# Mechanisms Regulating Complex Social Behavior

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA · 2022 · $743,809

## Abstract

Project Summary
Social connections among individuals shape many health outcomes. The progression and treatment of
a wide range of neuropsychiatric disorders (e.g., schizophrenia) and disease states (e.g., HIV positivity)
depend on individuals' social functioning. As examples, social support systems improve adherence to
difficult treatment regimens, whereas dysfunctional social perception exacerbates the mental health
challenges of depression and anxiety. Work from our groups in the previous period of support provided
evidence for a two-stage model that separated the neural and computational processes that establish
a social context from those that guide subsequent social control. Here, we test the hypothesis that
these processes reflect the core elements necessary for social competence—how one matches
behavior to the current demands of the social environment. Social competence has been recently
advanced as a consilient, cross-species framework that explains adaptive decision making in social
situations. Moreover, perceived deficits in social competence can drive privilege, ostracism, and
systemic discrimination—each of which reinforces larger-scale health disparities. In this project, we will
determine how status in a social hierarchy influences mechanisms of decision making, manipulate
sensitivity to social hierarchies, and determine how the complexity of the social environment changes
decision processes. Our three aims rely on tightly integrated and theoretically well-motivated
experiments that use primate electrophysiology, human electrophysiology and neuroimaging, and
manipulations of brain function; that adopt parallel tasks and social context manipulations; and that
analyze behavior through common computational models. Our work builds on progress from the
previous grant cycle that demonstrates how our groups are uniquely positioned to achieve these aims.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10475894
- **Project number:** 5R01MH108627-07
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
- **Principal Investigator:** SCOTT Allen HUETTEL
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $743,809
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2016-04-20 → 2026-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10475894

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10475894, Mechanisms Regulating Complex Social Behavior (5R01MH108627-07). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10475894. Licensed CC0.

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