Motor-response execution versus inhibition alters social-emotional evaluations of specific individuals

Abstract

Social-emotional evaluations of unfamiliar people are negatively impacted by ignoring or withholding motor-responses from images that depict them; an effect attributed to the propensity of inhibition to affectively devalue associated stimuli. Prior findings suggest that the social-emotional consequences of inhibition may operate on category-level representations that impact all members of a corresponding group. Here we assess whether such social-emotional consequences of motor-response action versus inaction also operate on item-level representations of specific individuals. Participants memorized individual identities of a group of fellow students before completing a Go/No-go response-inhibition task designed to associate item-level representations of each previously-memorized person with action (Go trials) or inaction (No-go trials). Social identities associated with action were consistently rated as more trustworthy in subsequent evaluations than those associated with inaction. This suggests that the social-emotional consequences of motor-response execution versus inhibition can operate on item-level stimulus representations in memory.