Influence of Betrayal on Emotional Modulation of Executive Control: Evidence From ERPs

Previous studies have found that betrayal increases negative attentional bias and hinders executive control. However, it remains unclear how betrayal influences emotional modulation of executive control. What's more, according to the dual mechanisms of control model, executive control can be divided into reactive and proactive control. It also requires clarification whether both aspects of executive control are affected equally by betrayal in emotional contexts. Thus, the present study aims to provide insight into how betrayal influences the emotional modulation of executive control. Betrayal was induced using a repeated trust game in two experiments. Eighty-two participants (40 for Experiment 1 and 42 for Experiment 2) completed emotional executive control tasks while event-related potentials were recorded. In Experiment 1, an emotional Go/No-go task was used to explore the impact of betrayal on the emotional modulation of executive control. The results indicated that betrayal resulted in inefficient top-down attention processing towards negative stimuli and impaired executive control over these stimuli. This was evidenced by higher N2a and N2b amplitudes in the angry Go condition, and smaller angry No-go P3 amplitudes in individuals who experienced betrayal compared to the control group. In Experiment 2, a modified emotional Stroop task was employed to measure proactive and reactive control in emotional contexts. The results indicated that betrayal impaired only reactive control towards negative stimuli and did not affect proactive control. This was evidenced by the betrayed group exhibiting smaller SP amplitudes under the happy incongruent condition in the most congruent context, with no significant difference observed in the most incongruent context. In summary, betrayal decreases the efficiency of top-down attentional processing directed towards negative stimuli and hampers executive control over negative stimuli. Moreover, this impairment appears to be confined to reactive control strategy.