Loss of control as a violation of expectations: Testing the predictions of a common inconsistency compensation approach in an inclusionary cyberball game

Abstract

Personal control relies on the expectation that events are contingent upon one’s own behavior. A common ‘inconsistency compensation approach’ posits that a violation of expectancies in social interaction triggers aversive arousal and compensatory effort. Following this approach, we tested the hypothesis that interventions affecting participants' decisions violate the expected personal control. In a modified version of the established cyberball paradigm, participants were not excluded, but consistently included. However, their decisions regarding the recipient of a ball throw in the virtual game were occasionally overruled (expectancy violation). We hypothesized that this intervention will trigger a P3 response in event-related brain potentials (ERP). Since this component is related to subjective expectancies, its amplitude was assumed to depend on the frequency of interventions (independent factor: loss of control). Further, we manipulated the vertical position of the participants’ avatar on the computer screen (independent factor: verticality). Building on research showing that verticality is related to the self-assigned power and influences the expected level of control, we hypothesized that the ERP effects of intervention should be more pronounced for participants with avatars in superior position. As predicted, both experimental factors interactively affected the expression of the ERP response: In case of low intervention frequency, P3 amplitudes were significantly pronounced if the participants’ avatar was positioned above as compared to below co-players (high > low self-assigned power). The effect of verticality could be traced back to a lack of adaptation of P3 amplitudes to recurring aversive events. By demonstrating that loss of control triggers ERP effects corresponding to those triggered by social exclusion, this study provides further evidence for a common cognitive mechanism in reactions to aversive events based on an inconsistency in expectancy states.

From Loss of Control to Social Exclusion: ERP Effects of Preexposure to a Social Threat in the Cyberball Paradigm

“…Recently, Niedeggen and colleagues [ 19 ] modified the Cyberball paradigm, in which personal control was threatened ( Intervention Cyberball ). To challenge the participants’ decisional autonomy, a putative supervisor was introduced, who can overrule the participant’s decision on the recipient of his/her ball throw and select a different ball recipient.…”

“…Notably, the participant remains included, i.e., the probability of ball reception remains unchanged, but his/her personal control is challenged by the intervention of the supervisor. Correspondingly, self-reports provided in the NTQ indicated that participants did not feel a threat to belonging, but reported a significantly increased threat in the scale need for control [ 19 ].…”

“…The posterior P3 effects in Cyberball studies appear to be closely related to processing changes in social participation as well as personal control. In a series of experiments, the change in P3 amplitude was consistently associated with the processing of a transition to exclusion ( Exclusion Cyberball ) [ 14 ], or a transition to intervention ( Intervention Cyberball ) [ 19 ]. In both cases, the reduced probability of receiving the ball or intervening in decisional autonomy, respectively, increased the P3 amplitude.…”

“…In contrast to Hudac, the current study did not rely on repetitive “prime-target” pairs, but on the transfer effect of an aversive preexposure condition to an exclusion condition. According to the expectancy-violation account [ 19 ], preexposure to a loss of control will lead to an adaptation of the expectancy level. This adaptation effect has already been observed in a previous Intervention Cyberball study and reflected in a gradual decrease of the P3 amplitude over time [ 19 ].…”

Can Social Norms Promote Recycled Water Use on Campus? The Evidence From Event-Related Potentials

“…After the induction of FRN, several studies have also discovered that behaviors that cause a sense of violation of rules or expectations can induce the related subsequent P300 component (Niedeggen et al, 2019;Porcaro et al, 2019;Zhan et al, 2020). The P300 component that appears after the FRN amplitude peak usually reaches its maximum positive amplitude 200-600 ms after stimulation.…”