Experiential, Temperamental Factors, and Methodological
Pitfalls...................................................................................................................................................20
1. Fear acquisition, extinction and return of fear as experimental models.......................................20
1.1 Signals in the noise: a paradigm shift from average responding to a focus on inter-individual
differences....................................................................................................................................20
3. Biological and experiential variables.............................................................................................21
3.1 Age and development.............................................................................................................21
3.2. Sex differences and sex hormones.........................................................................................21
3.3 Brain morphology and volumetry...........................................................................................21
3.4 Genetic polymorphisms..........................................................................................................21
, 3.5 The stress hormone cortisol....................................................................................................21
3.6 Life events and previous encounters.......................................................................................21
3.7 Interim summary: biological and experiential variables..........................................................22
4. Temperamental variables and cognitive biases.............................................................................22
4.1 State and trait anxiety.............................................................................................................22
4.2 Neuroticism............................................................................................................................22
4.3 Intolerance of uncertainty......................................................................................................22
4.4 Interim summary: trait variables.............................................................................................22
5. The story of noise evolving into a meaningful tune: inter-individual differences..........................23
Sippel et al. - How does social support enhance resilience in the trauma-exposed individual?...........23
Introduction......................................................................................................................................23
Defining social support.....................................................................................................................23
The association between social support and individual health........................................................23
Mechanisms for the link between social support and individual resilience......................................23
Family and community resilience and the transactional model of resilience...................................24
Implications for intervention............................................................................................................24
Conclusions.......................................................................................................................................24
,Kedia et al. – From the Brain to the Field: The
Applications of Social Neuroscience to Economics,
Health and Law
Introduction
Social neuroscience: aims to investigate how biological systems implement social behaviour, and to
understand social processes by examining their biological underpinnings.
This article provides examples of the contribution of social neuroscience to the domains of
economics, health and law, address the concerns raised by the extrapolation of neuroscientific results
to applied disciplines, and suggest guidelines and good practices to circumvent these concerns.
Reverse inference: the engagement of a certain mental process can be inferred from the observed
activity of a biological system.
Brain responses to social stimuli are affected by the format in which these stimuli are presented
(videos vs. pictures) as well as by the level of expertise of the participants, their expectations, their
personality or the social environment in which they perceive these stimuli.
Problems with generalizability and reproducibilityof neuroscience experiments:
- Most methods impose heavy constraints on participants that prevent them from reacting
naturally as may occur in real-world settings;
- Most methods require numerous trials consisting of the same task, which is exhausting and
results in biases and cognitive processes that differ from real-world situations;
- In most studies the social context is artificial and not comparable to the real world;
- Most studies are from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD)
countries;
- File drawer problem and other biases (replication crisis).
Economics
Neuroeconomics: integrates ideas and methods from psychology, economics and cognitive
neuroscience with the goal of producing more robust models of economic decision-making (game
theory, Ultimatum Game).
Neuroimaging studies have shown that the brain reward system reacts to social rewards in similar
ways as to monetary rewards.
Reward and feedback coming from other people engage social contribution brain systems and striatal
regions to a greater extent than reward and feedback from a computer.
Thus: social context affects reward and economic decision-making.
Reactions to unfairness in adults are not only affected by the offer itself in the UG but also by the
ascribed intentionality of the person making the offer.
Unintentional unfair offers leads to increased acceptance rates. Younger adolescents were
less affected by intentions.
Deception is a common practice in experiments, but if participants know this, they may stop believing
the cover stories experimenters tell them. This can be resolved by generating new experimental
paradigms where using deception is avoided.
, There exists a strong relationship between reward processes and nucleus accumbens activity and this
legitimates the use of reverse inferences in this context.
Disadvantage: in social neuroscience most conclusions are based on brain data from university
students, which may not be generalizable.
Health
Our (perceived) social standing, the quality of our social interactions, and the empathy and support
we receive from others form possible sources of stress, and accordingly determine our psychological
and physical wellbeing.
Neuroscientific measures are now used, because self-reports and behavioural measurements
are often subject to strong social norms and may not always be accessible to introspection;
Social neuroscience may thus provide unique insights in how social stressors affect individual
wellbeing.
Examples: stigmatized groups experience higher stress levels which lead to higher morbidity, people
with low SES are more likely to develop physical and psychological illnesses and die prematurely.
Besides social stressors influencing psychological and physical wellbeing directly, they may also do so
through the behaviours they evoke (overeating, substance abuse, risky decision-making).
People (and healthcare providers also) display less neural resonance with the pain of an outgroup
member, which can lead them to treat some patients differently than others.
Limitation of social neuroscience research in the health domain: reliance on anatomical overlap in
activation patterns as evidence for shared neural networks.
Law
Lie detection isn’t accurate, because a person can be conveying false information that they believe to
be true, thereby misrepresenting the truth.
The usefulness of social neuroscience for law lies with illuminating the complex psychological
constructs central to legal decision-making.
Researchers suggest that:
- Utilitarian decisions – deciding to sacrifice one life in order to save others – engages brain
systems associated with logical decision-making;
- Deontological decisions – harming is wrong, so not even one life should be sacrificed, even to
save more lives – engaged brain regions associated with emotional processing.
Is people’s behaviour driven by emotion or do people intentionally plan and execute behaviour?
Conclusions
Advantages of social neuroscience: it constitutes implicit methods that enable to investigate
unconscious processes as well as cognitions that participants may be unwilling or unable to explicitly
admit. Also, it represents powerful tools to test overlaps and differences in brain activations and their
putative underlying cognitive mechanisms
