We Met Yesterday, Will I Like You in Three Months? - Incite at Columbia University

“Why do certain group members end up liking each other more than others?”

This is the key question posed in a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and featured in Psychology Today.

Written by Incite Institute affiliates Noam Zerubavel, Mark Hoffman, Adam Reich, Kevin Ochsner and Peter Bearman, “Neural precursors of future liking and affective reciprocity” draws on fMRI and longitudinal social network data collected as part of the 2014 Summer for Respect to test whether or not neural activity in one’s brain can predict one’s future liking of someone.

Specifically, the authors discuss how neural activity in reward networks in the brain increases when one meets someone who one will end up liking in the future, even as they’re unaware of any attraction in the present.