What neuroimaging and brain localization can do, cannot do and should not do for social psychology.

Interest in bridging social psychology and neuroscience has seen a significant upsurge. Much of this interest has centered on brain localization—the attempt to relate psychological events to locations of brain events. Although many articles have sought to localize brain activity that supports social behavior, scant attention has been paid to the specific methods to be used in integrating brain localization data into psychological theory. The authors describe 4 strategies psychologists can use to integrate brain localization data and psychological theory, and they consider whether social psychology presents special considerations in the use of these strategies. They conclude that brain localization offers a useful tool for some but not all problems in social psychology, and they discuss the types of problems for which it may and may not prove useful. The purpose of this article is to examine why social psychologists should be interested in localizing psychological processes in the brain. The intersection of neuroscience and social psychology has been vibrant for many years, and substantial progress has been made in understanding the relationship of the social mind and the body’s physiology (for a number of examples, see Cacioppo, Tassinary, & Berntson, 2000). There is, however, a new enthusiasm for the integration of neuroscience and social psychology. This increased interest may be adduced by the recent (2001) request by the National Institute of Mental Health for applications that combine social psychology and neuroscience and by the increasing number of social neuroscience presentations at conferences. This increased interest has been noted in professional journals (in addition to this special section of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, see Adolphs, 1999; Ochsner & Lieberman, 2001) and in the press (Azar, 2001). Some change in zeitgeist seems to be at hand. What is behind this exuberance? We think it is clear that the apparent applicability of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and its greater availability to researchers is fueling much of the excitement. fMRI is a method of localizing neural activity that is associated with mental activity. Because it is noninvasive, relatively inexpensive, and can be applied to healthy brains, it is indeed a breakthrough technology. Naturally, fMRI and other methods of localization are but one type of neuroscientific data of interest to social psychologists. The nervous system has different components (e.g., central vs. peripheral), and each component has more than one measurable characteristic. As shown in Table 1, social psychologists have already made good use of several neuroscientific methods. Space limitations obviously preclude a detailed examination of all of the methods listed in Table 1, and indeed, that is not our purpose. We focus on anatomic localization because we believe that these data are currently receiving the most attention. Previous treatments have more often focused on reviewing past achievements while encouraging continued work (e.g., Adolphs, 1999; Klein & Kihlstrom, 1998; Ochsner & Lieberman, 2001). We consider two points. First, how does one actually use brain localization data to advance psychological theory? Second, do social psychological questions pose different problems or opportunities for the use of brain localization data than other psychological questions?