Preference uncertainty accounts for developmental effects on susceptibility to peer influence in adolescence
Creators: name: Reiter, Andrea M. F.
name: Moutoussis, Michael
name: Vanes, Lucy
name: Kievit, Rogier
name: Bullmore, Edward T.
name: Goodyer, Ian M.
name: Fonagy, Peter
name: Jones, Peter B.
name: Dolan, Raymond J.
name: Bullmore, Edward
name: Dolan, Raymond
name: Goodyer, Ian
name: Jones, Peter
name: Hauser, Tobias
name: Neufeld, Sharon
name: Romero-Garcia, Rafael
name: Clair, Michelle St
name: Vértes, Petra
name: Whitaker, Kirstie
name: Inkster, Becky
name: Prabhu, Gita
name: Ooi, Cinly
name: Toseeb, Umar
name: Widmer, Barry
name: Bhatti, Junaid
name: Villis, Laura
name: Alrumaithi, Ayesha
name: Birt, Sarah
name: Bowler, Aislinn
name: Cleridou, Kalia
name: Dadabhoy, Hina
name: Davies, Emma
name: Firkins, Ashlyn
name: Granville, Sian
name: Harding, Elizabeth
name: Hopkins, Alexandra
name: Isaacs, Daniel
name: King, Janchai
name: Kokorikou, Danae
name: Maurice, Christina
name: McIntosh, Cleo
name: Memarzia, Jessica
name: Mills, Harriet
name: O’Donnell, Ciara
name: Pantaleone, Sara
name: Scott, Jenny
name: Vaghi, Matilde
name: Van Harmelen, Anne-Laura
name: Reiter, Andrea
Publisher: name: Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository
Year: 2021
Subjects: Article
/631/378/2649
/631/378/2571
/631/378/1595
/631/378/3919
/631/378/2645
/59/57
article

description: Funder: The Wellcome Trust funded the ‘Neuroscience in Psychiatry Project’ (NSPN). All NSPN members (S-Table 4) are supported by a Wellcome Strategic Award (ref 095844/7/11/Z). Ray Dolan is supported by a Wellcome Investigator Award (ref 098362/Z/12/Z). The Max Planck – UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing is a joint initiative of the Max Planck Society and UCL. A.M.F. Reiter acknowledges support from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft, DFG RE 4449/1-1, SFB 940-3, project B7) and by a 2020 NARSAD Young Investigator Grant from the Brain &amp; Behavior Foundation. M. Moutoussis receives support from the NIHR UCLH Biomedical Research Centre. R.A. Kievit is supported by a Sir Henry Wellcome Trust Grant 107392/Z/15/Z and MRC Programme Grant SUAG/014 RG91365. E. Bullmore is in receipt of an NIHR Senior Investigator Award. P. Fonagy is in receipt of a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Senior Investigator Award (NF-SI-0514-10157). P. Fonagy was in part supported by the NIHR Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC) North Thames at Barts Health NHS Trust. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health. We are grateful to the NSPN management and research assistant teams.
description: Abstract: Adolescents are prone to social influence from peers, with implications for development, both adaptive and maladaptive. Here, using a computer-based paradigm, we replicate a cross-sectional effect of more susceptibility to peer influence in a large dataset of adolescents 14 to 24 years old. Crucially, we extend this finding by adopting a longitudinal perspective, showing that a within-person susceptibility to social influence decreases over a 1.5 year follow-up time period. Exploiting this longitudinal design, we show that susceptibility to social influences at baseline predicts an improvement in peer relations over the follow-up period. Using a Bayesian computational model, we demonstrate that in younger adolescents a greater tendency to adopt others’ preferences arises out of a higher uncertainty about their own preferences in the paradigmatic case of delay discounting (a phenomenon called ‘preference uncertainty’). This preference uncertainty decreases over time and, in turn, leads to a reduced susceptibility of one’s own behaviour to an influence from others. Neuro-developmentally, we show that a measure of myelination within medial prefrontal cortex, estimated at baseline, predicts a developmental decrease in preference uncertainty at follow-up. Thus, using computational and neural evidence, we reveal adaptive mechanisms underpinning susceptibility to social influence during adolescence.