The primacy of the individual versus the collective self: evidence from an event-related potential study

Behavioral studies have suggested that the individual self is primary in self-conception as compared to the collective self. The aim of the present investigation was to further investigate the primacy of the individual self versus the collective self at neurophysiologic levels. In the present study, event-related potentials (ERPs) to three types of experimental stimuli (individual self-relevant, collective self-relevant and non-self-relevant stimuli) were recorded while subjects performed a three-stimulus oddball task. The results showed that larger P2 amplitudes were evoked by individual self-relevant and collective self-relevant stimuli than by non-self-relevant stimuli, and that there was no P2 amplitude difference observed between individual self-relevant and collective self-relevant stimuli. Furthermore, N2 amplitudes evoked by individual self-relevant stimuli were smaller than those evoked by collective self-relevant and non-self-relevant stimuli, and no difference was observed in N2 amplitudes between collective self-relevant and non-self-relevant stimuli. Moreover, individual self-relevant stimuli elicited larger P3 amplitudes than did collective self-relevant stimuli, which, in turn, elicited larger P3 amplitudes than did non-self-relevant stimuli. In summary, in addition to finding a classic self-relevant effect at the early P2 processing stage, the present study demonstrates the primacy of the individual self versus the collective self at the N2 and P3 processing stages.