Abstract
Self-relevance exerts a powerful influence on information processing. Compared to material associated with other people, personally meaningful stimuli are prioritized during decision-making. Further exploring the character of this effect, here we considered the extent to which stimulus enhancement is impacted by the frequency of self-relevant versus friend-relevant material. In a matching task, participants reported whether shape-label stimulus pairs corresponded to previously learned associations (e.g., triangle = self, square = friend). Crucially however, before the task commenced, stimulus-based expectancies were provided indicating the probability with which both self- and friend-related shapes would be encountered. The results revealed that task performance was impacted by the frequency of stimulus presentation in combination with the personal relevance of the items. When self- and friend-related shapes appeared with equal frequencies, a self-prioritization effect emerged (Expt. 1). Additionally, in both confirmatory (Expt. 2) and dis-confirmatory (Expt. 3) task contexts, stimuli that were encountered frequently (vs. infrequently) were prioritized, an effect that was most pronounced for self-relevant (vs. friend-relevant) items. Further computational analyses indicated that, in each of the reported experiments, differences in performance were underpinned by variation in the rate of information uptake, with evidence extracted more rapidly from self-relevant compared to friend-relevant stimuli. These findings advance our understanding of the emergence and origin of stimulus-prioritization effects during decisional processing.
Highlights
Reflecting the fundamental role that self-relevance exerts during information processing, recent years have witnessed a burgeoning interest in the degree to which the personal significance of otherwise arbitrary material, most notably geometric shapes, influences decision-making (Humphreys & Sui, 2016; Sui & Humphreys, 2015, 2017)
In both confirmatory (Expt. 2) and dis-confirmatory (Expt. 3) task contexts, stimuli that were encountered frequently were prioritized, an effect that was most pronounced for self-relevant items
Further computational analyses indicated that, in each of the reported experiments, differences in performance were underpinned by variation in the rate of information uptake, with evidence extracted more rapidly from self-relevant compared to friend-relevant stimuli
Summary
Reflecting the fundamental role that self-relevance exerts during information processing, recent years have witnessed a burgeoning interest in the degree to which the personal significance of otherwise arbitrary material, most notably geometric shapes, influences decision-making (Humphreys & Sui, 2016; Sui & Humphreys, 2015, 2017). Extending earlier research highlighting the memorial advantages of stimulus relevance (Symons & Johnson, 1997), self-prioritization— whereby decision-making is facilitated for self-relevant (vs other-relevant) information—has been documented across a wide range of task contexts (e.g., Frings & Wentura, 2014; Macrae et al, 2018; Mattan et al, 2015; Moradi et al, 2015; Payne et al, 2017; Schäfer et al, 2015, 2016; Sui et al, 2012; Woźniak & Knoblich, 2019) Driving these effects, it has been claimed, is a mind that is exquisitely receptive to self-relevant inputs, such that they are enhanced during decisional processing (Humphreys & Sui, 2016; Sui & Humphreys, 2015, 2017)..
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