Frontal Alpha Asymmetry Reveals a Relationship Between Human Approach Motivation and the Propensity to Take the Altercentric Perspective

Abstract

Frontal asymmetry in the EEG alpha frequency allows to distinguish greater left activation relating to approach motivation from greater right activation relating to withdrawal motivation. It has been mostly studied in the context of affective empathy. Instead, it remains unknown whether it can be specifically related to one key component of the cognitive dimension of empathy, i.e., visuospatial perspective-taking (VSPT). In the present study, we intended to bridge this gap. To this aim, we administered an implicit VSPT task in which participants were presented with scenes of an agent grasping an object, gazing at it, or both, or neither, and were required to judge the left/right location of the object, without receiving any instruction about the perspective to take. The same participants underwent a resting state EEG recording to obtain an index of frontal alpha asymmetry. Correlational analyses showed a positive relationship between left frontal activation and the spontaneous tendency to take the agent’s perspective (altercentric propensity) when the agent behaved ambiguously, grasping the object while not gazing to it. These results suggest that the onlooker’s spontaneous altercentric propensity implies the approach motivation in the effort to understand what another individual is intending to do.