Nice or nerdy? The neural representation of social and competence traits

ABSTRACT

This study investigates to what extent social and competence traits are represented in a similar or different neural trait code. To localize these trait codes, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging repetition suppression, which is a rapid reduction of neuronal responses upon repeated presentation of the same implied trait. Participants had to infer an agent’s trait from brief trait-implying behavioral descriptions. In each trial, the critical target sentence was preceded by a prime sentence that implied the same trait or a different competence-related trait which was also opposite in valence. The results revealed robust repetition suppression from prime to target in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) given a similar (social) as well as a dissimilar (competence) prime. The suppression given a similar prime confirms earlier research demonstrating that a trait code is represented in the ventral mPFC. The suppression given a dissimilar prime is interpreted as indicating that participants categorize a combination of competence and social information into novel subcategories, reflecting nice (but incompetent) or nerdy (but socially awkward) traits. A multi-voxel pattern analysis broadly confirmed these results, and pinpointed the inferior parietal cortex, cerebellum, temporo-parietal junction and mPFC as areas that differentiate between social and competence traits.

KEYWORDS:

• Competence traits
• social traits
• mPFC
• repetition suppression
• repetition enhancement

Acknowledgments

fMRI scanning was conducted at the Ghent Institute for Functional and Metabolic Imaging.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by SRP15 grant of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel to Frank Van Overwalle.