It’s not always about me: The effects of prior beliefs and stimulus prevalence on self–other prioritisation

Abstract

Although self-relevance is widely acknowledged to enhance stimulus processing, the exclusivity of this effect remains open to question. In particular, in commonly adopted experimental paradigms, the prioritisation of self-relevant (vs. other-relevant) material may reflect the operation of a task-specific strategy rather than an obligatory facet of social-cognitive functioning. By changing basic aspects of the decisional context, it may therefore be possible to generate stimulus-prioritisation effects for targets other than the self. Based on the demonstration that ownership facilitates object categorisation (i.e., self-ownership effect), here we showed that stimulus prioritisation is sensitive to prior expectations about the prevalence of forthcoming objects (owned-by-self vs. owned-by-friend) and whether these beliefs are supported during the task. Under conditions of stimulus uncertainty (i.e., no prior beliefs), replicating previous research, objects were classified more rapidly when owned-by-self compared with owned-by-friend (Experiment 1). When, however, the frequency of stimulus presentation either confirmed (Experiment 2) or disconfirmed (Experiment 3) prior expectations, stimulus prioritisation was observed for the most prevalent objects regardless of their owner. A hierarchical drift diffusion model (HDDM) analysis further revealed that decisional bias was underpinned by differences in the evidential requirements of response generation. These findings underscore the flexibility of ownership effects (i.e., stimulus prioritisation) during object processing.

More or less of me and you: self-relevance augments the effects of item probability on stimulus prioritization

“…When contrasted with responses to self-relevant items, performance was equivalent (i.e., mother = self). Albeit in a different task context, these findings conflict with Falbén et al's (2020) demonstration that, regardless of the target of association, frequently (vs. infrequently) encountered stimuli were prioritized during decision-making.…”

“…Second, Falbén et al's (2020) demonstration of the elimination of self-bias is surprising given the reported ubiquity of this effect (Reuther & Chakravarthi, 2017;Schäfer et al, 2017;Sui et al, 2014;Wade & Vickery, 2017). For example, prior to the performance of a matching task, Reuther and Chakravarthi (2017) introduced a training phase in which error-free learning was equated for all the shape-label stimulus pairs.…”

“…Contrasting Falbén et al's (2020) methodology, a useful feature of matching tasks is that participants respond to shape-label pairings that correspond to previously learned associations (e.g., triangle = you, square = friend) on half the experimental trials, but mismatch these associations (e.g., square = you, triangle = friend) on the remaining trials (Sui et al, 2012). As the response options (i.e., matching vs. nonmatching) are used equally often during the task and do not explicitly reference self or other, this therefore raises the possibility of manipulating stimulus frequencies without creating a bias for either self-or friend-related responses.…”

“…As such, participants were told to expect an equivalent number of self-and friend-related items to be presented. Unlike Falbén et al, (2020), absent the operation of self-other response-related expectancies-and reflecting the strength of self-shape associations in working memorya self-prioritization effect was expected to emerge on matching trials under these conditions (Reuther & Chakravarthi, 2017;Sui et al, 2012;Wade & Vickery, 2017). 2 To identify the processes underlying task performance (i.e., stimulus and/or response biases), a drift diffusion model (DDM) analysis was conducted on the data as this approach has been applied successfully in previous work exploring the origins of stimulus prioritization (Falbén et al, 2020;Golubickis et al, 2017Golubickis et al, , 2018Golubickis et al, , 2020.…”

“…Unlike Falbén et al, (2020), absent the operation of self-other response-related expectancies-and reflecting the strength of self-shape associations in working memorya self-prioritization effect was expected to emerge on matching trials under these conditions (Reuther & Chakravarthi, 2017;Sui et al, 2012;Wade & Vickery, 2017). 2 To identify the processes underlying task performance (i.e., stimulus and/or response biases), a drift diffusion model (DDM) analysis was conducted on the data as this approach has been applied successfully in previous work exploring the origins of stimulus prioritization (Falbén et al, 2020;Golubickis et al, 2017Golubickis et al, , 2018Golubickis et al, , 2020. Replicating previous research that has used shape-label matching tasks to probe self-bias (Golubickis et al, 2017(Golubickis et al, , 2020, we expected self-prioritization to be underpinned by differences in the rate of information uptake during decisional processing.…”