Responsibility modulates neural mechanisms of outcome processing: an ERP study

The role of personal responsibility in decision-making and its influence on the outcome evaluation process have been investigated relatively rarely in cognitive neuroscience. The present event-related brain potential (ERP) study manipulated the subjective sense of responsibility by modifying outcome controllability in a gambling task. Participants reported a higher sense of responsibility and produced a larger fERN when they were told that the game was 'controllable' compared with when they were told that the game was 'uncontrollable.' In addition, fERN amplitude was correlated with individual self-reports of personal responsibility over the outcomes. These results indicate that self-attribution of responsibility associated with different degrees of controllability affects the outcome evaluation process and fERN amplitude.