Incidental self-processing modulates the interaction of emotional valence and arousal

Actor or recipient role matters: Neural correlates of self-serving bias

INTRODUCTION

When involved in interpersonal events, people often play the role of an initiative actor (e.g., "I hit Tom") or a passive recipient (e.g., "Paul hit me"). Numerous studies have documented that people manifest a self-serving bias (SSB), that is, they tend to attribute positive interpersonal events to themselves and negative events to other external factors. Recent studies have identified the neural regions associated with the SSB; yet little is known about the neural mechanism of its modulation by the actor or recipient role.

METHODS

In this study, participants were scanned while they attributed the positive or negative events in which the self played the actor or recipient role.

RESULTS

The results showed that people manifested more SSB than non-SSB (NONSSB) attributions and spent less time on making the former. Importantly, more SSB attributions and shorter reaction times were found in the actor than in the recipient condition. Greater activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) was observed in responding to NONSSB than SSB attributions only in the actor condition. Furthermore, the greater the difference in dmPFC activity in responding to NONSSB and SSB attributions, the smaller the difference in corresponding attribution response.

CONCLUSION

The results suggest that people prefer making heuristic SSB attributions, and more cognitive resources are needed when they make NONSSB attributions. The activity of the dmPFC may be associated with inhibiting the heuristic SSB, especially when they play the actor role at interpersonal events.