Neighborhood socioeconomic status and adolescent brain responses to peer feedback: Testing relationships with negative and positive affect assessed outside of the lab

Abstract

Lower socioeconomic status (SES) is a risk factor for psychopathology. Youth living in low SES neighborhoods experience a myriad of stressors, particularly social stressors (e.g., discrimination), which may be particularly stressful for adolescents sensitive to peer feedback (i.e., blunted sensitivity to acceptance from peers). This study thus aimed to test whether neighborhood SES moderates the relationship between brain responses to peer feedback and affect outside of the lab, measured through ecological momentary assessment (EMA). To measure neural response to acceptance (relative to rejection), 13–18-year-old adolescents (N=172) completed an event-related potential (ERP) task during which they received accepting or rejecting feedback from peers. They also rated their positive and negative affect via EMA for a week. Neighborhood SES moderated the relationship between brain responses to peer acceptance and negative affect. Specifically, for adolescents living in low SES neighborhoods, blunted brain response to acceptance was related to elevated negative affect. Prevention and intervention efforts (e.g., neighborhood/community interventions) may benefit from focusing on increasing hedonic responses to social feedback.