Abstract
Social comparison, a widespread phenomenon in human society, has been found to affect outcome evaluation. The need to belong to a social group may result in distinct neural responses to diverse social comparison outcomes. To extend previous studies by examining how social comparison with hierarchical characteristics is temporally processed, electroencephalography responses were recorded in the current study. Participants played a lottery game with two pseudo-players simultaneously and received both their own and the other two players’ outcomes. Results of three event-related potential components, including the P2, the feedback-related negativity (FRN), and the late positive component (LPC), indicate that social comparison manifests in three stages. First, outcomes indicating a different performance from others elicited a larger P2 than evenness. Second, the FRN showed hierarchical sensitivity to social comparison outcomes. This effect manifested asymmetrically. Finally, large difference between the participant’s outcome and the other two players’ evoked a larger LPC than the medium difference and the even condition. We suggest that during social comparison, people detect if there is any difference between self and others, and then evaluate the information of this difference hierarchically, and finally interpret the situations in which oneself deviates from the group as most motivationally salient.
Highlights
A recent study found that social comparison modulated not the feedback-related negativity (FRN), but a later stage of outcome evaluation indicated by the late positive component (LPC)[18]
With EEG recording, the current study aims to investigate the temporal processing of outcome evaluation in a social comparison context
The ERP findings in the current study reveal how social comparison is processed in three stages, which requires good understanding of context-dependent social norms and social structures among group members[8,35,50]
Summary
A recent study found that social comparison modulated not the FRN, but a later stage of outcome evaluation indicated by the late positive component (LPC)[18]. Based on prior findings[3,6,12,15,17], we hypothesized that ERP signals would be elicited during the process of outcome evaluation and that EEG responses to different kinds of social comparing outcomes would show distinct patterns. We have revised the social comparison paradigm designed by Boksem et al.[17], such that participants played the same task with two other players simultaneously. The hypothesis of this study was that the best and worst outcomes obtained in social comparison would elicit larger LPC than other conditions, since these two kinds of outcomes are more motivationally salient
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