I just got back from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s Annual Conference, this year in Albuquerque, NM.  Some of the highlights in my book included talks on SCN and neuro-endocrine interactions:

Symposium on Social Cognitive Neuroscience Perspectives on Intragroup and Intergroup Relations.  Of particular interest here, Jay Van Bavel discussed his work with Dominic Packer and Will Cunningham, using a minimal group paradigm (with mixed race teams).  As in previous work, participants showed ingroup bias (they favored people on their own team over people on the other team).  Using fMRI, the group found that viewing photos of ingroup members (compared to viewing photos of outgroup members) was associated with increased activity in regions of the brain that are associated with affective processing (amygdala, striatum).  This is especially interesting considering the fact that the amygdala is usually thought of as a “fear” region.  This work adds to the mounting evidence that the amygdala may be more broadly associated with motivationally relevant affective processes.  The work is also interesting because it adds to the literature suggesting that there is something special about the idea of an ingroup, regardless of familiarity/ race.

Jenn Pfeifer also presented results (from an impressive longitudinal fMRI study of children and adolescents) demonstrating increased amygdala activity in imitating facial expressions of ingroup compared to outgroup members (in this case, ingroup = gender).  Furthermore, across several areas of the brain that are typically associated with shared representations of the self and others, “children who were more biased in favor of their own gender showed greater activity in response to gender ingroup members, while in other preliminary data, girls with higher levels of estradiol [female sex hormone] showed greater activity in response to boys.”  In fact, in young girls who did not consciously show interest in boys, levels of sex hormones were associated with the ways that they responded to photos of the opposite sex in the scanner.  Hormones are powerful things…

Continuing on the topic of hormones, at a symposium on Social Endocrinology: How Hormones Can Contribute to Research in Social and Personality Psychology, Pranjal Mehta presented data suggesting the importance of considering the role of multiple hormone systems in concert.  Pranjal’s data demonstrated an interaction between cortisol and testosterone levels in predicting a response to defeat in a competition.  From Pranjal’s absract: “After facing social defeat, high testosterone- low cortisol individuals were more likely to choose to compete again than high testosterone, high cortisol individuals.  Hormones were unrelated to the decision to compete again after victory.  These data support the hypothesis that when social status is threatened, testosterone increases the motivation to gain status, whereas cortiso influences behavioral approach and avoidance.”   Given how much we have come to rely on hormonal measures to link psychology and health outcomes, I was especially interested to see how important the interaction of multiple hormones was in predicting the “dominance behavior” outcomes discussed.  This is potentially of interest to people interested in health as well, because dominance hierarchies seem to play such a key role in health outcomes.

Other talks at this symposium addressed the role of testosterone in decision making (e.g. testosterone made people more likely to maximize their gains in an ultimatum game, but placebo effects/ thinking you had received testosterone made people more likely to behave in aggressive ways).   I am not sure what to make of the data since the manipulations typically involved administering testosterone exogenously, and who knows whether giving someone testosterone is the same thing as having the body produce it in response to outside influences.  I actually thought one of the most interesting points here related to the placebo effects– despite the fact that actually receiving testosterone made people behave in one way, the belief that one had received testosterone made them behave in the opposite (aggressive) way that is typically depicted in the media.  Does testosterone as an excuse make men think that they can behave in aggressive ways?

More updates on SPSP soon.