Bilateral (Germany): The neural substrates of social comparison

The natural environment of humans is one of relationships and social institutions. Social psychologists have shown that, as a consequence of this, almost all our judgements and assessments of ourselves and other people are shaped by comparison with the people who surround us or those we know about. However, comparatively little is known about the underlying mechanisms that make our brains "social". In this project, we will investigate the brain networks of social comparison. We expect some overlap with the networks that enable us to take the perspective of other people ("mentalising"). We will then go on to examine how social comparisons contribute to evaluations of the self. We assume that differences in the influence of such unconscious comparisons are related to differences in the motivation system of the human brain. One general aim of this project is to establish the neuroscience of social comparisons as a key topic of investigation into the social brain. Comparisons contribute to a host of psychological phenomena in social judgment, emotion and motivation. Understanding the neural substrates of comparison will thus enable a deeper and more complete understanding of humans as social thinkers.