Being liked activates primary reward and midline self-related brain regions

Abstract

The experience of being liked is a key social event and fundamental to motivating human behavior, though little is known about its neural underpinnings. In this study, we examined the experience of being liked in a group of 15- to 24-year-old: a cohort for whom forming friendships has a great degree of salience, and for whom the explicit representation of relationships is familiar from their frequent use of social networking technologies. Study participants (n = 19) were led to believe that other participants had formed an opinion on their likability based on their appearance in a photograph, and during fMRI scanning viewed the photographs of people who had purportedly responded favorably to..