Social value orientation modulates the processing of outcome evaluation involving others

Abstract

Social value orientation (SVO) is a stable personality trait that reflects how people evaluate interdependent outcomes for themselves and others in social environments. Generally, people can be classified into two types: proselfs and prosocials. The present study examined how SVO affects the processing of outcome evaluation temporally using the event-related potential (ERP). Young adults with two different SVO types participated in a simple gambling task in which they received outcome distributions for themselves and others. The results showed that for the self outcomes, the feedback-related negativity (FRN) was more negative for self-loss than self-gain, and the P3 and late positive component (LPC) was larger for self-gain than self-loss in both prosocial and proself groups. For the other outcomes, however, the FRN, P3 and LPC were sensitive to other’s gain and loss only in the prosocial group but not in the proself group. These findings suggest that outcomes for oneself and others are processed differently at different stages of evaluation processing in the brains of individuals with distinct SVOs.

Feedback processing in the context of social comparison

“…The results of the present experiment do not corroborate the observation of FRN modulations made by Boksem et al () (see also Hu et al, ; Luo et al, ). The absence of any FRN modulation caused by the quality of preceding feedback might indicate that, in the present design, social comparison does not change feedback interpretation according to valence or expectedness.…”

“…Despite the absence of any FRN modulation, in the present experiment, social comparison had a significant effect on the P3a component. However, two characteristics of the observed P3a modulations do not conform to the late ERP effects reported in other studies of social comparison (Hu et al, ; Luo et al, ; Qiu et al, ; Wu et al, ). First, contrary to the observation of parietal modulations in Luo et al (), Hu et al (), and Wu et al () or to the widespread effect in Qiu et al (), in the present experiment, social comparison affected the P3 amplitude over fronto‐central electrodes, with bilateral electrodes showing the most robust effect.…”

“…Previous studies of the electrophysiological underpinnings of social comparison reported discordant results about which ERP component evoked by performance monitoring reflects the relative interpretation of feedback. With the presentation of personal and nonpersonal feedback within the same external signal, Boksem et al () observed that social comparison affected the FRN, Wu et al () and Qiu et al () reported P3 effects, whereas Luo et al () and Hu et al () recorded modulations of both the FRN and the P3. Contrary to previous studies of social comparison, the present experiment aimed to identify the ERP related to social comparison by presenting personal and nonpersonal feedback in sequence and analyzed how the first feedback affected the interpretation of the second feedback.…”

“…Importantly, in these two studies, inequality seemed to be the most effective factor, irrespective of whether the personal outcome was better or worse than the outcome of the other participant. Furthermore, Luo et al () found modulations of both the FRN and the P3 induced by feedback descriptive of the outcomes of three people involved in a gambling task, and recently Hu et al () observed FRN and P3 modulations, along with effects on the LPC activity, but only in participants that showed prosocial value orientation.…”

“…Neuroimaging studies have shown that the relative evaluation of outcomes is associated with the activity of the bilateral ventral striatum (Bault, Joffily, Rustichini, & Coricelli, ; Dvash, Gilam, Ben‐Ze'ev, Hendler, & Shamay‐Tsoory, ; Fliessbach et al, ; Takahashi et al, ). However, the effect of social comparison on the ERPs evoked by feedback processing is still unclear (Boksem, Kostermans, & De Cremer, ; Hu, Xu, & Mai, ; Luo et al, ; Qiu et al, ; Wu, Zhang, Elieson, & Zhou, ).…”