The Effect Of Gender During Evaluating Others’ Outcome,an ERP Study

Feedback Related Negativity(FRN)is a negative component that occurs200-350 ms after a negative result onset,which mainly distributes in the anterior part of the scalp.The researchers proposed that it reflects the perception of negative results or expectation violations.In the past studies on FRN,the event-related potentials(ERPs)were evoked by evaluation participants’ own win or lose.There is less research on the EEG response of bystanders after seeing other people win or lose.This study consists of two experiments.the subjects participated in gambling tasks,they will get two results,win or lose.Meanwhile,another subject watch on one side.The EEG of the observer will be recorded.In experiment one,the observer and the observed person’s gender was the same.In experiment two,the observer and the observed person’s gender was different.The results are as follows:1.In experiment 1,as past studies found,loss condition evoked larger FRN than gain condition did.In addition,evaluation ones own outcome evoked larger FRN than evaluation others’ outcome,especially for male participants,which results did not demonstrated on FRN,but also on P300.The results indicate that,although with some empathy,participants processed their own results deeply,thus elicited larger FRN in processing own loss than processing others loss.2.In experiment 2,loss condition elicited much larger FRN than gain condition,which was comparable to experiment 1.Different to experiment 1,the empathy was enhanced when evaluation different-gender others’ outcome,and thus evoked comparable FRN for evaluation own and others’ outcome.Except in P300 stage,evaluation once own outcome evoked larger amplitude than evaluation others’ outcome.These results suggest that,firstly,processing others’ outcome,our brain engaged a gain and loss evaluation and evoked FRN,which is smaller than evaluation own outcome;secondly,the evaluation for others’ results is modulated by gender between observer and observed participants.When the observed participants had the same gender as observer,the FRN and P300 were smaller for evaluation others’ loss than for evaluation ones own loss.When observed participants have different gender to observers,the evoked FRN was comparable for evaluation ones’ own outcome and evaluation others’ outcome.