Modulation of the brain activity in outcome evaluation by the presence of an audience: An electrophysiological investigation.
The audience effect refers to the phenomenon that one׳s performance on a task is affected by the presence of others. Here we investigated how the audience effect modulates the neurocognitive signatures underlying people׳s evaluation of their own task performance/outcome. Participants in our study played a gambling game in two social contexts: an "audience" condition and an "alone" condition. The presence of others modulated the feedback-related negativity (FRN), which might reflect enhanced motivational significance or increased reward processing when participants were watched compared to when they were alone. We also observed increased P300 responses to outcome feedback in the audience condition, presumably reflecting more elaborative and sustained evaluation of outcomes in the audience than alone context. This audience effect on the evaluative processes complements previous observations on the social nature of outcome evaluation and extends a traditional topic in social psychology to the neuroscientific field.
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Tengxiang
T
Tian
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Xue
X
Feng
Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Ruolei
R
Gu
Department of Behavioral Science, University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, KY, United States.
Lucas S
LS
Broster
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China. Electronic address: chunliang.feng@gmail.com.
Chunliang
C
Feng
School of Educational Science, Huaiyin Normal University, Huaian, China.
Lili
L
Wang
School of Nursing, Health Science Center, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China. Electronic address: guanqing@szu.edu.cn.
Qing
Q
Guan
Institute of Affective and Social Neuroscience, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China; Research Center of Sport Psychology, Wuhan Sports University, Wuhan, China.
Yue-Jia
YJ
Luo
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D030141:Feedback, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012919:Social Behavior; D012938:Social Perception; D055815:Young Adult
Audience effect; Event-related potential (ERP); Feedback-related negativity (FRN); Motivational significance; Outcome evaluation; P300