When decisions of others matter to me: an electrophysiological analysis

Abstract

BackgroundActions of others may have immediate consequences for oneself. We probed the neural responses associated with the observation of another person's action using event-related potentials in a modified gambling task. In this task a "performer" bet either a higher or lower number and could win or lose this amount. Three different groups of "observers" were also studied. The first (neutral) group simply observed the performer's action, which had no consequences for the observers. In the second (parallel) group, wins/losses of the performer were paralleled by similar wins and losses by the observer. In the third (reverse) group, wins of the performer led to a loss of the observer and vice versa.ResultsERPs of the performers showed a mediofrontal feedback related negativity (FRN) to losses. The neutral and parallel observer groups did similarly show an FRN response to the performer's losses with a topography indistinguishable from that seen in the performers. In the reverse group, however, the FRN occurred for wins of the performer which translated to losses for the observer.ConclusionsTaking into account previous experiments, we suggest that the FRN response in observers is driven by two evaluative processes (a) related to the benefit/loss for oneself and (b) related to the benefit/loss of another person.

Effects of social context and predictive relevance on action outcome monitoring

“…In particular, it seems to accord with recent hypotheses (Fukushima & Hiraki, 2006;Marco-Pallares, et al, 2010) suggesting that two different processes might lead to the generation of an oFRN and influence the direction of its amplitude changes: a first mechanism based on the evaluation of outcome for oneself, and a second simulation or mirroring mechanism based on the observed action outcome. Some evidence for two separate mechanisms involved in action outcome observation comes from the fMRI study by de Bruijn et al (2009), who showed dissociable reward-vs. error-related signals.…”

“…For the observation condition, if others' performance feedback is mainly processed according to self-centered reward outcome (Hajcak, et al, 2006;Holroyd & Coles, 2002), as previously suggested (Itagaki & Katayama, 2008;Marco-Pallares, et al, 2010), the oFRN should be larger in cooperating observers for negative compared to positive outcomes, whereas an inverse effect may be found in competing observers. However, because an oFRN has also been reported for neutral observers (Fukushima & Hiraki, 2009;Leng & Zhou, 2010;Marco-Pallares, et al, 2010;Yu & Zhou, 2006) and attributed to simulation processes, a smaller oFRN might also arise during competition, where self-and other-based evaluations might interfere with each other. Indeed, recent fMRI data suggested a possible dissociation between error monitoring and reward processing in competing observers (de Bruijn, et al, 2009).…”

“…The oFRN was also larger for friends than strangers in one study (Kang, Hirsh, & Chasteen, 2010), but not in another (Leng & Zhou, 2010). Interestingly, cooperative vs. antagonistic relationships between the participant and another virtual player during a gambling task produced no effects on ERPs to own losses, but the oFRN/oMFN were amplified for losses of cooperating partners and gains of antagonistic partners, indicating an evaluation of outcomes based on self-interest (Itagaki & Katayama, 2008;Marco-Pallares, Kramer, Strehl, Schroder, & Munte, 2010). However, gambling outcomes are not directly related to performance accuracy, but rather to probabilistic factors.…”

“…Based on previous findings (Itagaki & Katayama, 2008;Marco-Pallares, et al, 2010), we expected opposite FRN effects for cooperation vs. competition, i.e., a classic oFRN to negative feedback during cooperation but a greater response to positive feedback during competition.…”

Brain systems underlying the affective and social monitoring of actions: An integrative review

“…These authors demonstrated activation of dMFC for errors compared to hits independent of context, whereas the ventral striatum responded as a function of the subjective reward value of errors vs. hits (higher striatum activation for hits in cooperation, and for errors in competition). Similarly, it has been shown that other persons' positive outcomes activate the ventral striatum more when they are perceived as more similar to the self , in line with the assumption that affective responses to observed outcomes depend on the relationship between self and other (see also Carp et al, 2009;Itagaki, 2008;Kang and Hirsh, 2010;Koban et al, 2010;Marco-Pallares et al, 2010). Additionally, individual differences in personality may influence the processing of observed actions and errors, especially perspective taking and empathy (Koban et al, 2012b;Rak et al, 2013;Thoma and Bellebaum, 2012).…”