Fig. 1.

Neural responses associated with the confirmation of expectations about other individuals. Whole-brain random-effects contrasts comparing expectation-consistent > expectation-violating trials revealed activity in the NAcc in (A) Study 1 and (B) Study 3. In addition, we independently defined an ROI in the NAcc using a comprehensive meta-analysis (MNI coordinates: −6, 10, −6; 10, 12, −6). Analysis of parameter estimates in this region confirmed that the bilateral NAcc showed a stronger response during consistent than during violating trials in (C) Study 1 and (D) Study 3. Upper panel: Across all figures, individual dots represent parameter estimates for individual participants. Each figure also visualizes the mean of each condition (as a red dot), the median (solid horizontal line), and the first and third quartiles (boxplot). Lower panel: effect size (the mean difference between respective conditions, indicated by the black circles), the bootstrapped 95% CIs (illustrated by the vertical lines) and the resampled distribution of the effect size given the observed data, indicated by the curve (see Methods section).