People want to interact successfully with other individuals, and they invest significant efforts in attempting to do so. Decades of research have demonstrated that to simplify the dauntingly complex task of interpersonal communication, perceivers predict the responses of individuals in their environment using stereotypes and other sources of prior knowledge. Here, we show that these top-down expectations can also shape the subjective value of expectation-consistent and expectation-violating targets. Specifically, in two neuroimaging experiments (n = 58), we observed increased activation in brain regions associated with reward processing—including the nucleus accumbens—when perceivers observed information consistent with their social expectations. In two additional behavioral experiments (n = 704), we observed that perceivers were willing to forgo money to encounter an expectation-consistent target and avoid an expectation-violating target. Together, these findings suggest that perceivers value having their social expectations confirmed, much like food or monetary rewards.

中文翻译：

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确认人际期望本质上是有益的

人们希望与其他人成功互动，并为此付出了巨大的努力。数十年的研究表明，为了简化复杂的人际交流任务，感知者使用刻板印象和其他先验知识来源预测个人在其环境中的反应。在这里，我们表明这些自上而下的期望也可以塑造期望一致和期望违反目标的主观价值。具体而言，在两个神经影像学实验 (n = 58) 中，我们观察到当感知者观察到与其社会期望一致的信息时，与奖励处理相关的大脑区域（包括伏隔核）的激活增加。在另外两个行为实验中（n = 704），我们观察到，感知者愿意放弃金钱来遇到与期望一致的目标并避免违反期望的目标。总之，这些发现表明，感知者重视确认他们的社会期望，就像食物或金钱奖励一样。