Perspective shift: Neural similarity, shared affect and social anxiety symptoms in friend pairs

We used a naturalistic neuroscience paradigm to assess mentalizing network neural similarity. Undergraduate student (N = 34, 85% White, 65% Women) friend pairs engaged in a conversation while their views were recorded. Participants watched clips of the social interaction from both their own and their friend’s view while fMRI data were collected. After each clip, individuals rated their affect. Neural similarity was computed both in a classic sense (participants watched the same clip) and a perspective sense (participants both watched the self- or friend-view, making it the same moment but not the same clip). This created four conditions: Self Classic (self-view and friend’s friend-view), Friend Classic (friend-view and friend’s self-view), Self Perspective (self-view and friends’s self-view) and Friend Perspective (friend-view and friend’s friend-view). When dyads experienced more shared affect than their average, they exhibited more neural similarity during the Self Perspective compared to the Self Classic condition. Additionally, when dyads experienced less shared affect than their average, greater social anxiety symptoms were related to more neural similarity during the Friend Perspective compared to the Self Classic condition. Our results suggest shared affect enhances neural similarity in social interactions and that social anxiety may alter this relation, potentially due to over-mentalizing.