Social Self-Regulation and the Feedback-Related Negativity
Date
2013
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Haverford College. Department of Psychology
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine how the error-monitoring system in the brain, as indexed by the feedback-related negativity (FRN), which has been researched in objective cognitive tasks, extends to a subjective rating task that involves social stimuli as well as social feedback. Participants rated the perceived trustworthiness of a set of faces and voices and received either social or non-social feedback about how their ratings compared to ratings made by a perceived group of peers. We hypothesized that feedback indicating social deviance would elicit larger FRNs when it was delivered through a social medium (a face or voice) versus a non-social symbol. We also anticipated that individuals high in fear of negative evaluation as well as empathy would produce larger FRNs than individuals with low levels of those traits. Results partially supported the main hypothesis in that voice feedback elicited the largest FRNs. However, no effect was found for face feedback, and in the symbol feedback condition participants responded more positively to feedback indicating social deviance than feedback showing social conformity. There was a pervasive pattern in the data such that participants responded more positively to voice stimuli and feedback than to faces or symbols. There were no significant effects of individual differences. These results suggest that individuals self-regulate differently based on the presence or absence of social stimuli and feedback during social judgment tasks.