Publications by authors named "Matthew D Lieberman"

Partisan animosity has been growing in the United States and around the world over the past few decades, fueling efforts by researchers and practitioners to help heal the divide. Many studies have been conducted to test interventions that aim to promote open-mindedness; however, these studies have been conducted in disparate literatures that do not always use the same terminology. In this review, we integrate research on open-mindedness in order to facilitate cross-talk and collaboration between disciplines.

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Article Synopsis
  • - A significant number of individuals exposed to combat-related trauma develop PTSD, which negatively affects their mental and physical health, highlighting the need for new treatment methods.
  • - This pilot study tested a new computer-based intervention using "affect labeling" on veterans with PTSD, revealing that those who underwent the intervention showed reduced PTSD symptoms and decreased brain reactivity to trauma cues.
  • - Results indicate that affect labeling might be an effective and low-cost option for treating PTSD, suggesting avenues for future research and development in this area.
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As social creatures, our relationships with other people have tremendous downstream impacts on health and well-being. However, we still know surprisingly little about how our social interactions regulate how we think and feel through life's challenges. Getting help from other people to change how one thinks about emotional events-known as "social reappraisal"-can be more effective in downregulating negative affect than reappraising on one's own, but it is unknown whether this regulatory boost from social support persists when people face the same events alone in the future.

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Understanding the socio-political attitudes of other people is a crucial skill, yet the neural mechanisms supporting this capacity remain understudied. This study used multivariate pattern analysis to examine patterns of activity in the default mode network (DMN) while participants assessed their own attitudes and the attitudes of other people. Classification analyses indicated that common patterns in DMN regions encode both own and others' support across a variety of contemporary socio-political issues.

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Background: Although potential links between oxytocin (OT), vasopressin (AVP), and social cognition are well-grounded theoretically, most studies have included all male samples, and few have demonstrated consistent effects of either neuropeptide on mentalizing (i.e. understanding the mental states of others).

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The rise of ideological polarization in the U.S. over the past few decades has come with an increase in hostility on both sides of the political aisle.

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Although subjective construal (i.e., our personal understanding of situations and the people and objects within them) has been an enduring topic in social psychology, its underlying mechanisms have never been fully explored.

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Adolescence is characterized as a period when relationships and experiences shift toward peers. The social reorientation model of adolescence posits this shift is driven by neurobiological changes that increase the salience of social information related to peer integration and acceptance. Although influential, this model has rarely been subjected to tests that could falsify it, or studied in longitudinal samples assessing within-person development.

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Consoling touch is a powerful form of social support that has been repeatedly demonstrated to reduce the experience of physical pain. However, it remains unknown whether touch reduces emotional pain in the same way that it reduces physical pain. The present research sought to understand how handholding with a romantic partner shapes experiences of emotional pain and comfort during emotional recollection, as well as how it shapes lasting emotional pain associated with emotional experiences.

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Social neuroscience research has demonstrated that those who are like-minded are also 'like-brained.' Studies have shown that people who share similar viewpoints have greater neural synchrony with one another, and less synchrony with people who 'see things differently.' Although these effects have been demonstrated at the 'group level,' little work has been done to predict the viewpoints of specific 'individuals' using neural synchrony measures.

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The family of neuroimaging analytical techniques known as multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) has dramatically increased in popularity over the past decade, particularly in social and affective neuroscience research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). MVPA examines patterns of neural responses, rather than analyzing single voxel- or region-based values, as is customary in conventional univariate analyses. Here, we provide a practical introduction to MVPA and its most popular variants (namely, representational similarity analysis (RSA) and decoding analyses, such as classification using machine learning) for social and affective neuroscientists of all levels, particularly those new to such methods.

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Approximately half of individuals with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) treated with psychological intervention do not achieve clinically significant improvement or retain long-term gains. Neurobiological models of SAD propose that disruptions in functioning of amygdala-prefrontal circuitry is implicated in short-term treatment response. However, whether treatment-related changes in functional connectivity predict long-term well-being after psychotherapy is unknown.

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CD38 genetic variation has been associated with autism spectrum disorders and social anxiety disorder, which may result from CD38's regulation of oxytocin secretion. Converging evidence has found that the rs3796863 A-allele contributes to increased social sensitivity compared to the CC genotype. The current study examined the moderating role of CD38 genetic variants (rs3796863 and rs6449182) that have been associated with enhanced (or reduced) social sensitivity on neural activation related to neuroticism, which is commonly elevated in individuals with social anxiety and depression.

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Objectives: Beliefs about aging can contribute to health and well-being in older adults. Feeling generative, or that one is caring for and contributing to the well-being of others, can also impact health and well-being. In this study, we hypothesized that those with more positive expectations regarding aging (ERA) in the mental health domain would report greater levels of perceived social support (PSS) and lower levels of loneliness in response to a generativity intervention (vs control condition).

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Generativity, or concern for and contribution to the well-being of younger generations, plays an important role in successful aging. The purpose of this study was to develop a novel, writing-based intervention to increase feelings of generativity and test the effect of this intervention on well-being and inflammation in a sample of older women. Participants in this study (n = 73; mean age = 70.

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Traditional cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety disorders has been designed to target reductions in negative affect (NA) associated with defense-related processes. However, a subset of anxiety disorders, including social anxiety disorder (SAD), are also characterized by low positive affect (PA) resulting from separate deficits in appetitive-related processes. In contrast to CBT, "third-wave" approaches, such as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), align more consistently with motivational processes and, as a result, PA.

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Background: Social cognitive impairments, specifically in mentalizing and emotion recognition, are common and debilitating symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Despite this, little is known about the neurobiology of these impairments, as there are currently no published neuroimaging investigations of social inference in PTSD.

Methods: Trauma-exposed veterans with and without PTSD (n = 20 each) performed the Why/How social inference task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

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Research examining oxytocin and vasopressin in humans has the potential to elucidate neurobiological mechanisms underlying human sociality that have been previously unknown or not well characterized. A primary goal of this work is to increase our knowledge about neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders characterized by impairments in social cognition. However, years of research highlighting wide-ranging effects of, in particular, intranasal oxytocin administration have been tempered as the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and other disciplines have been addressing concerns over the reproducibility and validity of research findings.

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Self-referential processing is critical to understanding social anxiety disorder (SAD). This study examined neural differences in self-referential processing in healthy controls (HC) and participants with SAD at pre- and post-treatment. Participants (n = 64) underwent fMRI scanning while viewing a video of themselves ("Self") or another person ("Other").

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