Abstract
Humans are thought to be able to form shared representations, considered a keystone of social cognition. However, whether and to what extent such representations are social in nature is still open for debate. In the present study, we address the question of whether action co-representation can be modulated by social attitudes, such as judgments about one’s own social status. Two groups of participants performed an Interactive Simon task after the experimental induction of a feeling of social inclusion or exclusion (ostracism) by means of a virtual ball tossing game. Results showed a compatibility effect in included, but not in excluded participants. This indicates that judgments about one’s own social status modulate action co-representation. We suggest that this modulation may occur by way of a redirection of one’s attentional focus away from others when one experiences social exclusion. This is a far-reaching issue given the increasing need for integration in modern society. Indeed, if integration fails, modern society fails also.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Ostracism occurred long before it was named (“ostrakismos”) around 500 BC, when Athenians cast their votes on shards of clay, ostraca, to determine whether a member of the community, usually a former political leader, should be banished for a period of 10 years.
References
Ambrosini E, Blomberg O, Mandrigin A, Costantini M (2013) Social exclusion modulates pre-reflective interpersonal body representation. Psychol Res. doi:10.1007/s00426-012-0476-2
Aron A, Aron EN, Smollan D (1992) Inclusion of other in the self scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness. J Pers Soc Psychol 63:596–612. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.63.4.596
Bourgeois P, Hess U (2008) The impact of social context on mimicry. Biol Psychol 77:343–352. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2007.11.008
Brewer MB (2007) The social psychology of intergroup relations. Guilford Press, New York
Brewer MB, Gardner W (1996) Who is this “We”? Levels of collective identity and self representations. J Pers Soc Psychol 71:83–93. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.71.1.83
Cardellicchio P, Sinigaglia C, Costantini M (2012) Grasping affordances with the other’s hand: a TMS study. Soc Cognit Affect Neurosci (Epub ahead of print). doi:10.1093/scan/nss017
Cardini F, Costantini M, Galati G, Romani GL, Ladavas E, Serino A (2011) Viewing one’s own face being touched modulates tactile perception: an fMRI study. J Cognit Neurosci 23:503–513. doi:10.1162/jocn.2010.21484
Carpenter M (2009) Just how joint is joint action in infancy? Topics Cognit Sci 1:380–392
Chartrand TL, Bargh JA (1999) The chameleon effect: the perception–behavior link and social interaction. J Pers Soc Psychol 76:893–910. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.76.6.893
Costantini M, Sinigaglia C (2012) Grasping affordance: a window onto social cognition. In: Seemann A (ed) Joint attention: new developments. MIT press, Cambridge
Costantini M, Ambrosini E, Sinigaglia C, Gallese V (2011a) Tool-use observation makes far objects ready-to-hand. Neuropsychologia 49:2658–2663. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.05.013
Costantini M, Committeri G, Sinigaglia C (2011b) Ready both to your and to my hands: mapping the action space of others. PLoS ONE 6:e17923
Costantini M, Di Vacri A, Chiarelli AM, Ferri F, Romani GL, Merla A (2013) Studying social cognition using near-infrared spectroscopy: the case of social Simon effect. J Biomed Opt 18:25005. doi:10.1117/1.JBO.18.2.025005
Ferraro L, Iani C, Mariani M, Milanese N, Rubichi S (2011) Facilitation and interference components in the joint Simon task. Exp Brain Res 211:337–343. doi:10.1007/s00221-011-2711-2
Frischen A, Tipper SP (2004) Orienting attention via observed gaze shift evokes longer term inhibitory effects: implications for social interactions, attention, and memory. J Exp Psychol Gen 133:516–533. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.133.4.516
Galati G, Committeri G, Spitoni G, Aprile T, Di Russo F, Pitzalis S, Pizzamiglio L (2008) A selective representation of the meaning of actions in the auditory mirror system. Neuroimage 40:1274–1286
Galati G, Committeri G, Pitzalis S, Pelle G, Patria F, Fattori P, Galletti C (2011) Intentional signals during saccadic and reaching delays in the human posterior parietal cortex. Eur J Neurosci 34:1871–1885. doi:10.1111/j.1460-9568.2011.07885.x
Hess YD, Pickett CL (2010) Social rejection and self- versus other-awareness. J Exp Soc Psychol 46:453–456. doi:10.1016/J.Jesp.2009.12.004
Hommel B (2011) The Simon effect as tool and heuristic. Acta Psychol 136:189–202. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2010.04.011
Hommel B, Musseler J, Aschersleben G, Prinz W (2001) The theory of event coding (TEC): a framework for perception and action planning. Behav Brain Sci 24:849–878 (discussion 878–937)
Hommel B, Colzato LS, van den Wildenberg WPM (2009) How social are task representations? Psychol Sci 20:794–798. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02367.x
