Citation

Jankowski KF, Takahashi H. Psychiatry Clin. Neurosci. 2014; 68(5): 319-336.

Affiliation

Department of Psychiatry, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine; Department of Psychology, University of Oregon.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/pcn.12182

PMID

24649887

Abstract

Social emotions are affective states elicited during social interactions and integral for promoting socially-appropriate behaviors and discouraging socially-inappropriate ones. Social emotion-processing deficits significantly impair interpersonal relationships, and play distinct roles in the manifestation and maintenance of clinical symptomology. Elucidating the neural correlates of discrete social emotions can serve as a window to better understanding and treating neuropsychiatric disorders. Moral cognition and social emotion-processing broadly recruit a fronto-temporo-subcortical network, supporting empathy, perspective-taking, self-processing, and reward-processing. The present review specifically examines the neural correlates of embarrassment, guilt, envy, and schadenfreude. Embarrassment and guilt are self-conscious emotions, evoked during negative evaluation following norm violations and supported by a fronto-temporo-posterior network. Embarrassment is evoked by social transgressions and recruits greater anterior temporal regions, representing social conceptual knowledge. Guilt is evoked by moral transgressions and recruits greater prefrontal regions, representing perspective-taking and behavioral change demands. Envy and schadenfreude are fortune-of-other emotions, evoked during social comparison and supported by a prefrontal-striatal network. Envy represents displeasure in others' fortunes, and recruits increased dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, representing cognitive dissonance, and decreased reward-related striatal regions. Schadenfruede represents pleasure in others' misfortunes, and recruits reduced empathy-related insular regions and increased reward-related striatal regions. Implications for psychopathology and treatment design are discussed.

Language: en