Cyberpsychology and the Brain by Parsons Thomas D

Author:Parsons, Thomas D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2017-03-27T04:00:00+00:00

10.4.4 Virtual Interactions Using Cyberball

Social neuroscientists have also started using the virtual gaming task called Cyberball to induce social exclusion in participants. A number of researchers have used the Cyberball game as an experimentally controlled social exclusion assessment that elicits affective (Wesselmann, Wirth, Mroczek, & Williams, 2012; Williams, 2007), neurobiological (Eisenberger et al., 2012), psychophysiological (Moor, Crone & Van der Molen, 2010; Sijtsema, Shoulberg, & Murray-Close, 2011), and hormonal (Geniole, Carré, & McCormick, 2011; Zwolinski, 2012) responses. Findings from neuroimaging studies have revealed that social exclusion activates a ventral affective salience network that involves a number of interconnected brain hub areas, including the medial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala, and anterior insula. Furthermore, being excluded during a Cyberball game has been found to be associated with ventrolateral areas of the prefrontal cortex involved in the regulation of social distress (Eisenberger et al., 2003; Guyer et al., 2008).

Throughout the Cyberball task, the participant is represented by an avatar that is playing catch with two other avatars. The two other avatars ostensibly represent two other human participants. Participants are either included or ostracized during the Cyberball tossing game by two or three other players who are, in fact, controlled by an experimenter. The virtual Cyberball game starts with each avatar catching and throwing a ball (each about a third of the time). During the “inclusion” condition, the participant continues to catch and throw the ball about a third of the time. However, during the “exclusion” condition, the other two avatars throw the ball back and forth and ignore (neither avatar looks at or throws the ball to) the participant.

It is interesting to note that telling participants that the avatars in the Cyberball game are controlled by a computer does not change the effects of ostracism. In fact, the ostracism delivered by computers was judged by participants to be just as unpleasant as ostracism by humans. Further, it did not matter to participants whether the human-controlled or computer-controlled players had a choice as to whom they threw the ball to (Zadro, Williams, & Richardson, 2004).

The use of the Cyberball game in ostracism research is expedient because it allows for flexibility modification for study of group interactions without the use of live confederates, to collect large samples over the Internet, and for neuroimaging studies. Recent results from neuroimaging studies have revealed that the experience of being excluded from ball-tossing reliably evokes increased activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate and anterior insula, which correlates with self-reports of physical pain (Eisenberger, 2012). A number of qualitative reviews of the fMRI and Cyberball social exclusion literature have emerged and all have concluded that nociceptive stimuli and social rejection both activate this physical pain matrix. Although the results from a recent meta-analysis suggest that the neural correlates of nociceptive stimuli and social rejection have some distinct patterns of activation, they still share commonalities (Cacioppo et al., 2013). In a more recent meta-analysis, Rotge et al. (2014) found that the Cyberball task activated the dorsal anterior cingulate circuit less than other experimental social pain tasks.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.