Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect (51 page)

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Authors: Matthew D. Lieberman

Tags: #Psychology, #Social Psychology, #Science, #Life Sciences, #Neuroscience, #Neuropsychology

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Chapter 9: Panoptic Self-Control

203

Babies have been shown to imitate their parents
Meltzoff, A. N., & Moore, M. K. (1977). Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates.
Science, 198
(4312), 75–78.

203

babies typically pass the mirror self-recognition test
Amsterdam, B. (1972). Mirror self-image reactions before age two.
Developmental Psychobiology, 5
(4), 297–305.

205

Mischel tested preschoolers between the ages of three and five
Mischel, W., & Ebbesen, E. B. (1970). Attention in delay of gratification.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16
(2), 329; Mischel, W., & Baker, N. (1975). Cognitive appraisals and transformations in delay behavior.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31
(2), 254.

205

Replacing the actual marshmallows with pictures
Mischel, W., & Moore, B. (1973). Effects of attention to symbolically presented rewards on self-control.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28
(2), 172.

205

Mentally focusing on aspects of the marshmallows
Mischel, W., & Baker, N. (1975). Cognitive appraisals and transformations in delay behavior.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31
(2), 254.

205

they were able to wait three times as long
Moore, B., Mischel, W., & Zeiss, A. (1976). Comparative effects of the reward stimulus and its cognitive representation in voluntary delay.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34
(3), 419.

206

Mischel retested his preschoolers
Shoda, Y., Mischel, W., & Peake, P. K. (1990). Predicting adolescent cognitive and self-regulatory competencies from preschool delay of gratification: Identifying diagnostic conditions.
Developmental Psychology, 26
(6), 978.

206

preschoolers who could wait
Lehrer, J. (2009). DON’T! The secret of self-control.
New Yorker
, May 18, pp. 26–32.

206

GPA was better predicted
Duckworth, A. L., & Seligman, M. E. (2005). Self-discipline outdoes IQ in predicting academic performance of adolescents.
Psychological Science, 16
(12), 939–944.

206

People with higher levels of self-control
Moffitt, T. E., Arseneault, L., Belsky, D., Dickson, N., Hancox, R. J., Harrington, H., … , & Caspi, A. (2011). A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108
(7), 2693–2698; Meier, S., & Sprenger, C. D. (2012). Time discounting predicts creditworthiness.
Psychological Science, 23
(1), 56–58; Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., Bernzweig, J., Karbon, M., Poulin, R., & Hanish, L. (1993). The relations of emotionality and regulation to preschoolers’ social skills and sociometric status.
Child Development, 64
(5), 1418–1438; Shoda, Y., Mischel, W., & Peake, P. K. (1990). Predicting adolescent cognitive and self-regulatory competencies from preschool delay of gratification: Identifying diagnostic conditions.
Developmental Psychology, 26
(6), 978; Tangney, J. P., Baumeister, R. F., & Boone, A. L. (2008). High self-control predicts good adjustment, less pathology, better grades, and interpersonal success.
Journal of Personality, 72
(2), 271–324; Côté, S., Gyurak, A., & Levenson, R. W. (2010). The ability to regulate emotion is associated with greater well-being, income, and socioeconomic status.
Emotion, 10
(6), 923.

207

Our impulses and emotional reactions
Damasio, A. R. (1994).
Descartes’ Error
. New York: Putnam.

208

self-control is like a muscle
Vohs, K. D., & Heatherton, T. F. (2000). Self-regulatory failure: A resource-depletion approach.
Psychological Science, 11
(3), 249–254; Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D. M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource?
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74
(5), 1252.

208

It is the only region in the prefrontal cortex
Shaw, P., Lalonde, F., Lepage, C., Rabin, C., Eckstrand, K., Sharp, W., … , & Rapoport, J. (2009). Development of cortical asymmetry in typically developing children and its disruption in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
Archives of General Psychiatry, 66
(8), 888; Holloway, R. L., & De La Costelareymondie, M. C. (1982). Brain endocast asymmetry in pongids and hominids: Some preliminary findings on the paleontology of cerebral dominance.
American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 58
(1), 101–110; Zilles, K. (2005). Evolution of the human brain and comparative cyto-and receptor architecture. In S. Dehaene, J. R. Duhamel, M. D. Hauser, & G. Rizzolatti (Eds.).
From Monkey Brain to Human Brain.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Bradford Books, pp. 41–56.

208

it is appropriate to characterize the rVLPFC
Cohen, J. R., Berkman, E. T., & Lieberman, M. D. (2013). Intentional and incidental self-control in ventrolateral PFC. In D. T. Stuss & R. T. Knight (Eds.).
Principles of Frontal Lobe Function
, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 417–440; Cohen, J. R., & Lieberman, M. D. (2010). The common neural basis of exerting self-control in multiple domains. In Y. Trope, R. Hassin, & K. N. Ochsner (Eds.).
Self-control.
New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 141–160.

209

Countless studies have observed increased rVLPFC
Aron, A. R., Robbins, T. W., & Poldrack, R. A. (2004). Inhibition and the right inferior frontal cortex.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8
(4), 170–177.

209

associated with deficits on the no-go task
Aron, A. R., Fletcher, P. C., Bullmore, T., Sahakian, B. J., & Robbins, T. W. (2003). Stop-signal inhibition disrupted by damage to right inferior frontal gyrus in humans.
Nature Neuroscience, 6
(2), 115–116.

209

Decades after Mischel performed the initial marshmallow tests
Casey, B. J., Somerville, L. H., Gotlib, I. H., Ayduk, O., Franklin, N. T., Askren, M. K., … , & Shoda, Y. (2011). Behavioral and neural correlates of delay of gratification 40 years later.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108
(36), 14998–15003.

