The Neural Development of Us and Them

Abstract

Social groups aid human beings in several ways, ranging from the fulfillment of complex social and personal needs to the promotion of survival. Despite the importance of group affiliation to humans, there remains considerable variation in group preferences across development. In the current study, children and adolescents completed an explicit evaluation task of in-group and out-group members during functional neuroimaging. We found that developmental increases in bilateral amygdala, fusiform gryus, and orbitofrontal cortex activation predicted greater propensity for in-group favoritism. Additionally, brain regions implicated in social cognition, such as the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, showed heighted activation when viewing in-group compared to out-group peers. Our findings suggest that the motivational significance and processing of group membership undergoes important changes across development, with peaks in neural sensitivity to in-group members during adolescence, a period when young people are especially concerned with their social identity.

Keywords: group membership, social cognition, adolescence, social identity