Why Don’t You Like Me? The Role of the Mentalizing Network in Social Rejection

Abstract

The pain of rejection is often tied to the way that we interpret how another person thinks or feels about us. In this review, we explore evidence from the current literature to examine the role of mentalizing, the process by which we think about and understand someone else’s thoughts and feelings, in the experience of social rejection. We first turn to meta-analyses investigating the neural bases of social rejection to examine whether parts of the mentalizing network are also active during the experience of rejection (Cacioppo et al., 2013; Vijayakumar, Cheng, & Pfeifer, 2017). Next, we review some evidence suggesting that developmental changes in mentalizing, such as those during early childhood and adolescence, may be associated with changes in sensitivity to rejection (e.g. Somerville, 2013; Rochat, 2003). Then, we examine the extent to which individuals who demonstrate compromised mentalizing, such as those with schizophrenia or autism, may exhibit reduced sensitivity to rejection (e.g. Bauminger & Kasari, 2000; Gradin et al., 2012). Finally, we summarize some future directions building on the possibility of a link between mentalizing and the experience of social rejection. The available evidence seems to support a role of the mentalizing network in feeling the pain of social rejection, such that understanding another person’s mental state may be what allows us to understand and process rejection. Why Don’t You Like Me 3 Rejection hurts. Although this phrase is typically meant metaphorically, a body of evidence suggests that social rejection may hurt literally, much like physical pain (for reviews, see Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2005; Eisenberger, 2012). But not every instance of social rejection cuts deeply. When we find out that the romantic interest who’s been acting distant recently lost a loved one, or that a mutual friend who’s been giving us the cold shoulder is anxious around people they don’t know well, this knowledge can alter our interpretations of their behavior and lead us to feel less hurt by their actions. It seems that being socially rejected hurts not just because someone ignores or dismisses us, but rather because we feel that their rejection has something to do with how they think and feel about us. We notice how someone is acting – distant, cold, uninterested – and we wonder why they might be acting this way: “why don’t they like me?” The pain of rejection, or at least some forms of rejection, seems to be inherently tied to the way that we interpret another person’s thoughts or feelings. It makes sense that the pain of social rejection relies to some extent on how we perceive the intentions of the person rejecting us. Indeed, even the experience of physical pain is more intense when we perceive our pain to be intentionally caused by someone else (Wegner & Gray, 2008). Despite this intuitive connection between the experience of social rejection and the process of thinking about and trying to understand someone else’s thoughts and feelings, a process referred to as “mentalizing” (Frith & Frith, 2006), very little neuroscience research has explicitly examined the role of mentalizing in the experience of social rejection. In this review, we explore evidence from the current literature to examine the possible role of mentalizing in the experience of social rejection. To do this, we first turn Why Don’t You Like Me 4 to meta-analyses investigating the neural bases of social rejection to examine whether parts of the mentalizing network are also active during the experience of rejection (Cacioppo et al., 2013; Vijayakumar, Cheng, & Pfeifer, 2017). Next, we assess whether developmental changes in mentalizing, such as those during early childhood and adolescence, are associated with changes in sensitivity to rejection (e.g. Somerville, 2013; Rochat, 2003). Then, we examine whether individuals who demonstrate compromised mentalizing, such as those with schizophrenia or autism, exhibit reduced sensitivity to rejection (e.g. Bauminger & Kasari, 2000; Gradin et al., 2012). Finally, we summarize some future directions building on the possibility of an inherent link between mentalizing and the experience of social rejection. We suggest that the available evidence supports a potential role of the mentalizing network in feeling the pain of social rejection, such that understanding another person’s mental state may be what allows us to understand and process rejection. Are Mentalizing Regions Active During the Experience of Social Rejection? Research suggests that we have such a strong aversion to social rejection that even rejection by a stranger, from whom we have little to gain or lose, can cause us significant distress. For example, Eisenberger et al. (2003) published the first study to use a paradigm called “Cyberball” to induce feelings of social rejection in participants who were laying alone in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. Cyberball is a virtual ball-toss game that involves three avatars passing a ball back and forth. The participant believes that one avatar represents themselves, while the other two avatars represent the other players in the game. However, in reality, there are no other players; instead, the program is designed to include or exclude the participant from the ballWhy Don’t You Like Me 5 tossing game. Initially, the participant is included in the game; however, in an exclusion condition, the participant’s avatar no longer receives the ball from the other avatars. Even in this context where participants are not physically around other people and have little to lose by being excluded, participants report feeling distressed by the rejection. The Cyberball paradigm has consistently elicited feelings of social distress in participants across populations (e.g. Gradin et al., 2012; Groschwitz et al., 2016; Masten et al., 2011), across modified versions of the paradigm (e.g. DeWall et al., 2012.; Onoda et al., 2009), and even in studies where participants know they are not really playing the game with other people (Zadro, Williams, & Richardson, 2004). The pain of rejection is so salient that researchers have theorized that the experience of rejection may have piggybacked on the physical pain system, borrowing the pain signal to denote the potential for broken social bonds, warning us to avoid them (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2004; MacDonald & Leary, 2005; Panksepp, 2004). By allowing us to detect the threat of exclusion, which can restrict access to resources, social support, and other protective factors, social pain can help us adaptively navigate the social world and maintain the relationships that promote our well-being (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2005). Since the first study using Cyberball, countless studies have examined the neural mechanisms underlying feelings of rejection. While many of these studies have used the Cyberball paradigm, others have used more personally relevant paradigms, such as thinking about rejection by recounting a recent romantic break-up (Fisher et al., 2010; Kross et al. 2011). These studies have predominantly focused on examining the neural regions associated with the affective (unpleasant-feeling) component of physical pain (i.e. dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), anterior insula (AI)), and have not directly Why Don’t You Like Me 6 investigated the relationship between mentalizing and social rejection. However, by examining meta-analyses of such studies, we can investigate whether there is evidence of a consistent role for mentalizing-related neural regions in the experience of social rejection. First, we will briefly describe the neural network typically associated with mentalizing. Then, we will assess the extent to which this network seems to play a role in experiencing social rejection. The Mentalizing Network Social cognition researchers draw a distinction between the ways that we understand how others do things and why they do things. Understanding how someone does something involves grasping the mechanisms of an action, whereas understanding why someone does something involves reasoning about their mental states, i.e. mentalizing (Spunt et al., 2010). In the case of social rejection, understanding how someone is passing a ball back and forth to another person is experientially distinct from understanding why they are passing the ball to the other person. While how-thinking doesn’t seem to play a role in our own feelings about the game or the other players, whythinking can lead us to wonder why we are not receiving the ball from others. Such thoughts can lead to hurt feelings, self-doubt, offense, embarrassment, and a host of other negative emotions. While mentalizing can sometimes lead to negative emotional experiences, it allows us to understand the intentions, goals, and emotions of those around us, which informs how we behave and communicate with others, and facilitates our ability to collaborate with others towards achieving joint goals (Saxe, 2006). Given the clear distinction between how-thinking and why-thinking, and the importance of reasoning Why Don’t You Like Me 7 about mental states in our everyday experience, extensive research has documented the neural bases of this social cognitive process. The ‘mentalizing network,’ as it has come to be called, is typically thought to include regions such as the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), precuneus, posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and the temporal poles (Frith & Frith, 2006; Gallagher & Frith, 2003; Lieberman, 2010), with some evidence suggesting that ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) contributes to related social cognitive processes (Lieberman et al., 2019). Each of these neural regions is thought to assist with processing different sorts of information that collectively facilitate understanding the mental states of others. While the contributing role of each region is still not clearly understood, mentalizing is t