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. 2016 Feb 4:6:20274.
doi: 10.1038/srep20274.

Trait self-esteem and neural activities related to self-evaluation and social feedback

Juan Yang  1 , Xiaofan Xu  1 , Yu Chen  1 , Zhenhao Shi  2 , Shihui Han  3
Affiliations

Trait self-esteem and neural activities related to self-evaluation and social feedback

Juan Yang et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Self-esteem has been associated with neural responses to self-reflection and attitude toward social feedback but in different brain regions. The distinct associations might arise from different tasks or task-related attitudes in the previous studies. The current study aimed to clarify these by investigating the association between self-esteem and neural responses to evaluation of one's own personality traits and of others' opinion about one's own personality traits. We scanned 25 college students using functional MRI during evaluation of oneself or evaluation of social feedback. Trait self-esteem was measured using the Rosenberg self-esteem scale after scanning. Whole-brain regression analyses revealed that trait self-esteem was associated with the bilateral orbitofrontal activity during evaluation of one's own positive traits but with activities in the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate, and occipital cortices during evaluation of positive social feedback. Our findings suggest that trait self-esteem modulates the degree of both affective processes in the orbitofrontal cortex during self-reflection and cognitive processes in the medial prefrontal cortex during evaluation of social feedback.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Experimental procedure (top) and experimental conditions (bottom) used in the fMRI study.
The conditions varied according to the Target of the evaluation (self versus Celebrity) and to the Task of the evaluation (self-evaluation versus social feedback).
Figure 2
Figure 2. Participants’ reaction times
(A), proportion of responses during the self-evaluation task (B) and proportion of responses during the social feedback task (C).
Figure 3
Figure 3. Prediction of self-esteem by attitude-related neural activity showed significant activations in the bilateral OFC in responses to evaluation of positive traits of the self compared to the celebrity (Z = 0).
Figure 4
Figure 4. Prediction of self-esteem by attitude-related neural activity showed significant activations in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), PCC and occipital cortex in responses to evaluation of positive social feedback to the self compared to the celebrity (X = 7).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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