Semantic and affective priming are classic effects observed in cognitive and social psychology, respectively. The authors discovered that affect regulates such priming effects. In Experiment 1, positive and negative moods were induced before one of three priming tasks; evaluation, categorization, or lexical decision. As predicted, positive affect led to both affective priming (evaluation task) ...

This paper discusses our view on sociable media and applications in which social connectedness is not limited to (re)connecting with (distant) lovers, friends and family and maintaining long-term relationships, but also encompasses casual connections to nearby `strangers'. Based on experiences at the Mobile Life Center, we discuss various aspects that need to be taken into account in design and...

Social interaction inherently involves the subjective evaluation of cues salient to social inclusion and exclusion. Testifying to the importance of such social cues, parts of the neural system dedicated to the detection of physical pain, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula (AI), have been shown to be equally sensitive to the detection of social pain experienced after...

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a serious psychiatric disorder characterized by severe restriction of energy intake and dangerously low body weight. Other domains of functioning are affected, including social functioning. Although difficulties within this domain have started to be acknowledged by the literature, some important gaps remain to be filled. Do social difficulties predate the onset of the i...

Despite robust associations between the ventral anterior cingulate cortex (vACC) and social evaluation, the role of vACC in social evaluation remains poorly understood. Two hypotheses have emerged from existing research: detection of positive valence and detection of opportunities for subjective reward. It has been difficult to understand whether one or both hypotheses are supported because pre...

Self-esteem is a facet of personality that influences perception of social standing and modulates the salience of social acceptance and rejection. As such, self-esteem may bias neural responses to positive and negative social feedback across individuals. During functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning, participants (n = 42) engaged in a social evaluation task whereby they ostensibly recei...

The present study examines the relationship between questionnaire measures of social phobia and gelotophobia. A sample of 211 Colombian adults filled in Spanish versions of the Social Anxiety and Distress scale (SAD; Watson & Friend, 1969), the Fear of Negative Evaluation scale (FNE; Watson & Friend, 1969) and the GELOPH<15> (Ruch & Proyer, 2008). Results confirmed that both Social Anxiety and ...

Being accepted or rejected by peers is highly salient for developing social relations in childhood. We investigated the behavioral and neural correlates of social feedback and subsequent aggression in 7-10-year-old children, using the Social Network Aggression Task (SNAT). Participants viewed pictures of peers that gave positive, neutral or negative feedback to the participant's profile. Next, ...