I am happy for us: Neural processing of vicarious joy when winning for parents versus strangers
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I am happy for us: Neural processing of vicarious joy when winning for parents versus strangers Philip Brandner 1,2
&
Berna Güroğlu 2 & Eveline A. Crone 1,2
Accepted: 21 September 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This study investigated the neural processes underlying vicarious joy and their dependence on emotional closeness. Prior studies revealed that the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) is a target brain region for processing rewards for self, but the neural mechanisms of processing rewards for others are not yet well understood. A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm was employed in young adults (N = 30), in combination with a self-report questionnaire on the perceived emotional closeness to the target. We examined the neural correlates of vicarious rewards when winning money for oneself or one of three other targets. To examine family relationships, two of the targets were the mother and father of the participants, and the third target was an unknown stranger. We found an increase in activation in the NAcc when playing for family members compared with a stranger. We further observed a difference in neural activation when winning for the father compared with the mother in an extended network involving the medial prefrontal cortex and precuneus, brain regions involved in mentalizing. These findings were not related to reports of emotional closeness. This new paradigm has considerable value for future research into the fundamental neural processes underlying empathy and vicarious joy. Keywords Vicarious joy . Empathy . Nucleus accumbens . Family . Emotional closeness
Vicarious joy and reward Vicarious joy is the ability to feel happy about other people’s positive experiences (Batson et al., 1991). In that sense, it differs from compassion in its valence of the shared emotion, focusing on the positive rather than the negative experience of another person (Royzman & Rozin, 2006). Vicarious joy can further be conceptually defined by its focus on the other person’s positive experience rather than one’s own feeling of positivity, which is sometimes defined as warm glow (Andreoni, 1990; Batson et al., 1991). In that sense, vicarious joy requires the ability to cognitively grasp someone else’s
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-020-00839-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Philip Brandner [email protected] 1
Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
2
Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
emotional state, also referred to as mentalizing. Without this key foundational ability, one would just feel the positive emotional contagion of someone else’s happiness, without necessarily understanding why (Schnell, Bluschke, Konradt, & Walter, 2011). Empathy, especially with negative valence, has been the focus of a substantial amount of research in the past decade. For most of these studies, participants ar
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