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Abstract
The psychological effect of being watched by others has been proven a powerful tool in modulating social behaviors (e.g., charitable giving) and altering cognitive performance (e.g., visual search). Here we tested whether such awareness would affect one of the core elements of human cognition: emotional processing and impulse control. Using an emotion stop-signal paradigm, we found that viewing emotionally-arousing erotic images before attempting to inhibit a motor response impaired participants’ inhibition ability, but such an impairing effect was completely eliminated when participants were led to believe that their facial expressions were monitored by a webcam. Furthermore, there was no post-error slowing in any of the conditions, thus these results cannot be explained by a deliberate speed-accuracy tradeoff or other types of conscious shift in strategy. Together, these findings demonstrate that the interaction between emotional arousal and impulse control can be dependent on one’s state of self-consciousness. Furthermore, this study also highlights the effect that the mere presence of the experimenter may have on participants’ cognitive performance, even if it’s only a webcam.
Highlights
The psychological effect of being watched by others has been proven a powerful tool in boosting honest or charitable behaviors (Bateson et al, 2006; Ekstrom, 2012) while reducing dishonest behaviors (Nettle et al, 2012). This watching effect increases self-awareness (Baltazar et al, 2014) and causes individual to consciously modify their behavior to increase compliance with social standards (Wedekind and Milinski, 2000; Milinski et al, 2002). Besides these high-level socio-behavioral changes that are subject to participants’ conscious decisions, it remains unclear whether the effect of watchful eyes can modulate some of the core elements of human cognition, such as cognitive control and emotion regulation
In this study we explored whether increased levels of conscientiousness, or the knowledge of being watched by others, may influence the effects that emotion has on cognitive control
For Go RTs, there were no significant effects of emotion condition [F(1,24) = 0.005, p = 0.95], being watched [F(1,24) = 0.936, p = 0.34], or interaction of the two factors [F(1,24) = 2.106, p = 0.16]
Summary
The psychological effect of being watched by others has been proven a powerful tool in boosting honest or charitable behaviors (Bateson et al, 2006; Ekstrom, 2012) while reducing dishonest behaviors (Nettle et al, 2012). This watching effect increases self-awareness (Baltazar et al, 2014) and causes individual to consciously modify their behavior to increase compliance with social standards (Wedekind and Milinski, 2000; Milinski et al, 2002). In addition to Stroop interference, one recent study using visual search has shown that people may alter their cognitive performance by searching slowly in order to achieve higher accuracy rates when they are being (or believe they are) watched by others (Miyazaki, 2013)
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