An fMRI study of violations of social expectations: When people are not who we expect them to be

The current study examines the effect of violations of social expectancies on the neural substrates of person perception. In an event-related fMRI experiment, participants were presented with the photographs of either Republican or Democrat politicians paired with either typical Republican or Democrat political views (e.g., “wants a smaller government” or “wants liberal supreme court judges”). Subjects were asked to form an impression of the targets using information about both their political affiliation and their political views. Of interest was the contrast between stereotypically congruent trials and stereotypically incongruent trials. The results reveal that brain regions previously involved in mentalizing (i.e., temporoparietal junction and medial prefrontal cortex) are preferentially recruited when viewing incongruent social targets. ►Additional brain regions recruited by socially incongruent social targets. ►Brain areas involved in mentalizing (TPJ and MPFC) also support individuation. ►Perceiving violations of social expectations recruit additional prefrontal regions.