Abstract
When inferring the mental states of others, individuals’ judgments are influenced by their own state of mind, an effect often referred to as egocentricity. Self–other differentiation is key for an accurate interpretation of other’s mental states, especially when these differ from one’s own states. It has been suggested that the right supramarginal gyrus (rSMG) is causally involved in overcoming egocentricity in the affective domain. In a double-blind randomized study, 47 healthy adults received anodal (1 mA, 20 min) or sham transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to the rSMG prior to performing a newly developed paradigm, the self–other facial emotion judgment (SOFE) task. In this task, participants made judgments of facial emotional expressions while having been previously confronted with congruent or incongruent emotion-inducing situations. To differentiate between emotional and cognitive egocentricity, participants additionally completed an established visual perspective-taking task. Our results confirmed the occurrence of emotional egocentric biases during the SOFE task. No conclusive evidence of a general role of the rSMG in emotional egocentricity was found. However, active as compared to sham tDCS induced descriptively lower egocentric biases when judging incongruent fearful faces, and stronger biases when judging incongruent happy faces, suggesting emotion-specific tDCS effects on egocentric biases. Further, we found significant tDCS effects on cognitive egocentricity. Results of the present study expanded our understanding of emotional egocentricity and point towards emotion-specific patterns of the underlying functionality.
Highlights
As social beings, humans often rely on the ability to correctly interpret others’ mental states in order to interact successfully
Using anodal transcranial direct current stimulation, which involved the application of a weak electrical current to enhance brain activity, we aimed to investigate the causal role of right supramarginal gyrus (rSMG) in overcoming emotional egocentricity during self–other facial emotion judgment (SOFE) task performance
We aimed to investigate the causal role of the rSMG in a novel emotional egocentricity paradigm by means of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)
Summary
Humans often rely on the ability to correctly interpret others’ mental states in order to interact successfully. Difficulties in self–other distinction can result in egocentric biases, which have been investigated by a broad range of experimental paradigms in the cognitive domain [2,3]. Cognitive egocentricity occurs when the own knowledge about a given situation affects inferences about how someone else judges the situation. It can influence decisions during visual perspectivetaking [4], which involves the understanding that one’s own viewpoint (i.e., self) may differ from the viewpoint of another observer (i.e., other). Subjects had to disengage from their own experience of an affective touch (i.e., self) in order to correctly judge the emotional state of another person (i.e., other) undergoing a simultaneous affective touch of incongruent valence. Similar paradigms evoked congruent or incongruent emotions between a participant and another person via visuo-gustatory [9] or audiovisual [10] stimulation or via a monetary reward and punishment manipulation in a competitive game [11]
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