Can the Early Visual Processing of Others' Actions Be Related to Social Power and Dominance?

Overview

Journal Psychol Res

Specialty Psychology

Date 2021 Nov 21

PMID 34802076

Authors

Jeremy Decroix

Laurent Ott

Nicolas Morgado

Solene Kalenine

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Although goals often drive action understanding, this ability is also prone to important variability among individuals, which may have its origin in individual social characteristics. The present study aimed at evaluating the relationship between the tendency to prioritize goal information over grip information during early visual processing of action and several social dimensions. Visual processing of grip and goal information during action recognition was evaluated in 64 participants using the priming protocol developed by Decroix and Kalénine (Exp Brain Res 236(8):2411-2426, 2018). Object-directed action photographs were primed by photographs sharing the same goal and/or the same grip. The effects of goal and grip priming on action recognition were evaluated for different prime durations. The same participants further fulfilled questionnaires characterizing the way individuals deal with their social environment, namely their sense of social power, dominance, perspective taking, and construal level. At the group level, results confirmed greater goal than grip priming effects on action recognition for the shortest prime duration. Regression analyses between the pattern of response times in the action priming protocol and scores at the questionnaires further showed that the advantage of goal over grip priming was associated with higher sense of social power, and possibly to lower dominance. Overall, data confirm that observers tend to prioritize goal-related information when processing visual actions but further indicate that this tendency is sensitive to individual social characteristics. Results suggest that goal information may not always drive action understanding and point out the connection between low-level processing of observed actions and more general individual characteristics.

References

Aarts H, Gollwitzer P, Hassin R . Goal contagion: perceiving is for pursuing. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2004; 87(1):23-37. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.87.1.23. View

Anderson C, John O, Keltner D . The personal sense of power. J Pers. 2011; 80(2):313-44. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2011.00734.x. View

Baldwin D, BAIRD J, Saylor M, Clark M . Infants parse dynamic action. Child Dev. 2001; 72(3):708-17. DOI: 10.1111/1467-8624.00310. View

Benjamin D, Berger J, Johannesson M, Nosek B, Wagenmakers E, Berk R . Redefine statistical significance. Nat Hum Behav. 2019; 2(1):6-10. DOI: 10.1038/s41562-017-0189-z. View

Bird G, Viding E . The self to other model of empathy: providing a new framework for understanding empathy impairments in psychopathy, autism, and alexithymia. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2014; 47:520-32. DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.09.021. View

Blader S, Shirako A, Chen Y . Looking Out From the Top: Differential Effects of Status and Power on Perspective Taking. Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2016; 42(6):723-37. DOI: 10.1177/0146167216636628. View

Borgomaneri S, Gazzola V, Avenanti A . Transcranial magnetic stimulation reveals two functionally distinct stages of motor cortex involvement during perception of emotional body language. Brain Struct Funct. 2014; 220(5):2765-81. PMC: 4549387. DOI: 10.1007/s00429-014-0825-6. View

Buresh J, Woodward A . Infants track action goals within and across agents. Cognition. 2006; 104(2):287-314. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2006.07.001. View

Cheng Y, Yang C, Lin C, Lee P, Decety J . The perception of pain in others suppresses somatosensory oscillations: a magnetoencephalography study. Neuroimage. 2008; 40(4):1833-40. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.01.064. View

10.

Dapretto M, Davies M, Pfeifer J, Scott A, Sigman M, Bookheimer S . Understanding emotions in others: mirror neuron dysfunction in children with autism spectrum disorders. Nat Neurosci. 2005; 9(1):28-30. PMC: 3713227. DOI: 10.1038/nn1611. View

11.

Decroix J, Borgomaneri S, Kalenine S, Avenanti A . State-dependent TMS of inferior frontal and parietal cortices highlights integration of grip configuration and functional goals during action recognition. Cortex. 2020; 132:51-62. DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.08.004. View

12.

Decroix J, Kalenine S . Timing of grip and goal activation during action perception: a priming study. Exp Brain Res. 2018; 236(8):2411-2426. DOI: 10.1007/s00221-018-5309-0. View

13.

Decroix J, Roger C, Kalenine S . Neural dynamics of grip and goal integration during the processing of others' actions with objects: An ERP study. Sci Rep. 2020; 10(1):5065. PMC: 7081278. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-61963-7. View

14.

Deschrijver E, Palmer C . Reframing social cognition: Relational versus representational mentalizing. Psychol Bull. 2020; 146(11):941-969. DOI: 10.1037/bul0000302. View

15.

DiGirolamo M, Simon J, Hubley K, Kopulsky A, Gutsell J . Clarifying the relationship between trait empathy and action-based resonance indexed by EEG mu-rhythm suppression. Neuropsychologia. 2019; 133:107172. PMC: 9093112. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.107172. View

16.

Donnarumma F, Costantini M, Ambrosini E, Friston K, Pezzulo G . Action perception as hypothesis testing. Cortex. 2017; 89:45-60. PMC: 5383736. DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2017.01.016. View

17.

Galinsky A, Magee J, Inesi M, Gruenfeld D . Power and perspectives not taken. Psychol Sci. 2007; 17(12):1068-74. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01824.x. View

18.

Gazzola V, Aziz-Zadeh L, Keysers C . Empathy and the somatotopic auditory mirror system in humans. Curr Biol. 2006; 16(18):1824-9. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2006.07.072. View

19.

Hommel B . The role of action semantics in action control: Comment on "Action semantics: A unifying conceptual framework for the selective use of multimodal and modality-specific object knowledge" by Michiel van Elk, Hein van Schie and Harold Bekkering. Phys Life Rev. 2014; 11(2):259-60. DOI: 10.1016/j.plrev.2014.01.010. View

20.

Hrkac M, Wurm M, Schubotz R . Action observers implicitly expect actors to act goal-coherently, even if they do not: an fMRI study. Hum Brain Mapp. 2013; 35(5):2178-90. PMC: 6869124. DOI: 10.1002/hbm.22319. View