Elucidating the neural correlates of egoistic and moralistic self-enhancement

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Abstract

Self-enhancement is the biasing of one’s view of oneself in a positive direction. The brain correlates of self-enhancement remain unclear though it has been reported that the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) may be important for producing self-enhancing responses. Previous studies have not examined whether the neural correlates of self-enhancement depend on the particular domain in which individuals are enhancing themselves. Both moralistic and egoistic words were presented to participants while transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied to the MPFC, precuneus or in a sham orientation. Participants were asked to make decisions as to the words describing themselves, some of which were positive and some of which were negative. It was found the MPFC TMS significantly disrupted egoistic self-enhancement when TMS was delivered to the MPFC. Judgments involving moralistic words were not influenced by TMS. These data provide further evidence that MPFC is involved in self-enhancement, and that the role of MPFC may be selective in this regard.

Introduction

John and Robins (1994) asserted that “the self is a ‘special’ kind of observer” (p. 217), such that the way we perceive ourselves is different from the way we perceive others. Previous research has shown that individuals are often biased in their own self-perception when compared to perceptions of others (see Taylor & Brown, 1988). Individuals with high levels of self-enhancement bias also those tend to be narcissistic (Paulhus, 1998). On the other hand, self-enhancement bias may serve the purpose of maintaining mental health (Mar et al., 2006, Taylor and Brown, 1988, Taylor and Brown, 1994).

Indeed, two theories of depressive cognition, including depressive realism (Alloy & Abramson, 1988) and negative self-judgment bias (Beck, 1967), suggest that depressed individuals lack traditional self-enhancement biases that nondepressed individuals normally display. Interestingly, PET studies of depressed individuals have provided evidence of decreased blood flow to medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) (Drevets et al., 1992). Additionally, increased lesions in medial orbital PFC are associated with late-onset depression and correlate with severity of depression (MacFall, Payne, Provenzale, & Krishnan, 2001). While these data alone are not necessarily suggestive of the role of the MPFC in self-enhancement, other patient studies have highlighted its possible role: patients with frontotemporal dementia not only exaggerate positive and minimize negative personality qualities (Rankin, Baldwin, Pace-Savitsky, Kramer, & Miller, 2005) but they also display a general deficit in self-evaluation and error monitoring (O’Keeffe et al., 2007). Clearly, while this excludes many of the complexities of depression in terms of cortico-limbic networks and systems (Mayberg, 2003, Ressler and Mayberg, 2007), the data suggest that self-enhancement may play a role in depression and such enhancement may be mediated via MPFC structures.

Although it remains uncertain if the MPFC plays a role in self-enhancement, there is considerable evidence that it may be involved in networks associated with self-monitoring and self-evaluation (Johnson et al., 2005, Ochsner et al., 2004, Ochsner et al., 2005). For example, researchers have noted MPFC involvement during evaluation of self-relevant adjectives or statements (Craik et al., 1999, Fossati et al., 2003, Fossati et al., 2004, Heatherton et al., 2006, Johnson et al., 2002, Lou et al., 2004). Furthermore, activity in the MPFC has been noted during general self-reflection (Gusnard and Raichle, 2001, Johnson et al., 2006). Of course, self-perception itself involves more than a single perspective and researchers have documented separate cortical networks for directed (‘how you perceive yourself’) and reflected (‘how others perceive you’) self evaluations. Whereas directed self-evaluation resulted in significant activation in MPFC, right PFC, and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), reflected self-evaluation activated regions of the orbital frontal, insula, and temporal cortices (Ochsner et al., 2005).

While the findings of these and other studies have provided suggestive evidence of MPFC involvement in direct evaluations of the self, it is still unclear whether these regions are additionally responsible for the enhancement of positive self-evaluations. Recently, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to disrupt activity in the MPFC, supplementary motor area (SMA) or precuneus during a self-evaluation task and found that TMS delivered to the MPFC reduced self-enhancement (Kwan et al., 2007). These data suggest that at least the dorsal aspects of the MPFC (dMPFC) may be involved in self-enhancement which is consistent with literature differentiating regions of the MPFC (D’Argembeau et al., 2007, Schmitz and Johnson, 2007). And while it is controversial as to the influence TMS may have on deeper regions (i.e., vMPFC), certainly the effect is greater to dorsal, rather than ventral regions in terms of medial aspects. Therefore, it is possible that our previous finding may be limited to aspects of self-enhancement that are more self-related (i.e., egoistic) rather than interactive (i.e., moralistic) and thus involve more ventral aspects of the MPFC (Mitchell, Macrae, & Banaji, 2006).

Clearly, self-enhancement may involve multiple concepts as the role of personality, values, and motives may interact with what can be constituted as self-enhancement. For example, Paulhus and John (1998) have alluded to a distinction between two forms of self-enhancement defined by two personality forms: the alpha “superhero” type personality and gamma “saint-like” personality. While the alpha personality type, termed “egoistic,” is described as obtaining an inflated sense of worth, specifically regarding social and intellectual status, because of want of power and status, the gamma personality type, termed “moralistic,” has an inflated sense of good character, specifically by observance of social norms, due to the need for acceptance (Paulhus & John, 1998). In essence, individuals self-enhance in accordance to their personality types, though the nature of this relation on a causal level is not known.

The purpose of the current study was 2-fold. We first sought to replicate the findings reported in Kwan et al. (2007) in which self-enhancement was disrupted via TMS delivered to the MPFC. In addition, we hoped to further elucidate the role of the cortical networks of self-enhancement to determine if different forms of enhancement would be related to midline cortical structures.

Section snippets

Participants

Ten female university students were recruited by word of mouth for the study. All participants were paid $25 for their participation. All of the participants were treated in accordance to the guidelines set forth by the Institutional Review Board at Montclair State University and the guidelines of the American Psychological Association.

Results

Before examining self-enhancement, we examined reaction time. Overall reaction time was 740.92 (SE = 103.1). A three-way interaction was found using a 2 × 3 × 2 ANOVA (Word Type × Brain Site × Self-Other) using a within groups ANOVA (F(2, 16) = 4.02, p = .039). Post-hoc comparisons across brain regions and word types revealed that there was a significant self-other difference at MPFC for egoistic words such that the reaction time for self (M = 903.20, SE = 141.45) was longer than for other (M = 678.10, SE = 104.91; t

Discussion

There were two goals for this experiment. Initially, we wanted to replicate the results found in the Kwan et al. (2007) study, providing support for the finding that TMS delivered to the medial prefrontal cortex disrupts self-enhancement. Secondly, we hoped to shed light on the neural correlates differentiating egoistic and moralistic self-enhancement. Significant differences in the current study centered on the MPFC region. Specifically, when investigating the relationship between word types

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