210

Elliot Berkman and I tested the idea that rVLPFC
Berkman, E. T., Falk, E. B., & Lieberman, M. D. (2011). In the trenches of real-world self-control: Neural correlates of breaking the link between craving and smoking.
Psychological Science, 22
, 498–506.

211

fewer than half of the participants answer the question correctly
Evans, J. S. B., Barston, J. L., & Pollard, P. (1983). On the conflict between logic and belief in syllogistic reasoning.
Memory & Cognition, 11
(3), 295–306.

211

Although we may not have as much control
Relative to other kinds of self-control discussed, cognitive self-control is more often lateralized to the left hemisphere rather than to the right. It appears that when cognitive self-control is more wholistic (that is, when one is trying to inhibit an entire thought or belief), it tends to switch back to being right lateralized like the other kinds of self-control described.

211

To study the neural bases of cognitive self-control
Goel, V., & Dolan, R. J. (2003). Explaining modulation of reasoning by belief.
Cognition, 87
(1), 11–22.

211

Another study of the belief bias
Tsujii, T., & Watanabe, S. (2010). Neural correlates of belief-bias reasoning under time pressure: A near-infrared spectroscopy study.
NeuroImage, 50
(3), 1320–1326.

212

a third study used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
Tsujii, T., Masuda, S., Akiyama, T., & Watanabe, S. (2010). The role of inferior frontal cortex in belief-bias reasoning: An rTMS study.
Neuropsychologia, 48
(7), 2005; Tsujii, T., Sakatani, K., Masuda, S., Akiyama, T., & Watanabe, S. (2011). Evaluating the roles of the inferior frontal gyrus and superior parietal lobule in deductive reasoning: An rTMS study.
NeuroImage, 58
(2), 640–646.

212

A similar finding has been demonstrated with framing effects
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice.
Science, 211
(4481), 453–458.

212

An fMRI study examined which brain regions
De Martino, B., Kumaran, D., Seymour, B., & Dolan, R. J. (2006). Frames, biases, and rational decision-making in the human brain.
Science, 313
(5787), 684–687.

213

Typical fMRI studies of mentalizing
Samson, D., Apperly, I. A., Kathirgamanathan, U., & Humphreys, G. W. (2005). Seeing it my way: A case of a selective deficit in inhibiting self-perspective.
Brain, 128
(5), 1102–1111; van der Meer, L., Groenewold, N. A., Nolen, W. A., Pijnenborg, M., & Aleman, A. (2011). Inhibit yourself and understand the other: Neural basis of distinct processes underlying Theory of Mind.
NeuroImage, 56
(4), 2364–2374.

214

This is called the
false consensus effect
because we tend
Ross, L., Greene, D., & House, P. (1977). The “false consensus effect”: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13
(3), 279–301.

216

suppression isn’t used to suppress one’s experience of an emotion
Gross, J. J. (2002). Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences.
Psychophysiology, 39
(3), 281–291.

217

“Pain is inevitable
Murakami, H. (2008).
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir
. New York: Knopf, p. vii.

217

our reality derives from the stories we tell ourselves
Bower, J. E., Low, C. A., Moskowitz, J. T., Sepah, S., & Epel, E. (2007). Benefit finding and physical health: Positive psychological changes and enhanced allostasis.
Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2
(1), 223–244.

217

These threat reactions are orchestrated
Pape, H. C. (2010). Petrified or aroused with fear: The central amygdala takes the lead.
Neuron, 67
(4), 527–529.

218

Suppression and reappraisal differ
Butler, E. A., Egloff, B., Wilhelm, F. H., Smith, N. C., Erickson, E. A., & Gross, J. J. (2003). The social consequences of expressive suppression.
Emotion, 3
(1), 48; Richards, J. M., & Gross, J. J. (2000). Emotion regulation and memory: The cognitive costs of keeping one’s cool.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79
(3), 410; Gross, J. J. (2002). Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences.
Psychophysiology, 39
(3), 281–291.

218

Despite these differences between suppression and reappraisal
Ochsner, K. N., & Gross, J. J. (2005). The cognitive control of emotion.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9
(5), 242–249.

218

For people who reappraise
Goldin, P. R., McRae, K., Ramel, W., & Gross, J. J. (2008). The neural bases of emotion regulation: Reappraisal and suppression of negative emotion.
Biological Psychiatry, 63
(6), 577.

219

VLPFC activity is linked to our success
Lee, T.-W., Dolan, R. J., & Critchley, H. D. (2008). Controlling emotional expression: Behavioral and neural correlates of nonimitative emotional responses.
Cerebral Cortex, 18
(1), 104–113.

219

In reappraisal, VLPFC activity has been linked
Ochsner, K. N., Bunge, S. A., Gross, J. J., & Gabrieli, J. D. (2002). Rethinking feelings: An fMRI study of the cognitive regulation of emotion.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14
(8), 1215–1229; Phan, K. L., Fitzgerald, D. A., Nathan, P. J., Moore, G. J., Uhde, T. W., & Tancer, M. E. (2005). Neural substrates for voluntary suppression of negative affect: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study.
Biological Psychiatry, 57
, 210–219
;
Kalisch, R. (2009). The functional neuroanatomy of reappraisal: Time matters.
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 33
(8), 1215–1226; Kalisch, R., Wiech, K., Critchley, H. D., Seymour, B., O’Doherty, J. P., Oakley, D. A., … , & Dolan, R. J. (2005). Anxiety reduction through detachment: Subjective, physiological, and neural effects.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17
(6), 874–883.

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