iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Begüm Babür @begumbabur.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Really grateful to have done this work with @ycleong.bsky.social and @leorhackel.bsky.social, and for their support!

Begüm Babür @begumbabur.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Last week I had the pleasure of giving a talk at the Society for Social Neuroscience! Our work examines how we learn who values us in social interactions and how our brains track these social computations My first S4SN was full of inspiring new research and new connections! #S4SN #SocialNeuro

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Yi Zhang @yizhang96.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

New paper out in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology! 🎉 How do we figure out who will accept or reject us in a new group? We show that people generalize relational value across friendship ties—forming a network gradient of approach & avoidance. authors.elsevier.com/a/1lq3x51f8w...

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Ava Ma de Sousa @avamadesousa.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

So excited to share that my first first-author paper is out in @commspsychol.nature.com 🎉 In a mini-meta analysis of seven studies, we looked at whether loneliness is related to altered expectations of one’s own and others' emotion transitions. www.nature.com/articles/s44... (1/4)

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Yi Zhang @yizhang96.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

🥳Excited to share that our new paper is live at Psychological Science @psychscience.bsky.social! We show that Pavlovian learning can grow empathy for another person. 🧵👇

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The Conversation U.S. @us.theconversation.com · 10/06/2025

Rejection can be emotionally painful, but it can also teach us something. A social psychology researcher shows how rejection can serve as a learning signal – shaping how people navigate relationships and decide whom to attempt to connect with in the future.

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Your brain learns from rejection − here’s how it becomes your compass for connection

Rejection can feel physically painful. It also provides a lesson for your brain on whom to connect with and how.

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Begüm Babür @begumbabur.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

That’s a wrap on #SANS2025! Had a great time presenting my work on how our brains learn from rejection & how loneliness relates to patterns in our daily language

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Leor Hackel @leorhackel.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

A secondary but neat finding in our new work: We find neural evidence for rewards biasing social perception. We’ve previously found that rewards lead people to see others in a more positive light. We’ve argued this reflects a kind of affect-as-information… www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

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Begüm Babür @begumbabur.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

🫂 Updating our beliefs about what our interaction partners are feeling towards us and choosing partners who accept us can help us interact with partners who are likely to reciprocate care and avoid ones that are unlikely to, guiding adaptive social choice

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Begüm Babür @begumbabur.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

💡These findings offer an alternative account to interpreting activity in the social rejection network, beyond social rejection being painful or surprising. We show that experiences of rejection can also serve as learning opportunities, shaping future social decisions

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Begüm Babür @begumbabur.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

🔍 Next, we asked whether the social rejection network (dACC, vACC, AI) encoded an internal model of relational value. We found that partners who elicited more similar voxel patterns were rated more similarly by the participants ("how much do you think this person likes you?")

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Begüm Babür @begumbabur.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

🧠 We also found that these processes are distinctly represented in the brain -Updating beliefs about how others value us, through good or bad ranks, tracked activity in the “social rejection network”(dACC, vACC, AI) -Learning from rewarding outcomes tracked activity in VS

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Begüm Babür @begumbabur.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

🧩 Using a Bayesian cognitive model, we found that people tracked relational value and rewarding outcomes when choosing partners

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Begüm Babür @begumbabur.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

🤝 Participants tried to match with others for a trust game and got feedback on: 1. Relational value (partner's ranking of them) 2. Reward value (successful match or not) This allowed us to separate learning how others feel toward us from tracking positive social outcomes

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Begüm Babür @begumbabur.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

🤔 Social rejection hurts, but it can also be informative. We modeled how people choose partners after experiences of social rejection and acceptance & uncovered two distinct learning mechanisms shaping social affiliation using computational neuroimaging

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Begüm Babür @begumbabur.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

🥳 Exciting news! My first paper is out now in @pnas.org This work was a great collaboration between @ycleong.bsky.social , Chelsey Pan, & @leorhackel.bsky.social We examined how the brain learns from experiences of social acceptance and rejection🧵👇 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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