Prosociality moderates outcome evaluation in competition tasks

Jiachen Lu; Weidong Li; Yujia Xie; Qian Huang; Jingjing Li

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-15570-3

Prosociality moderates outcome evaluation in competition tasks

Sci Rep. 2022 Jul 6;12(1):11397. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-15570-3.

Authors

Jiachen Lu¹, Weidong Li², Yujia Xie¹, Qian Huang¹, Jingjing Li³

Affiliations

¹ School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China.
² School of Physical Education, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, 510006, China.
³ School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China. 2020010222@m.scnu.edu.cn.

Abstract

The current study investigated the effect of prosociality on outcome evaluation without involving social comparison and reward processing in face-to-face competition tasks. The results showed that when faced with medium and large outcome feedback, the feedback-related negativity (FRN) amplitude induced in high-prosocial individuals was significantly more negative than that of low-prosocial individuals. In addition, the P300 amplitude induced in high-prosocial individuals was smaller than that in low-prosocial individuals in the face of large outcome feedback; hence, the prosociality score was significantly correlated with FRN amplitude. However, there was no significant difference in FRN between high-and low-prosocial individuals in the face of small outcome feedback. It was concluded that individual prosocial traits can moderate outcome evaluation.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Evoked Potentials*
Feedback
Feedback, Psychological
Humans
Outcome Assessment, Health Care
Reward*