Receiving feedback about your child appears to engage brain regions that are activated when receiving feedback about yourself, according to new research published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
“For parents, it is quite common to receive feedback about their child, for example from a teacher, sports coach or family member. But so far no studies have investigated how parents’ brains react to this kind of vicarious feedback,” explained lead researcher Lisanne A. E. M. van Houtum, a PhD candidate at Leiden University.
“Excessive reactions by parents when confronted with criticism about their child can have a large impact on contact with the teacher or sports coach, and indirectly may also shape parent-child dynamics. This is what prompted us to examine how parents react to both compliments and criticism about their child. We also wanted to know whether parents react more emotionally when they feel that feedback about their child is inapplicable, or when they generally have a more rosy view of their child.”
The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the brain activity in 60 parents as they received feedback about their child.
The parents were part of a larger research project — called Relations and Emotions in Parent-Adolescent Interaction Research — and the feedback was purportedly based on observations of parent–adolescent interaction videos that had previously been recorded. In reality, however, each parent received the same feedback about their child.
As expected, parents tended to report better mood after receiving positive feedback and worse mood after receiving negative feedback about their child. “This was especially the case when negative feedback was inconsistent with their own perceptions of their child; so-called misplaced criticism,” van Houtum told PsyPost.
The researchers also found that positive feedback was associated with increased activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus. Negative feedback, on the other hand, was associated with increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and precuneus.
“The feedback activated brain areas that are normally activated when people receive social feedback about themselves, including brain areas that are involved in social salience processing and mentalizing, understanding the intentions and emotions of others,” van Houtum explained.
“When parents generally had a more rosy view of their child, they reacted more strongly to both positive and negative feedback about their child. In these parents, certain brain areas (i.e. dorsal striatum, thalamus, left inferior frontal gyrus and left insula) were also activated more strongly when specifically receiving negative feedback about the child.”
The findings provide some new insights into vicarious social feedback. But, van Houtum noted, scientists still have much to learn.
“Whereas there are indications for differential activation patterns in mothers and fathers, larger sample sizes are needed to draw valid conclusions on differences in neural responses to vicarious feedback between mothers and fathers,” she said. “Furthermore, I am very much intrigued by the ‘rosy view’ findings, and especially by the question of whether you can also ‘overdo’ it as a parent.”
“Some parents may express the strong emotions that arise when they receive criticism about their child by blaming the criticizer, or criticizing the child themselves, or by overpraising the child. This can possibly impact on the child’s own self-views and self-esteem.”
“For adolescents who already have a negative self-image and low self-esteem, for example those suffering from depression, their parents’ ‘rose-colored glasses’ might also have a particularly negative impact,” van Houtum added. “Parents’ awareness of their own perceptions and reactions to feedback about the child may potentially be an important pillar in parenting interventions.”
The study, “Vicarious praise and pain: parental neural responses to social feedback about their adolescent child“, was authored by Lisanne A. E. M. van Houtum, Mirjam C. M. Wever, Loes H. C. Janssen, Charlotte C. van Schie, Geert-Jan Will, Marieke S. Tollenaar, and Bernet M. Elzinga.
