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The Neural Roots of Future Liking and Affective Reciprocity

Tue, August 15, 2:30 to 4:10pm, Palais des congrès de Montréal, Floor: Level 5, 516D

Abstract

In this article, we look within the brain in order to identify the neural underpinnings of liking and its reciprocation in human groups. To anticipate the main findings of this research, we show that (1) an individual’s (ego’s) future liking at time 2 (T2) of another group member (alter) can be intrapersonally predicted from ego’s neural activity (while looking at alter) measured months earlier at time 1 (T1), even controlling for known social-structural predictors of affiliation; (2) ego’s future liking of an alter can be interpersonally predicted by alter’s valuation activity (while looking at ego) at T1; (3) these mechanisms not only shape individual group members’ idiosyncratic liking preferences at T2, but also help explain how ego’s and alter’s liking of each other—which are initially unrelated at T1—become mutually reciprocated by T2, even controlling for known social structural determinants of mutuality in pairs. We propose several alternative interpretations for these results, identify potential fundamental mechanisms for inducing liking and its mutual reciprocation, and thereby provide novel insight into the neural underpinnings of interpersonal attraction, dyadic reciprocity, and the social ties/bonds/relations that undergird human groups’ affiliative network structure. More broadly, this study advances a paradigm for researching the links between the inter- and intra-personal mechanisms undergirding the formation of social relations and their consequent social network structure.

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