Iani C, Anelli F, Nicoletti R, Arcuri L, Rubichi S (2011) The role of group membership on the modulation of joint action. Exp Brain Res 211:439–445. doi:10.1007/s00221-011-2651-x
Kornblum S, Hasbroucq T, Osman A (1990) Dimensional overlap: cognitive basis for stimulus-response compatibility–a model and taxonomy. Psychol Rev 97:253–270. doi:10.1037/0033-295x.97.2.253
Kourtis D, Sebanz N, Knoblich G (2013) Predictive representation of other people’s actions in joint action planning: an EEG study. Soc Neurosci 8:31–42. doi:10.1080/17470919.2012.694823
Kuhbandner C, Pekrun R, Maier MA (2010) The role of positive and negative affect in the “mirroring” of other persons’ actions. Cognit Emot 24:1182–1190. doi:10.1080/02699930903119196
Lakin JL, Chartrand TL, Arkin RM (2008) I am too just like you. Psychol Sci 19:816–822. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02162.x
Markus HR, Kitayama S (1991) Culture and the self: implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychol Rev 98:224–253. doi:10.1037/0033-295x.98.2.224
Nisbett RE, Peng K, Choi I, Norenzayan A (2001) Culture and systems of thought: holistic versus analytic cognition. Psychol Rev 108:291–310. doi:10.1037/0033-295x.108.2.291
Ondobaka S, de Lange FP, Newman-Norlund RD, Wiemers M, Bekkering H (2012) Interplay between action and movement intentions during social interaction. Psychol Sci 23:30–35. doi:10.1177/0956797611424163
Ruys KI, Aarts H (2010) When competition merges people’s behavior: interdependency activates shared action representations. J Exp Soc Psychol 46:1130–1133. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2010.05.016
Sebanz N, Knoblich G, Prinz W (2003) Representing others’ actions: just like one’s own? Cognition 88:B11–B21
Sebanz N, Bekkering H, Knoblich G (2006a) Joint action: bodies and minds moving together. Trends Cognit Sci 10:70–76
Sebanz N, Knoblich G, Prinz W, Wascher E (2006b) Twin peaks: an ERP study of action planning and control in co-acting individuals. J Cogn Neurosci 18(5):859–870
Simon J, Rudell A (1967) Auditory S-R compatibility: the effect of an irrelevant cue on information processing. J Appl Psychol 51:300–304
Tajfel H, Turner JC (1979) An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. Brooks-Cole, Monterey
Tajfel H, Billig MG, Bundy RP, Flament C (1971) Social categorization and intergroup behaviour. Eur J Soc Psychol 1:149–178. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2420010202
Thomas R, Press C, Haggard P (2006) Shared representations in body perception. Acta Psychol (Amst) 121:317–330
Tipper SP (2010) From observation to action simulation: the role of attention, eye-gaze, emotion, and body state. Q J Exp Psychol 63:2081–2105. doi:10.1080/17470211003624002
Tipper S, Paul M, Hayes A (2006) Vision-for-action: the effects of object property discrimination and action state on affordance compatibility effects. Psychon Bull Rev 13:493–498. doi:10.3758/bf03193875
Tollefsen D (2005) Let’s pretend! Children and joint action. Philos Soc Sci 35:75–97
Tsai C–C, Kuo W-J, Jing J-T, Hung D, Tzeng O (2006) A common coding framework in self-other interaction: evidence from joint action task. Exp Brain Res 175:353
Tsai C–C, Kuo W-J, Hung DL, Tzeng OJL (2008) Action co-representation is tuned to other humans. J Cognit Neurosci 20:2015–2024. doi:10.1162/jocn.2008.20144
Turner JC, Hogg MA, Oakes PJ, Reicher SD, Wetherell MS (1987) Rediscovering the social group: a self-categorization theory. Blackwell, Oxford
van Baaren RB, Maddux WW, Chartrand TL, de Bouter C, van Knippenberg A (2003) It takes two to mimic: behavioral consequences of self-construals. J Pers Soc Psychol 84:1093–1102. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.84.5.1093
Welsh TN, Ray MC, Weeks DJ, Dewey D, Elliott D (2009) Does Joe influence Fred’s action? Not if Fred has autism spectrum disorder. Brain Res Cognit Brain Res 1248:141–148
Wilkowski BM, Robinson MD, Friesen CK (2009) Gaze-triggered orienting as a tool of the belongingness self-regulation system. Psychol Sci 20:495–501. doi:10.1111/J.1467-9280.2009.02321.X
Williams KD, Jarvis B (2006) Cyberball: a program for use in research on interpersonal ostracism and acceptance. Behav Res Methods 38:174–180
Williams KD, Cheung CKT, Choi W (2000) Cyberostracism: effects of being ignored over the Internet. J Pers Soc Psychol 79:748–762. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.748
Zadro L, Williams KD, Richardson R (2004) How low can you go? Ostracism by a computer is sufficient to lower self-reported levels of belonging, control, self-esteem, and meaningful existence. J Exp Soc Psychol 40:560
Acknowledgments
MC was supported by a grant from the Volkswagen Foundation “European Platform for Life Sciences, Mind Sciences and the Humanities” (Ref: 85 639). We would like to thank Marzia Quarta for data collection, Ettore Ambrosini for data analysis, and Alisa Mandrigin for the English revision of the text.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Costantini, M., Ferri, F. Action co-representation and social exclusion. Exp Brain Res 227, 85–92 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-013-3487-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-013-3487-3