The audience effect refers to the phenomenon that one's performance on a task is affected by the presence of others. Here we investigated how the audience effect modulates the neurocognitive signatures underlying people's evaluation of their own task performance/outcome. Participants in our study played a gambling game in two social contexts: an "audience" condition and an "alone" condition. The presence of others modulated the feedback-related negativity (FRN), which might reflect enhanced motivational significance or increased reward processing when participants were watched compared to when they were alone. We also observed increased P300 responses to outcome feedback in the audience condition, presumably reflecting more elaborative and sustained evaluation of outcomes in the audience than alone context. This audience effect on the evaluative processes complements previous observations on the social nature of outcome evaluation and extends a traditional topic in social psychology to the neuroscientific field. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1.Beijing Normal Univ, State Key Lab Cognit Neurosci & Learning, Beijing 100875, Peoples R China 2.Chinese Acad Sci, Inst Psychol, Key Lab Behav Sci, Beijing 100101, Peoples R China 3.Univ Kentucky, Coll Med, Dept Behav Sci, Lexington, KY 40536 USA 4.Huaiyin Normal Univ, Sch Educ Sci, Huaian, Peoples R China 5.Shenzhen Univ, Sch Nursing, Hlth Sci Ctr, Shenzhen, Peoples R China 6.Shenzhen Univ, Inst Affect & Social Neurosci, Shenzhen, Peoples R China 7.Wuhan Sports Univ, Res Ctr Sport Psychol, Wuhan, Peoples R China
Recommended Citation:
Tian, Tengxiang,Feng, Xue,Gu, Ruolei,et al. Modulation of the brain activity in outcome evaluation by the presence of an audience: An electrophysiological investigation[J]. BRAIN RESEARCH,2015,1615(0):139-147.