The Cognitive And Neural Mechanism Of Threatening Information Influencing Self-face Advantage

The self-face advantage effect refers to a process where self-face recognition is faster than both stranger-face recognition and familiar-face recognition. The implicit positive association (IPA) theory attributed the self-face advantage to the implicit positive association with self-concept, and previous behavioral study has found that self-concept threat (SCT) could eliminate the self-face advantage over other-face.Firstly, according to the previous reports and IPA theory, it can be concluded that threatening self-concept would weaken the self-face advantage. However, it should be noticed that the conclusion was drawn only when self-face was compared with important other faces (friend-face or faculty advisor’s face). Hence, it is not clear whether threatening self-concept could weaken the self-face advantage over stranger-face. Secondly, although previous behavioral study has found that self-concept threat (SCT) could eliminate the self-face rather than friend-face, a recent research of self-face advantage suggested that for Chinese participants, priming mismatched self-construal modulated the processing to friend-face but not to self-face. So it is necessary to further explore whether the SCT mediated the responses to self-face or friend-face. Finally, few researches have studied the neural mechanism of self-face advantage effect and it is unclear how our brain tissues organize information to modulate self-face advantage, so it is necessary to explore the neural mechanism of self-face advantage.Therefore, the current study firstly aimed to investigate whether threatening self-concept could weaken the self-face advantage over stranger-face, and then explore wether the SCT mediated the responses to self-face or friend-face, at last explore the neural mechanism of self-face advantage.Study1was a behavioral study which included both the’Self-friend’ comparison task in which participants identified the face orientation of self-face and friend-face after SCT and NSCT (non-self-concept threat) priming, and the’Self-stranger’comparison task in which participants identified the face orientation of self-face and stranger-face after SCT and NSCT priming. Our behavioral results of left hand, which were consistent with above studies, showed that participants did not respond faster to self-face than to friend-face after SCT priming but responded faster to self-face than to friend-face after NSCT priming, which indicated that the SCT inhibited the self-face advantage over friend-face. Our results also found that participants responded faster to self-face than stranger-face after both SCT and NSCT priming, which indicated that SCT did not weaken the self-face advantage over stranger-face. In sum, self-concept threat and comparison with important others weaken self-face advantage altogether.In study2, we used event-related brain potential (ERP) technology which has the advantage of high temporal resolution and designed both the’Self-friend’comparison task (participants identified the face orientation of self-face and friend-face) and the ’Self-stranger’comparison task (participants identified the face orientation of self-face and stranger-face) which were both after self-concept threat (SCT) priming and non-threat (NSCT) priming. The results showed that the N2amplitudes were more negative to friend-face processing than to self-face processing after NSCT priming, but there was no significant difference between them after SCT priming. Moreover, the N2amplitudes were more negative for processing stranger-face compared to self-face both after SCT priming and after NSCT priming. Furthermore, the SCT manipulated the N2amplitudes of friend-face rather than self-face.The results suggested again that the IPA theory might be merely suitable to explain the self-face advantage over familiar-face, but not suitable to explain the self-face advantage over stranger-face. Moreover, the SCT weakened the self-face advantage by modulating the reaction to friend-face rather than self-face.In conclusion, the present study revealed that the IPA theory may only suit to explain the reason of self-face advantage over important other-face but does not explain the reason of self-face advantage over stranger-face. Moreover, the SCT weaken the self-face advantage by modulating the reaction to friend-face rather than self-face. The interaction between SCT and the self-face recognition mainly modulated the N2amplitudes around190to300ms over the frontal-central region.