自我-他人社会比较的距离效应及其神经机制

Social comparison plays an important role in our daily life, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to explore the cognitive process and neural mechanism of social comparison itself. However, previous studies are limited to the other-other social comparisons without self-involvement, and there is rarely study to explore the self-other social comparison. Our group had explored the neural mechanisms of other-other comparisons of facial beauty, moral beauty and intelligence, and found that the three types of social comparison all involved a frontoparietal network which was activated in the objective nonsocial comparisons. Based on our previous research, this study try to adopt a distance effect paradigm and integrate the behavioral, ERP and fMRI techniques, to systematically explore the neural mechanism of the process of self-other social comparison (comparison of facial beauty). The contents include: (1) whether self-other social comparison also obey a typical behavioral distance effect; (2) the temporal and spatial neural mechanisms of distance effect of self-other social comparison; (3) the influence factors of the neural mechanism of self-other social comparison and their influencing mechanism. The successful implementation of this project may provide the theoretical basis and practical guidance on how to improve the psychological health problems caused by social comparison.

社会比较在日常生活中扮演重要角色，探讨社会比较本身的认知过程和神经机制具有重要的理论和现实意义。但以往的研究局限于不涉及自我的他人-他人的社会比较，缺乏对自我-他人社会比较的探讨。本课题组前期对他人-他人外表美、心灵美以及智力比较进行了研究，结果发现这三种他人-他人社会比较的神经机制均涉及与客观非社会比较相似的大脑额顶网络。本项目拟在此基础上，采用距离效应的范式，综合运用行为、ERP和fMRI技术，系统探讨自我-他人社会比较（面孔美比较）过程的认知神经机制。研究内容包括：（1）自我-他人的社会比较在行为上是否也遵循经典的距离效应；（2）自我-他人社会比较的距离效应的大脑时间进程特点和空间激活模式；（3）自我-他人社会比较神经机制的影响因素以及如何影响。本项目的顺利实施可能为如何改善由社会比较引发的心理健康问题提供理论依据和实践指导。

社会比较在人们日常生活中扮演重要角色，探讨社会比较的认知过程和神经机制具有重要的理论和现实意义。以往对社会比较的研究局限于社会地位、收入等可量化方面，本课题组前期已涉及初级的外表美、智力等社会比较，而对于更高级和更抽象的道德比较，尚没有相关研究。通过对道德比较的研究，我们发现道德比较和非社会大小比较既共享相似的额顶网络，也有独特的神经基础。此外，道德比较不是单一的认知过程，还可以进一步分为道德判断比较和道德审美比较，两者的神经机制涉及的脑区不相同。最后，本项目还初步探讨了社会比较与负面情绪的关系，发现社会比较倾向可以预测社交焦虑和负面评价恐惧等。本项目的这些发现有助于增加对社会比较的认识，进而可能有助于改善由社会比较引发的个体心理健康问题以及社会治理问题。