Group creation is the process by which group members collaborate to produce novel and useful ideas or products, including ideas generation and evaluation. However, the interpersonal neural mechanism of group creation during natural communication remains unclear. In this study, two groups of same-sex dyads with similar individual creativity collaborated to complete the Product Improvement Task (creative condition) and the Item Purchase Plan Task (control condition), respectively. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to record both members' neural activity in the left prefrontal (lPFC) and right temporal-parietal junction (rTPJ) regions during the task. Considering that the role asymmetry of group members may have an impact on interpersonal neural patterns, we identified leaders and followers in the dyads based on participant performance. The results showed that leaders and followers in the creative condition had significantly lower interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) in the right superior temporal gyrus-left superior frontal gyrus, right supramarginal gyrus-left superior frontal gyrus, and right supramarginal gyrus-left middle frontal gyrus than in the control condition. Partial multivariate Granger causality analyses revealed the influence between dyads was bidirectional but was significantly stronger from the leaders to the followers than the other direction. In addition, in the creative task, the INS was significantly associated with novelty, appropriateness, and conflict of views. All these findings suggest that the ideas generation and ideas evaluation process in group creation have poor interpersonal neural activity coupling due to factors such as the difficulty of understanding novel ideas. However, performances may be improved when groups can better integrate views and reach collective understanding, intentions, and goals. Furthermore, we found that there are differences in the dynamics of INS in different brain regions. The INS related to the novelty of the group creation decreased in the early stages, while the INS related to the appropriateness decreased in the middle stages. Our findings reveal a unique interpersonal neural pattern of group creation processes in the context of natural communication.

Explicit self-esteem (ESE) is an important factor influencing subject well-being (SWB). However, the relationship between ESE and SWB is not clear. Due to the complex nature of self-esteem, implicit self-esteem (ISE) might moderate the relationship between ESE and SWB. Furthermore, providing the consistency between ISE and ESE, the interacting effect of ISE and ESE would only be significant for the cognitive component of SWB rather than the emotional component. To examine these assumptions, the present study recruited a total of 134 undergraduate students and measured their ISE, ESE, and SWB using Implicit Association Test (IAT) and self-report measures. The results showed that (a) ESE, rather than ISE, was significantly correlated to SWB; and (b) the interaction between ISE and ESE could significantly predict the cognitive components of SWB rather than the emotional components. Those findings contribute to the further understanding of the relationship between self-esteem and SWB.

Purpose: Bullying is a serious problem among adolescents. Many scholars have examined school bullying in recent years; however, there are many psychological and behavioral mechanisms for bully that still remain unclear. Based on the theory of self-worth orientation, this study examined the influence of academic achievement on bullying behavior among adolescents and explored the moderating effects of perceived social support and age cohort. Methods: Participants were 3227 middle and high school students in the 7th through 12th grades in China. A self-report method was used to measure academic achievement, social support, bullying, and demographic variables. Results: Moderation analyses indicated that the relationship between academic achievement and bullying behavior was moderated by the perceived social support of adolescents and their age cohort. Specifically, social support moderated the relationship between achievement and bullying behavior positively in the middle school group but negatively in the high school group. Conclusion: The results support the hypothesis of self-worth orientation theory and indicate that bullying intervention could be enhanced by addressing the relationships between academic achievement, social support, age cohort, and bullying.