Social reward

Social rewards

One question we are interesting in is how do we process the rewarding aspects of positive social interactions. In order to successfully guide our behavior, it is necessary that we know the stimuli, actions, and contexts that result in a particular positive social outcome. For example, some cues or actions might lead to a positive interaction with a close friend, while those same cues or actions might not lead to a positive outcome in a professional interaction. We are interested in how we encode these identity-specific social outcomes, the degree to which they are flexible and can be updated, and how problems with encoding positive social outcomes might contribute to problems with social relationsips.

Recent Publications:

Thompson JC, Hassan E, Shaffer L. (2021) Identity-specific representation of social rewards in orbitofrontal cortex. Poster at the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society Annual Conference.