Emotional expression differently modulates reward anticipation in gain and loss contexts

Reward and emotion are tightly intertwined, yet their interaction remains underexplored. The present study employed an adapted monetary incentive delay (MID) paradigm combined with electrophysiological recordings, using emotional faces as incentive cues (signaling gain, neutral, or loss prospect) to investigate how the alignment between emotional valence and incentive contexts affects the incentive representation and subsequent task motivation. Specifically, in valence-congruent blocks, happy, neutral, and angry faces indicate monetary gain, neutral, and loss conditions, respectively; in valence-incongruent blocks, angry, neutral, and happy faces indicate gain, neutral, and loss conditions, respectively. Participants completed a discrimination task in response to the subsequent target and received performance-contingent feedback. Behaviorally, responses were faster in both gain and loss conditions compared to the neutral condition. Analyses of cue-locked ERP components (fronto-central negativity, parietal positivity, and CNV) revealed no reliable emotion-category differences within the gain context. In contrast, significant processing differences between happy and angry cues emerged in the loss context. These findings demonstrate that the impact of emotional expressions on incentive anticipation varies distinctively across gain and loss prospects, highlighting a nuanced and context-dependent interplay between reward and emotion processing.