Publication Date
February 2013
Journal or Book Title
Journal of Experimental Psychology
Abstract
To secure the interest of the personal self (vs. social others) is considered a fundamental human motive, but the nature of the motivation to secure the self-interest is not well understood. To address this issue, we assessed electrocortical responses of European Americans and Asians as they performed a flanker task while instructed to earn as many reward points as possible either for the self or for their same-sex friend. For European Americans, error-related negativity (ERN)-an event-related-potential component contingent on error responses--was significantly greater in the self condition than in the friend condition. Moreover, post-error slowing--an index of cognitive control to reduce errors--was observed in the self condition but not in the friend condition. Neither of these self-centric effects was observed among Asians, consistent with prior cross-cultural behavioral evidence. Interdependent self-construal mediated the effect of culture on the ERN self-centric effect. Our findings provide the first evidence for a neural correlate of self-centric motivation, which becomes more salient outside of interdependent social relations.
DOI
10.1037/a0031696
Pages
62-70
Volume
143
Issue
1
Recommended Citation
Park, Jiyoung and Kitayama, Shinobu, "Error-related brain activity reveals self-centric motivation: Culture matters" (2013). Journal of Experimental Psychology. 12.
10.1037/a0031696
Comments
This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record.