Ģ��ֱ��

From an evolutionary perspective, social acceptance and social rejection serve as important social signals in the formation of interpersonal relationships. The motivation to belong drives humans to approach positive social outcomes (such as acceptance and intimacy) while driving people to avoid negative social outcomes (such as rejection and loneliness). However, the outcome of human interaction can be positive or negative, and everyone may experience social acceptance and rejection to some extent in their lives.

As an important signal in establishing interpersonal relationship, social acceptance plays an important role in guiding and regulating individuals in the process of social interaction. However, our lives contain many scenarios of social rejection, such as being rejected for the desired job or being rejected by one’s romantic partner, all of which can be frustrating and painful. How the brain responds to social acceptance and rejection may have profound implications for how people form future relationships. It is therefore important to understand how people make decisions in pursuing relationships and how they process positive and negative social feedback. MA Xukai Zhang’s dissertation advances these aims by exploring the behavior and brain response during pursuit of social relationships.

Xukai Zhang created a novel online speed dating task where participants met and chose potential romantic partners and saw each partner’s feedback. This paradigm allowed researcher to separate several different stages in pursuing a social relationship (such as decision-making stage, anticipatory stage, and feedback processing stage) and capture related brain activities.

“The results indicated that people have a strong motivation to know their important others' social evaluation, and that acceptance and rejection from important others were rewarding and painful events, respectively”, Xukai Zhang reports.

The dissertation also explores how waiting time affects the social feedback during pursuing social relationships, as social feedback is not always immediate in social context.

“The reduced Reward positivity (RewP) was observed for the feedback from unimportant others in the long wait condition. On the contrary, the increased RewP was observed for the feedback from important others in the long wait condition. These results indicated the effect of waiting time on reward value related to feedback from peers varies, either decreasing or increasing, depending on individual preference, such as important or unimportant others providing the feedback”, Xukai Zhang reports.

“In our everyday experience, breakups, broken relationships, and the loss of those closest to us are often the most emotionally devastating events. These social pain events are significantly associated with the onset and persistence of a variety of psychological disorders, including personality disorder, depression and anxiety disorder, and even suicide and homicide”, Xukai Zhang says.

Therefore, it is important to find ways to alleviate or reduce the social pain induced by social rejection. Xukai Zhang examined the effect of oxytocin on social rejection because the previous studies showed oxytocin to be a promising candidate for regulating social behavior and reducing negative emotions. The oxytocin group showed the significantly lower theta power compared to the placebo group when they received social rejection. This study revealed the pain-reducing effect of oxytocin on social rejection.

The results of the dissertation expand our understanding of the pursuit of social relationships. The results revealed the different stages of social relationship pursuit, the corresponding anticipatory and feedback-related ERP components, and confirmed important neural indicators of social pain. It also highlights the important influence of individual preference and waiting time on social feedback processing. In addition, the pain-reducing effects of oxytocin also provide a new thought for the treatment of psychopathological disorders related to social rejection in the future.

MA Xukai Zhang defends his doctoral dissertation in subject "Pursuit of Interpersonal Relationships: Behavioral and Brain response correlates of social acceptance and rejections". Opponent Professor Jutta Peterburs (Medical School Hamburg) and Custos Professor Paavo Leppänen (Ģ��ֱ��). The public defense is held in English. The dissertation can be read at .

The audience can follow the dissertation in the lecture hall (Seminarium, S212) or online. Link to the online event:

More information

Xukai Zhang
xukai.x.zhang@student.jyu.fi