The mutual influences between working memory and empathy for pain: the role of social distance

Does outcome feedback similarly impact the processing of surprised faces in competitive and cooperative contexts? Evidence from ERP

Competition and cooperation are pervasive across diverse domains of human society, and outcome feedback in these contexts has been shown to significantly influence human emotional responses and behavioral strategies. However, there is limited understanding of the mechanisms through which outcome feedback in obstructive and supportive settings affects the perception of facial expressions of interactors. To address this issue, thirty-seven participants in this event-related potential (ERP) study completed a modified version of the Tetris game with randomly assigned interactors (cooperative supporter, competitive hinderer). After receiving outcome feedback (correct, incorrect), participants were asked to rate the valence of surprised faces which were assumed to be displayed by interactors. Behaviorally, surprised faces in supportive correct feedback contexts were rated as more pleasant, while those in obstructive correct feedback contexts were rated as less pleasant. The ERP results showed a significant main effect of outcome feedback on the FRN and LPPfeedback, with enhanced amplitudes for incorrect relative to correct trials. More importantly, face-related P1, N170, and EPN components showed significant interactions between interaction type and outcome feedback. Surprised faces in obstructive correct contexts evoked larger P1 amplitudes compared to those faces in obstructive incorrect contexts. Conversely, amplified N170 and EPN responses were observed for faces in supportive correct contexts compared to those in supportive incorrect contexts. For the LPPface, an amplified response to faces was observed in correct feedback contexts compared to incorrect ones, irrespective of the influence of interaction type. Altogether, these findings offer the first empirical evidence that feedback cues in obstructive and supportive contexts can interactively influence the top-down processing of facial expressions, shifting attention away from the suppression of aversive stimuli towards a focus on self-related positive information, thus providing insights into the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the impact of complex social information on higher-order cognitive processes.

Neural correlates of social observation and socioeconomic status in influencing environmental donations

With the increasing urgency of environmental degradation, it is crucial to investigate whether and why individuals from different socioeconomic statuses (SES) engage in environmental donations within social contexts to develop targeted strategies that promote environmental sustainability. However, the psychological mechanisms and neural activities underlying environmental donations across SES in social contexts remain unclear. The current study randomly assigned participants to high (low) SES groups and asked them to complete the environmental donation task in the (non) observable contexts while the electroencephalogram was recorded. Behaviorally, this study revealed that the presence of others promoted environmental donations in the low-cost condition and the average donations and acceptance rates were influenced by costliness. The ERP results indicated that high-SES individuals exhibited more negative N2 in the observable condition than in the non-observable condition. At the later stage, social observation modulated the neural activity evoked by donation decision making, with high-SES individuals showing larger P3 and late positive potentials (LPP) in the observable (vs. non-observable) condition. These findings suggest that public service institutions can implement targeted fundraising strategies that consider motivational differences among individuals with different SES, such as creating cost-effective environmental scenarios for low-SES individuals and designing reputation-enhancing situations for high-SES individuals.

Social anxiety undermines prosocial behaviors when required effort

Social anxiety impairs interpersonal relationships, which rely heavily on prosocial behaviors essential for healthy social interactions. The influence of social anxiety on the dynamics of helping others, through stages of prosocial choice stimulus presentation and effort, is not well understood. This study combines two experiments that integrate effort-based decision-making tasks with electroencephalography to distinguish between the choice stimulus presentation and effort phases of prosocial behavior. We examined the prosocial intention and motivation of 36 individuals with high social anxiety (HSAs) and 36 with low social anxiety (LSAs). Participants exerted effort for personal or others' gain, as well as to avoid losses. Participants chose whether to exert effort and then completed a designated number of key presses within a time limit, either to accumulate rewards or to avoid losses for themselves or others. Findings reveal that social anxiety indeed diminishes prosocial intention and effort motivation for gain. Interestingly, once HSAs decide to engage in prosocial efforts for gain, evaluative anxiety helps them reduce prosocial apathy and redirect their attentional resources from threatening stimuli to the task at hand, bringing their level of prosocial effort on par with LSAs. Moreover, HSAs exhibit prosocial apathy toward both gains and losses, with more pronounced prosocial apathy observed in loss tasks. However, evaluative anxiety does not help reduce HSAs' prosocial apathy in loss tasks. Notably, when striving to avoid losses for others, even without evaluative anxiety, HSAs demonstrated prosocial behavior indistinguishable from that of LSAs, suggesting that the goal of avoiding loss promotes prosociality among HSAs. Overall, while social anxiety diminishes individual prosocial behavior, evaluative anxiety and sensitive action goals can mitigate its impact to some extent. These findings are critical for developing strategies to enhance psychological health and promote healthier social interactions.