The impact of trust violations on emotional conflict control

Effectively controlling emotional conflicts is important for both social adjustment and mental health. Previous research has indicated that trust violations heightened negative cognitive biases and impaired cognitive control under moderate to high cognitive loads. However, the impact of trust violations on emotional conflict control remains unclear. This study aims to investigate how trust violations affect emotional conflict control in both intrapersonal (utilizing the emotional Stroop paradigm in Experiment 1) and interpersonal contexts (employing the cued Ultimatum game in Experiment 2). One hundred participants performed conflict control tasks with ERPs recorded (56 for Experiment 1 and 44 for Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, trust violations impaired conflict control when negative stimuli served as targets, reflected in longer RTs in the angry incongruent condition for the violation group compared to the control group. They also impaired conflict resolution when negative stimuli served as distractors, reflected in reduced slow potential (SP) amplitudes in the happy incongruent condition for the violation group compared to the control group. In Experiment 2, trust violations impaired conflict resolution in threatening interactions, reflected in reduced SP amplitudes when resolving conflicts between happy expressions and unfair proposals, and heightened negative bias in interpreting interpersonal cues, as indicated by larger P3 amplitudes for untrustworthy and angry faces. Overall, trust violations undermine emotional conflict control in both intrapersonal and interpersonal contexts, with the impairment particularly evident at the conflict resolution stage. In intrapersonal contexts, they disrupted conflict resolution when negative stimuli acted as distractors, and in interpersonal contexts, they impaired resolution in threatening interactions.