Abstract
“Social mindfulness” refers to being thoughtful of others and considering their needs before making decisions, and can be characterized by low-cost and subtle gestures. The present study compared the behavioral and neural responses triggered by observing others’ socially mindful/unmindful choices and how these responses were modulated by the social status of the agency. At the behavioral level, observing socially mindful choices made observers feel better, rate the actors as more likable, and behave more cooperatively than did observing socially unmindful choices. Analysis of event-related potentials in the brain revealed that compared with socially unmindful choices, mindful choices elicited more negative feedback-related negativity (FRN). Notably, while this effect of social mindfulness was only significant when the actor’s social status was medium and high, it was undetectable when the actor’s social status was low. These results demonstrate that the social mindfulness of others can be rapidly detected and processed, as reflected by FRN, even though it does not seem to receive further, more elaborate evaluation. These findings indicated that low-cost cooperative behaviors such as social mindfulness can also be detected and appreciated by our brain, which may result in better mood and more cooperative behaviors in the perceivers. Besides, the perception of social mindfulness is sensitive to important social information, such as social status.
Highlights
Imagine you are in line to buy a pie and there are two strawberry pies and one cherry pie remaining
For the ratings of pleasantness, the main effect of social mindfulness was significant (F(2,54) = 5.22, p = 0.008, ηp2 = 0.16) such that participants reported the highest level of pleasantness after observing mindful choices and lowest after observing unmindful choices
This study investigated two critical issues with regard to the perception of social mindfulness
Summary
Imagine you are in line to buy a pie and there are two strawberry pies and one cherry pie remaining. Participants are presented with a set of three or four items among which one is unique from the rest (e.g., three blue U-disks and one white U-disk, Figure 1A) They are asked to choose one of these items, and another person chooses from the remaining ones: (1) if participants choose the unique item and leave the others with no choice, it is counted as socially unmindful, and (2) if they choose one of the non-unique items and leave the others with more options, it is counted as socially mindful (Van Doesum et al, 2013; Van Lange and Van Doesum, 2015). Since the other’s behavior in the SoMi task reflects how thoughtful and cooperative the actor is, to some extent, it can be considered as an implicit social signal that the observers would perceive, evaluate, and adjust their own behavior to . We predicted that the effect of social mindfulness would be enhanced when the perceived actor’s social status increased
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