Neural activity in the reward-related brain regions predicts implicit self-esteem: a novel validity test of psychological measures using neuroimaging

Abstract

Self-esteem, arguably the most important attitudes an individual possesses, has been a premier research topic in psychology for more than a century. Following a surge of interest in implicit attitude measures in the 90s, researchers have tried to assess self-esteem implicitly in order to circumvent the influence of biases inherent in explicit measures. However, the validity of implicit self-esteem measures remains elusive. Critical tests are often inconclusive, as the validity of such measures is examined in the backdrop of imperfect behavioral measures. To overcome this serious limitation, we tested the neural validity of the most widely used implicit self-esteem measure, the implicit association test (IAT). Given (1) the conceptualization of self-esteem as attitude toward the self, and (2) neuroscience findings that the reward-related brain regions represent an individual’s attitude or preference for an object when viewing its image, individual differences in implicit self-esteem should be associated with neural signals in the reward-related regions during passive-viewing of self-face (the most obvious representation of the self). Using multi-voxel pattern analyses (MVPA) on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, we demonstrated that the neural signals in the reward-related regions were robustly associated with implicit (but not explicit) self-esteem, thus providing unique evidence for the neural validity of the self-esteem IAT. In addition, both implicit and explicit self-esteem were related, although differently, to neural signals in regions involved in self-processing. Our finding highlights the utility of neuroscience methods in addressing fundamental psychological questions and providing unique insights into important psychological constructs.

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ORCID for Constantine Sedikides: orcid.org/0000-0003-4036-889X

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