Fundamental features of social environments determine rate of social affiliation
Open accessAbstract
Humans start new friendships and social connections throughout their lives and such relationships foster mental and physical well-being. While friendship initiation may depend on alignment of subtle and complex personal variables, here we investigated whether it also depends on basic features of social environments. In a preregistered online study (n = 783) using a novel social-affiliation seeking paradigm, we found people were more likely to send friend requests as the density of friendship opportunities decreased and frequency of success increased. Further, we found task-related measures, like overall friend requests, were correlated with mental health dimensions like social thriving and anhedonia. Next, in an ultra-high-field fMRI study (n = 24), we found that both fundamental features of social environments--opportunity density and frequency of success--affected neural activity across a network of regions linked to foraging including dorsal raphe nucleus, substantia nigra, and anterior insula. Thus, humans consider the background statistics of an environment while making social decisions and these decisions are linked to activity in cortico-subcortical circuits mediating the influence of environmental statistics on other aspects of behavior. Moreover, individual differences in how environmental features influence social behavior are associated with variation in mental health dimensions, offering key insights into interindividual variability in social functioning.
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7T fMRI allowed measurement of BOLD activity even in small subcortical regions such as the DRN and MBD-associated nuclei.
“7T fMRI allowed us to measure blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) activity even in small subcortical regions such as the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN)15”
From Two prefrontal-subcortical circuits estimate controllability and reflect its impact on learning (2026) · cites this paper as [15]
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Two prefrontal-subcortical circuits estimate controllability and reflect its impact on learning
Liu, Y., Spiering, L., Luo, S., Kingston, N., Grohn, J., & Rushworth, M. F. S. (2026) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2026.07.029 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
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- Authors
- Garud, S., Rascu, M., Hamilton, S., Yu, I., Rushworth, M. F. S., & Klein-Flügge, M. C.
- Affiliations
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Oxford Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
- Warneford Hospital (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Garud, Sankalp
- Rushworth, Matthew F. S.
- Klein-Flügge, Miriam C.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2025-10-14
- Volume
- 122
- Issue
- 42
- Pages
- e2506243122-e2506243122
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC12557543
- OpenAlex
- W4415179624
- Cited by
- 2
- References
- 52
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2
- FWCI
- 1.13
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Wellcome Trust (221794/Z/20/Z, 103184/Z/13/Z, 223263/Z/21/Z, 203139/Z/16/Z)
- EC | European Research Council (EP/X021815/1)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior
- Keywords
- social affiliation, social environment, anhedonia, mental health, foraging, dorsal raphe nucleus, substantia nigra, anterior insula, cortico-subcortical circuits, individual differences, social decision-making, friend requests
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Brain, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Social Behavior, Social Environment, Friends, Young Adult
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