ArticleScientific reports2016
Increased frequency of social interaction is associated with enjoyment enhancement and reward system activation.
Article in Scientific reports, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Social perception in deaf individuals: A meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies.Human brain mapping · 2023Pooled it
- Processing of increased frequency of social interaction in social anxiety disorder and borderline personality disorder.Scientific reports · 2021Trial
- Brain activity sustaining the modulation of pain by empathetic comments.Scientific reports · 2019Trial
- Altered social and cognitive control interactions during decision-making in social anxiety.Psychological medicine · 2026Article
- Co-designing a technology-enhanced fall-prevention program for community-dwelling older adults: a qualitative pre-implementation study.BMC public health · 2026Article
- The Protective Role of Vigor in Volunteering Against Somatic and Psychological Symptoms in EMDR Therapists.Psychology in Russia : state of the art · 2026Article
- The temporal relationships between social motivation and social interactions in people with serious mental illness and recent homelessness.Journal of mental health (Abingdon, England) · 2025Article
- Electrophysiological and Behavioral Responses to Overinclusion Following Preexposure to Social Threat.Psychophysiology · 2025Article
- Toward a neuroaesthetics of interactions: Insights from dance on the aesthetics of individual and interacting bodies.iScience · 2025Review
- Predictors of smartphone addiction and its effect on quality of life: a cross-sectional study among the young adults in Bangladesh.Frontiers in digital health · 2025Article
- Brain bases of real-time social interaction: A meta-analytic investigation of human neuroimaging studies.Aperture neuro · 2025Article
- Neurobehavioral Mechanisms Influencing the Association Between Generativity, the Desire to Promote Well-Being of Younger Generations, and Purpose in Life in Older Adults at Risk for Alzheimer's Disease.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2024Article
- Associations between resting-state neural connectivity and positive affect in social anxiety disorder.Brain and behavior · 2023Article
- Sensitive caregiving and reward responsivity: A novel mechanism linking parenting and executive functions development in early childhood.Developmental science · 2023Article
- Species-typical group size differentially influences social reward neural circuitry during nonreproductive social interactions.iScience · 2022Article
- Differential brain responses to alcohol-related and natural rewards are associated with alcohol use and problems: Evidence for reward dysregulation.Addiction biology · 2022Article
- Are people with social anxiety disorder happier alone?Journal of anxiety disorders · 2021Article
- Loneliness and the Social Brain: How Perceived Social Isolation Impairs Human Interactions.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2021Article
- I, robot: depression plays different roles in human-human and human-robot interactions.Translational psychiatry · 2021Article
- The Interaction Between Caudate Nucleus and Regions Within the Theory of Mind Network as a Neural Basis for Social Intelligence.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Positive social interactions contribute to the sense that one's life has meaning. Enjoyment of feelings associated through social interaction motivates humans to build social connections according to their personal preferences. Therefore, we hypothesized that social interaction itself activates the reward system in a manner that depends upon individual interaction preferences. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study in which 38 participants played a virtual ball-toss game in which the number of ball tosses to the participant was either similar to (normal-frequency condition) or higher than (high-frequency condition) the number of tosses to the other players. Participants reported greater-than-anticipated enjoyment during the high-frequency condition, suggesting that receiving a social reward led to unexpected positive feelings. Consistent with this, the high-frequency condition produced stronger activation in the ventral striatum, which is part of the reward system, and the precuneus, representing positive self-image, which might be translated to social reward. Furthermore, ventral striatal activation covaried with individual participants' preference for interactions with others. These findings suggest that an elevated frequency of social interaction is represented as a social reward, which might motivate individuals to promote social interaction in a manner that is modulated by personal preference.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.