Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33760100›Full record

SynthesisSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2021

The neural underpinnings of intergroup social cognition: an fMRI meta-analysis.

Carrington C Merritt, Jennifer K MacCormack, Andrea G Stein, Kristen A Lindquist, Keely A Muscatell

Abstract readMeta-Analysis
In one paragraph

Synthesis in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
20citing papers in PubMed, 3 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

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.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

20 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
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  7. National identity reconfigures brain responses from "them" to "us".Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
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  20. Prefrontal contributions to the stability and variability of thought and conscious experience.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2022
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Carrington C MerrittDepartment of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.ORCID 0000-0003-1450-2178
Jennifer K MacCormackDepartment of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.
Andrea G SteinDepartment of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53705, USA.
Kristen A LindquistDepartment of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.
Keely A MuscatellDepartment of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.ORCID 0000-0002-7893-5565

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Roughly 20 years of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have investigated the neural correlates underlying engagement in social cognition (e.g. empathy and emotion perception) about targets spanning various social categories (e.g. race and gender). Yet, findings from individual studies remain mixed. In the present quantitative functional neuroimaging meta-analysis, we summarized across 50 fMRI studies of social cognition to identify consistent differences in neural activation as a function of whether the target of social cognition was an in-group or out-group member. We investigated if such differences varied according to a specific social category (i.e. race) and specific social cognitive processes (i.e. empathy and emotion perception). We found that social cognition about in-group members was more reliably related to activity in brain regions associated with mentalizing (e.g. dorsomedial prefrontal cortex), whereas social cognition about out-group members was more reliably related to activity in regions associated with exogenous attention and salience (e.g. anterior insula). These findings replicated for studies specifically focused on the social category of race, and we further found intergroup differences in neural activation during empathy and emotion perception tasks. These results help shed light on the neural mechanisms underlying social cognition across group lines.

Indexed as

Magnetic Resonance ImagingSocial CognitionBrainBrain MappingCognitionHumansPrefrontal CortexfMRIintergroup biasmeta-analysisracesocial cognition

Identifiers

PMID33760100
PMCPMC8421705

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.