Medial prefrontal activity during self-other judgments is modulated by relationship need fulfillment

ABSTRACT

The medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) plays an important role in representing semantic self-knowledge. Studies comparing semantic self-judgments with judgments of close others suggest that interpersonal closeness may influence the degree to which the MPFC differentiates self and other. We used optical neuroimaging to examine if support for competence, relatedness, and autonomy from relationship partners moderates MPFC activity during a personality judgment task. Participants (N = 109) were asked to judge the descriptive accuracy of trait adjectives for both themselves and a friend. Participants who reported lower need fulfillment with their friend showed elevated activity only in the self-judgment condition; in contrast, participants who reported higher need fulfillment with their friend showed similarly high levels of MPFC activity across the conditions. These results are consistent with the idea that the MPFC differentially represents others on the basis of the need fulfillment experienced within the relationship.

KEYWORDS:

• Basic psychological needs
• medial prefrontal cortex
• relationships
• self-referential processes
• self-determination theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2022.2074135

Notes

¹ Different findings from this sample are reported in Di Domenico et al. (2019). This other report did not include measures of relationship need fulfillment, the focus of the present study.

² Two participants indicated that they have known their friend “all their life.” These responses were winsorized to 15 years, the maximum value indicated by participants who provided numerical responses to this survey question.

³ We thank a reviewer for suggesting this analysis.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.