Experimental design. A, Prior to the experiment, participants completed a series of behavioral questionnaires that measured individual differences in aggression, social connectedness, and attributional complexity. They then listened to 21 narrated social scenarios while undergoing fNIRS. At the end of each story, participants provided hostility, intentionality, blameworthiness, and anger ratings. See Extended Data Table 1-1 for title, narrative category, and duration of 21 scenarios. B, We computed each participant's hostile attribution bias score as the average hostility ratings across all scenarios. Dotted line indicates sample median. C, Spatial location of the 20 fNIRS channels projected onto the cortical surface.