Your Performance Is My Concern: A Perspective-Taking Competition Task Affects ERPs to Opponent's Outcomes

Area of Science:

• Social Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Individuals exhibit in-group favoritism and out-group schadenfreude.
• Perspective-taking, a facet of cognitive empathy, is linked to heightened empathy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the interplay of in-group bias and perspective-taking on outcome evaluation after competition.
• To examine neural correlates of attention and bias towards in-group versus out-group members.

Main Methods:

• Subjects observed a gambling task involving an in-group partner and an out-group opponent.
• Electroencephalography (EEG) signals were recorded to measure neural activity.
• Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and correlation analyses were employed.

Main Results:

• Opponent's loss elicited larger feedback-related negativity (FRN) and smaller P300 than partner's loss.
• A win-loss differential P300 effect was observed for the opponent, but not the partner.
• Inclusion of the Other in the Self (IOS) scores correlated with FRN, suggesting perspective-taking enhances opponent monitoring.

Conclusions:

• Competition enhances neural attention towards out-group individuals.
• Perspective-taking may modulate neural responses, increasing differentiation in brain activity related to out-group outcomes.
• Findings support the motivation significance account of FRN and highlight neural evidence for in-group bias post-competition.