The social transmission of metacontrol policies: Mechanisms underlying the interpersonal transfer of persistence and flexibility

doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.01.009

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

Volume 81, Part A, October 2017, Pages 43-58

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.01.009 Get rights and content

Highlights

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The article provides a comprehensive review of evidence for interindividual and intraindividual differences in meta-control preferences.
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The article considers both biological and cultural factors responsible for metacontrol preferences.
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The article provides a mechanistic model of how genes and cultural factors impact metacontrol preferences.

Abstract

Humans often face binary cognitive-control dilemmas, with the choice between persistence and flexibility being a crucial one. Tackling these dilemmas requires metacontrol, i.e., the control of the current cognitive-control policy. As predicted from functional, psychometric, neuroscientific, and modeling approaches, interindividual variability in metacontrol biases towards persistence or flexibility could be demonstrated in metacontrol-sensitive tasks. These biases covary systematically with genetic predispositions regarding mesofrontal and nigrostriatal dopaminergic functioning and the individualistic or collectivistic nature of the cultural background. However, there is also evidence for mood- and meditation-induced intraindividual variability (with negative mood and focused-attention meditation being associated with a bias towards persistence, and positive mood and open-monitoring meditation being associated with a bias towards flexibility), suggesting that genetic and cultural factors do not determine metacontrol settings entirely. We suggest a theoretical framework that explains how genetic predisposition and cultural learning can lead to the implementation of metacontrol defaults, which however can be shifted towards persistence or flexibility by situational factors.

Section snippets

Cognitive control and metacontrol

Human behavior is characterized by its considerable flexibility, which in contrast to other species, and other primates, allows behavioral adjustments without extensive training and practice. The processes that are thought to be responsible for this flexibility are commonly referred to as cognitive-control processes or executive functions (e.g., Diamond, 2013). While there is no agreed-upon inventory of human cognitive control processes, a particularly popular set of functions has been

Genetics

Evidence for interindividual variability comes from behavioral genetics studies of polymorphisms that are known to be related to dopaminergic processing in the mesofrontal and the nigrostriatal pathway. COMT Val¹⁵⁸Met affects the efficiency of frontal dopaminergic processing (Chen et al., 2004) and DRD2 C957T the level of striatal dopamine (Hirvonen et al., 2009a, Hirvonen et al., 2009b). As polymorphisms of these genes seem to affect the relative efficiency of either the frontal or striatal

Mood

At least two research lines have tested the possibility, and provided evidence that mood—or the functional or neural state underlying it—entertains an intimate link to metacontrol. For one, positive mood is suspected to promote loose thinking and efficient brainstorming (Ashby et al., 1999), and many studies have indeed reported that divergent thinking benefits from positive-mood induction (Baas et al., 2008, Isen, 1999). Both neuroscientific (Ashby et al., 1999) and functional (Nijstad et al.,

Mechanisms of metacontrol sharing

Findings from behavioral genetics and from cultural studies have demonstrated the existence of systematic intraindividual differences with respect to indicators of metacontrol biases. The complexity of dopaminergic interactions underlying control processes is not yet sufficiently understood to allow for directed predictions under many circumstances, but there are clear proofs of principle that polymorphisms of genes impacting frontal and striatal dopaminergic processing are associated with

Conclusions and open questions

We have seen that genetic disposition and culture are associated with systematic interindividual variability in relative metacontrol biases towards persistence or flexibility. This means that one precondition for interpersonal sharing of metacontrol settings is fulfilled: if people differ in metacontrol settings, it may make sense to transfer them from one to another. We also have seen that situational factors can bias metacontrol towards persistence or flexibility, with mood and meditation

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Review articleThe social transmission of metacontrol policies: Mechanisms underlying the interpersonal transfer of persistence and flexibility

Highlights

Abstract

Section snippets

Cognitive control and metacontrol

Genetics

Mood

Mechanisms of metacontrol sharing

Conclusions and open questions

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Trends Neurosci.

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Am. J. Hum. Genet.

Neuroimage

Neuropsychologia

Neuropsychologia

Neuroscience

Cognition

Conscious. Cogn.

Conscious. Cogn.

Neuron

Biol. Psychiatry

Cognition

Neuron

Prog. Neuropsychopharmacol.

Cognition

Acta Psychol.

Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev.

J. Exp. Soc. Psychol.

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Vision Res.

The (b)link between creativity and dopamine: spontaneous eye blink rates predict and dissociate divergent and convergent thinking

Cognition

Creative mood swings: divergent and convergent thinking affect mood in opposite ways

Psychol. Res.

Accuracy of judgments of sexual orientation from thin slices of behavior

J. Pers. Soc. Psychol.

A neuropsychological theory of positive affect and its influence on cognition

Psychol. Rev.

A meta-analysis of 25 years of research on mood and creativity: hedonic tone, activation, or regulatory focus?

Psychol. Bull.

Conditional automaticity: varieties of automatic influence on social perception and cognition

The physiology, signaling and pharmacology of dopamine receptors

Pharmacol. Rev.

Apartheid, Liberation and the Calvinist Tradition

Conflict monitoring and cognitive control

Psychol. Rev.

Conflict monitoring and decision making: reconciling two perspectives on anterior cingulate function

Cogn. Affect. Behav. Neurosci.

Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader Grand Rapids, Mich.

Autoradiographic localization of dopamine D 1 and D 2 receptors in the brain of several mammalian species

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Losing the big picture: how religion may control visual attention

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Review article
The social transmission of metacontrol policies: Mechanisms underlying the interpersonal transfer of persistence and flexibility